I have written about SoTL questions before, so you may want to check out the posts below if this article doesn’t address your needs.
- SoTL research project development (March 2021)
- Generating a research question from scratch (February 2021)
- Generating a research question based on something else (February 2021)
- Anatomy of a research question (January 2022)
- Research question donations for you (March 2022)
- Replication and extension study example (April 2023)
One common strategy to developing a research question is to find a gap and fill it. That is, find a gap in our published knowledge where you can tell us something we don’t know about yet (e.g., whether students from marginalized communities or in a college program (vs. university) would demonstrate the same effect found in someone else’s study). Finding a gap could mean that there is nothing published on the topic, or that it’s not granular or specific enough. For example, there is published research about the effect of social media use on mental health, but perhaps not on specific types of social media (Twitter vs. Instagram vs. SnapChat, vs. Discord, etc.) and/or how each platform might affect various aspects of wellbeing.
The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) publishes a lot of research relevant to Ontario post-secondary education which might pique your interest or inspire you to ask some research questions. Check them out: https://heqco.ca/publications/ They also have an introductory research guide which you might find helpful (it was published in 2014, but most of the content is still relevant today).
I hope this has been helpful! Still have questions? Set up a time to chat with me or pop into my weekly virtual office hours on Fridays (12:30-1:30pm) in my Whereby video chat room.
