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Washington State University
College of Education

Educational Psychology – Courses

Foundational Educational Psychology Research Courses

ED_PSYCH 505
Research Methods I

Educational Psychology 505 is a foundational course that provides an overview of research and evaluation methods and methodologies designed to solve educational problems. The course examines the nature of scientific inquiry as well as how to identify research problems, perform a literature review, apply various methodological approaches, and interpret results. Students will design a research proposal to aid their understanding of course concepts. Offered fall, spring and summer.

ED_PSYCH 507
Foundations of Qualitative Research

Educational Psychology 505 is a foundational course that provides an overview of research and evaluation methods and methodologies designed to solve educational problems. The course examines the nature of scientific inquiry as well as how to identify research problems, perform a literature review, apply various methodological approaches, and interpret results. Students will design a research proposal to aid their understanding of course concepts. Offered fall, spring and summer.

ED_PSYCH 521
Data Management and Visualization

In this course we introduce the most recent data management and visualization techniques that can be applied in broad contexts. Using real data, we aim to illustrate the art and science of cleaning, manipulating, describing, and visualizing data in the rapid developing era of data science. Both SPSS and R (based on RStudio) will be used in class. Major topics include working with SPSS syntax and R programming, deal with data of various formats and structures, cleaning data, dealing with missing data and outliers, displaying and summarizing relationships, and identifying patterns, trends, and distributions. Offered in the summer.

ED_PSYCH 508
Educational Statistics

Ed Psych 508 is an introductory course for graduate students in applied statistics for the behavioral sciences. The course aims to provide a conceptual and practical basis to statistical literacy in the education disciplines. The course is designed to initiate statistical understanding in the graduate student from the ground up. Some mathematical computation is necessary in gaining understanding of the concepts. The primary focus of the course, however, is on conceptual understanding of the analyses and concepts. This course serves as a prerequisite for ED_RES 565 Quantitative Research. Course examples are taken from the fields of education and psychology, and include the execution, interpretation, and application of such statistical techniques as measures of central tendency, measures of variability, correlation, validity and reliability, standard scoring, probability, tests of significance, chi-square and t-tests, regression, and analysis of variance. Recommended preparation: ED PSYCH 505. Offered fall, spring, and summer.

ED_PSYCH 568
Quasi-Experimental Design

Ed Psych 568 covers Quasi-Experimental Design and application of research skills in writing proposals, dissertations, papers for publication; interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing research studies. Provides an overview of quasi-experimental designs for generalized caudal inference. Specifically, the course will focus on the design and analysis of different quasi-experimental methods including regression discontinuity designs, and instrumental variable approaches. The course will also introduce students to practical research matters including ethical considerations, validity, attrition, and statistical power. Considering that each of the major designs includes data analysis applications, students are expected to have a fundamental knowledge of statistics to excel in the course. Offered every other fall.

ED_PSYCH 569
Seminar in Quantitative Techniques in Education
(Topics in Multivariate Data Analysis)

Prerequisite: ED RES 565. The course aims to provide a conceptual and practical basis for statistical literacy in the educational disciplines. The course this semester focuses on the General Linear Model (GLM) and its extensions, and the various forms it takes in the multivariate context.  The forms of the model will be discussed in relation to research questions for which they are appropriate.  A range of multivariate statistical analysis procedures are considered to examine relationships between multiple variables (e.g., multiple dependent and/or independent variables) and comparisons will be made to their univariate equivalent.  Principal component and factor analysis will be covered as a way to reduce the number of measured variables to a smaller number of scores and to study the structure in data or underlying factors. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) will be introduced. Offered every other spring.

ED_PSYCH 509
Educational Measurements: Test Development and Assessment

This is an introductory course in measurement for graduate students in the educational and social sciences. The course purposes are for the student to (a) acquire an understanding of fundamental theory and applications of measurement, (b) be able to evaluate the psychometric properties of psychological and educational tests, and (c) apply skills to common measurement tasks. This course serves as a prerequisite for Classical and Modern Test Theory (ED_PSYCH 511). Offered every spring.

ED_PSYCH 511
Classical and Modern Test Theory

Prerequisite: ED PSYCH 509. The course provides a general introduction to psychometric theory and associated issues discussing both classical and modern test theory (reliability, validity, test fairness, standard setting, linking and equating, etc.). It focuses on (a) understanding the basic principles of psychometric theory, (b) practical applications, and (c) in-depth examination of methodological issues. Emphasis will be placed on the application of the methods. At the conclusion of the course, the student should have acquired an understanding of advanced psychometric theory as well as be able to apply psychometric methods to examine the technical properties of tests. Offered every other spring.

ED_PSYCH 570
Introduction to Program Evaluation

Prerequisite: ED PSYCH 505. Introduction to strategies and techniques for evaluation of educational and social programs. This course provides knowledge and skills for conducting program evaluation in educational and other settings. Major components of the course include evaluation theories and approaches appropriate for conducting evaluations; evaluation planning and implementation; tests and measurement; and guidelines for conducting program evaluations, including The Program Evaluation Standards (Yarbrough, Shulha, Hopson, & Caruthers, 2011). Note that the term program encompasses a variety of foci for evaluation, including programs, projects, initiatives, policies, and products. Offered every other fall.

ED_PSYCH 572
Introduction to Systematic Literature Reviews and Meta-Analyses 

Prerequisite: ED PSYCH 505 or 508. Introduction to the steps involved in conduction systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The perspective of this course is that research synthesis should be systematic and be a part of the scientific process that demands the same high standards of rigor that apply in all scientific work. Hence, research reviews must attend to the same details of problem formulation, data collection, data evaluation, data analysis, and interpretation that are addressed in the conduct of a primary research study. Students will develop a rich understanding of individual steps involved in conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses, including developing a focused research question, designing a study protocol, defining study selection criteria, identifying relevant literature databases, developing literature search strategies, performing a literature search, creating data abstraction form, developing data abstraction and management plans, and understanding the statistical methods for conducting a meta-analysis. Offered every fall.

ED_PSYCH 579
Large-Scale Surveys in Education

Prerequisite: ED PSYCH 509; Recommended Preparation: ED PSYCH 569. The course aims to provide detailed introductions to topics in large-scale surveys, including popular national and international large-scale survey programs; complex sampling and survey designs; survey operations and data collection; achievement calibration and scaling; procedures and construct validation of context questionnaire data; data accessibility and management; common data analysis approaches using large-scale survey data, etc. Offered every other spring.

 

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Educational Research Courses

ED_RES 564
Qualitative Research 

Prerequisite: ED PSYCH 507. Students will review theoretical underpinnings of qualitative research and gain familiarity with published qualitative research. Focus will be on contemporary thinking about epistemologies, analysis and (re)constructions and representations of data for their applications in educational and policy arenas. Students will learn to “read” texts and images using critical discourse and content analysis approaches. There will be some exploration of qualitative research design. Students will build skills for practice by understanding how to match methods for gathering data (e.g., interviews, focus groups, field notes, and observations) with specific research questions and contexts. Offered every fall and spring.

ED_RES 565
Quantitative Research

Prerequisite: ED PSYCH 508. This course aims to provide a conceptual and practical basis to statistical literacy in the education disciplines. The course focuses on univariate and repeated measures analysis from parametric to non-parametric procedures (hypothesis testing, ANOVAs and repeated measures, regressions, etc.). The student is exposed to statistical software packages common in the social and behavioral sciences. Offered every fall and spring.


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