BA-M 801B: Becoming a Professional Researcher – II

Overview

Co-developed and co-led by the DBA faculty and the JIU librarians, this second mentoring session continues where BA801a left off, focusing on the research resources in the JIU e-global library®. Such resources will serve as the basis for individual, and group level applied business research activities and assignments throughout the DBA courses as well as the DBA Project phase. This mentoring session has three primary goals:

1. Gaining knowledge of, and ability to fully utilize, the online research tools.
2. Building the foundation of the “learning community” to support the students throughout their entire degree program.
3. Assisting the students in making the transition from corporate executive to that of a research professional.

Introduction

Throughout this mentoring session you will learn new research methods along with how these methods will be fully utilized in the development and writing of your DBA Project. Emphasizing the peer-to-peer mentoring model, you will be engaged in leading a weekly graduate seminar discussion, team work, and projects that involve the entire cohort. The faculty mentor will provide guidance and feedback to all students.

Creating this “learning community” as quickly as possible provides a strong support system, which research shows is critical to the successful completion of a doctoral degree program.

This mentoring session will be eight weeks in duration, made up of four modules:

1. Writing Style and APA Guidelines
2. Theory vs. Methodology in the DBA Project
3. Choosing a Research Question
4. Getting Organized for the Review of Literature

Using Recommended Texts

The text that are recommended in this course are starting points, rather than specific readings from week to week. By now you have insight as to how you will be using reference texts such as these in your research process. The text will, give you starting points for understanding the concepts from week to week.

It will be up to you to use the information in these texts to make sense of your individualized research interests. If you have found other reference texts that you also find useful, you may want to share those with your cohort members in the Cyber Café for the course.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Cultivate and demonstrate the ability to scan literature efficiently, using computerized methods, to identify a set of useful articles and books.
• Apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.
• Write clear research question(s).
• Evaluate and analyze data for research interpretations.
• Evaluate the viability of their research question based upon the review of literature.

Course Requirements

• EndNote from Thomson ResearchSoft.

Required Texts
BA-M 801B texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore