EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CO-TEACHING RESEARCH METHODS TO MEXICAN STUDENTS AT OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY

Graduate Interdisciplinary Center at UPAEP University in Mexico and the College of Human Sciences at Oklahoma State University in the United States designed and delivered a Co-teaching experience to Mexican UPAEP Pedagogy Doctoral students in the United States during the 2013 summer. The experience included the participation of two professors one from each university jointly delivering instruction to the students. The class selected to be taught through this experience was Research Methods. The purpose of this study was to evaluate at 6 months of the experience, the effectiveness of a Co-Teaching Research Methods to Mexican students at Oklahoma State University. The methodology used in this project included the design and on line application of an evaluation. This evaluation included two sections, the first section evaluated the effectiveness of the experience (46 questions), the second section evaluated the quality of the services provided by the UPAEP Faculty Led office in Mexico and the UPAEP office in the United States (22 questions). The 68 questions were evaluated using five point Likert-type scale. The evaluation also included 5 open-ended questions. Eight students out of 9, who participated in the experience (89%), answered the survey. The result showed that attending the course was instrumental in the students’ professional development; it had an impact in their research project and motivated students to become a research professor mainly because the course changed their perception about the research process. The course provided students with tools (e.g. data bases and software) that had not been used before and promoted the discussion and debate, forcing students to see things in a different way. In conclusion, the co-teaching experience was effective and provided students with different perspectives and a broader point of view, enhanced students’ support, maximized the time of the students, increased adult students’ attention and a more powerful self-directed learning process.