Academic Courses > DOS 711
DOS 711 - Research Methods I
Course Description
Radiation oncology is an ever-evolving field, and learning how research is conducted and published is an important part of maintaining the most current set of skills. Everything that we are learning now in in this master's program will have a different shelf life attached to it. Some of it will be timeless knowledge that will always be true and accurate, and some will change subtly or drastically during the course of our careers as best practices evolve or are replaced by newer techniques. By learning about research methods, we are learning how to learn, so that we can keep ourselves at the forefront of this industry.
Assessment
Much like the world of research, this class was all about writing. There are many standard systems of citation and publication formatting, and we learned to write in the American Medical Association (AMA) style. Although we started off with a bang by diving into a large collaborative project all about how to format citations, the reinforcement of AMA practices continued throughout the whole semester in every assignment. We learned about how to formulate a questions that need to be answered (and CAN be answered) and about how to ethically and practically choose populations of participants that will be able to provide those answers. We learned about literature review through a process of selecting interesting articles and picking apart their structure. Later we also learned about how to conduct surveys and about how to evaluate data using basic statistics. I already had experience in several of these area before the class, but I found that there were more holes in my knowledge than I had thought, and this class helped to fill in the gaps as well as expose me to several new concepts.
Discussions and Other Writing
Weeks 1 & 2: AMA Group Project
Week 3: Informed Consent
Weeks 4 & 5: [no assignment]
Weeks 6 & 7: Popular and Scholarly Article on SBRT for Prostate Cancer
Week 8: Insiders and Outsiders in the Waiting Room
Week 9: Machine Learning for Thoracic IMRT Planning
Week 10: Evaluating Abstracts
Week 11: Survey Design
Weeks 12 & 13: Statistics Group Project
Week 3: Informed Consent
Weeks 4 & 5: [no assignment]
Weeks 6 & 7: Popular and Scholarly Article on SBRT for Prostate Cancer
Week 8: Insiders and Outsiders in the Waiting Room
Week 9: Machine Learning for Thoracic IMRT Planning
Week 10: Evaluating Abstracts
Week 11: Survey Design
Weeks 12 & 13: Statistics Group Project
Reflections
At the conclusion of each course, students are asked to reflect on what they have learned about the material and about themselves. The reflection is guided by five questions:
The new knowledge and skills I gained during this course were...
I learned quite a lot about the finer points of how to conduct research; in particular literature reviews. The analysis of different types of writing will also help me to structure my material appropriately for an audience whenever I write in the future. The huge amount of writing involved in the class also helped me drill in AMA styling guidelines.
The new knowledge and skills will benefit me by...
Practice, practice, practice. The AMA Challenge assignment in particular was a good exercise in how to properly cite sources. Being able to write in AMA style and show links to other established works will help me gain credibility as I begin to write and hopefully publish in my career.
I struggle with...
I have a hard time with philosophical writings. I much more prefer nuts and bolts factual topics, and I have a hard time with nebulous pseudo-definitions and phrases like "pluralistic perspective of reality". I will always struggle with wanting to quantify the unquantifiable.
I feel pretty good about...
Statistics used to be a sore spot for me, but I feel much better about them now. I also had a really good time collaborating with my classmates on the two group projects. I helped out with some of the coordination work and I feel that we all used effective communication and organization methods to keep things on track.
Other reflective thoughts...
I would still like to go back and re-read a lot of the content where my eyes glazed over and I skipped ahead. I feel like there is still much more to learn from this material.
The new knowledge and skills I gained during this course were...
I learned quite a lot about the finer points of how to conduct research; in particular literature reviews. The analysis of different types of writing will also help me to structure my material appropriately for an audience whenever I write in the future. The huge amount of writing involved in the class also helped me drill in AMA styling guidelines.
The new knowledge and skills will benefit me by...
Practice, practice, practice. The AMA Challenge assignment in particular was a good exercise in how to properly cite sources. Being able to write in AMA style and show links to other established works will help me gain credibility as I begin to write and hopefully publish in my career.
I struggle with...
I have a hard time with philosophical writings. I much more prefer nuts and bolts factual topics, and I have a hard time with nebulous pseudo-definitions and phrases like "pluralistic perspective of reality". I will always struggle with wanting to quantify the unquantifiable.
I feel pretty good about...
Statistics used to be a sore spot for me, but I feel much better about them now. I also had a really good time collaborating with my classmates on the two group projects. I helped out with some of the coordination work and I feel that we all used effective communication and organization methods to keep things on track.
Other reflective thoughts...
I would still like to go back and re-read a lot of the content where my eyes glazed over and I skipped ahead. I feel like there is still much more to learn from this material.
Academic Courses > DOS 711
|
Published May 8, 2015
Second Semester, 4 Months into Internship |