SAGE Publishing has collaborated with the Nuffield Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to launch SAGE Research Methods Teaching, a platform specifically designed for social science lecturers to find and share teaching materials and to inspire academics teaching quantitative methods courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
This exciting new partnership showcases the outputs of Q-Step, a £19.5m investment made by ESRC, the Nuffield Foundation and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) that was designed to deliver a step-change in undergraduate quantitative skills teaching.
The new platform is an important route through which the benefits of Q-Step can now be shared with the broader research community, ensuring the valuable resources will be free and open for reuse by faculty around the world. Designed with extensive input from faculty and lecturers in the Q-Step Centres, SAGE Research Methods Teaching includes resources for teaching topics including data analytics, modelling and descriptive statistics materials, including slide decks, lecture notes and activities.
The resource is designed to grow over time and become a forum through which researchers can share their teaching materials and build networks of support in teaching quantitative methods. It will promote pedagogical development and innovation, and ultimately strengthen the quality of teaching and the student experience, improving learning outcomes across the social science community.
Katie Metzler, Vice President of Books and Social Science Innovation at SAGE Publishing: “We’re excited about the value SAGE Research Methods Teaching will bring to quantitative social science teaching. We want to foster a culture of sharing and reuse of the best materials for teaching methods and statistics, and we believe the community will become a place for social science influencers to share their favourite resources and for faculty new to methods teaching to find tried and tested resources to support their teaching.”
Frances Burstow, Deputy Director of Skills and Methods at ESRC: “I am delighted we are able to share the benefits of Q-Step with the wider social science research community, strengthening capability nationally and internationally. This platform will allow researchers to draw on the pedagogical good practice and high-quality resources developed through the initiative to enhance the learning experience of their students.”
Josh Hillman, Director of Education at the Nuffield Foundation: “Effective training in quantitative methods boosts social science students’ employment prospects by equipping them with a deep and secure grasp of the skills needed for analysing data and evaluating evidence. We are very excited to be launching this new online platform which gives lecturers free access to teaching materials developed through our Q-Step Programme. This will enable many more students to benefit from high quality quantitative methods teaching and a better grounding in the ways that data can be used to understand society. Our hope is that this platform will also support and grow the community of quantitative social science teachers,” finishes Hillman.
