HITM Research
Through the Honors in the Major program, I conducted undergraduate research in the hopes of publishing "Addressing Student Engagement through Meaning-Making: Reception Theories and the Narrative Paradigm".
Writing my Prospectus
Prospectus cover page, Google Doc
Writing...
Getting to choose my own niche topic and leading a year-long project about it? For academic credit as well? Research is fun. I didn't know that about myself until now.
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However, not having any sense of direction was less fun. I knew I wanted to focus on instructional design, but had no template of what a prospectus or thesis should look like.
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I eventually got the hang of it, looking through guides online and discussing with my supervisor (who I scrounged for student examples). At the end of the day, I landed on 18 pages of solid content that covered all a prospectus should cover.
My Prospectus
Student engagement is a heavily debated topic, being essential to the learning process and one's future yet perceived to be decreasing, as seen in growing absenteeism or teacher testimonials. Yet, many studies describe student engagement to be improving in 2025, through some aspects show no recovery since COVID. The high reports of learning apathy must still be addressed, with many means of disengagement involving a lack of overall purpose or meaning in their coursework.
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In my research, I aim to explore different meaning-making theories, namely Ausubel's meaningful learning theory, reader-response criticism, and the narrative paradigm theory, to evaluate their potential effectiveness when further emphasized in classroom implementation.
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Conducting Interviews
After going through the wringer that is IRB, I began searching out participants for my interview. I cold emailed a couple professors, but those who reached back were mainly those I had connections to previously. I'll withhold information on said connections for privacy reasons, but I'd like to shout out Lucas von Hollen who likes appearing in random students' works to show he interacts with us. Besides him, it was fun letting people choose their own pseudonyms.
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In the end, I conducted 10 interviews over the course of November - 5 with students and 5 with instructors. With that, I internalized the oft-forgotten truth that everyone learns differently. Excitingly, all interviewees spoke positively about using narratives and storytelling in learning. I transcribed the audio recordings using Vibe and plugged everything into Taguette (for thematic analysis purposes).
Then, I began taking on the beast that is the actual thesis.
Interview documents
Highlighted transcript, Taguette
Defending my Thesis
(Current WIP)
