Developing Metadiscursive Thinking about Research Methods through a Mixed-Methods Research Project

This study provides an overview of the shifting epistemological terrain regarding methodological approaches to the research process in the field of communication and discusses how a mixed-methods design could improve methods comprehension in undergraduate education. The authors describe how they incorporated a mixed-methods project into the curriculum and discuss the student experience of learning qualitative and quantitative methods through the mixed-methods project as evidenced by surveys and reflective writing assignments. Specifically, the project reorients students' thinking from qualitative and quantitative methods as separate paradigms. Instead, it fosters a metadiscursive perspective on methods in which research designs and questions are in conversation with each other (Creswell, 2011). The project is structured using the Dimensions of Research in Undergraduate Learning framework (DRUL; Healey & Jenkins, 2009; Ozay, 2012) to foster this conversation by creating an explicit path for the transfer of knowledge between specific methods.