After considering some problems in more traditional ways of teaching research methods, this paper discusses how archived data may be used in teaching graduate level courses in this subject in political science and sociology. The discussion is based on my experience, over the last four years, in teaching a graduate course in research methods in political science through secondary analysis.
Data-banks do not grow up on their own. They are constrained by the objectives of the researchers or administrators who build them, and by the institution or environment that they relate to. Ideally they imply and require systematic planning. In practice this may be difficult to achieve. Unlike normal institutions of higher education, who receive students with few exceptions for a specific limited time period, which has a known end, the British Open University is committed to an open-ended flexible system in which students may study different numbers of courses in different years, take time off and return a year or so later and carry on their studies over an indefinite period. Different departments inside the University need information from different sources for different purposes. Some of it is course-based and some of it is student-based.
The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the differences between passive and active learning, and to suggest some implications for education and for television.