Choose your own adventure: Expanding students’ theoretical and methodological vocabularies

Abstract

Inspired by “choose your own adventure” books, this unit activity helps students differentiate between ontology, epistemology, axiology, methodology, and method. While completing the activity over two weeks, students apply these concepts to the study of a topic of the instructor’s choosing (illustrated here through the lens of family communication). Students who completed the full unit activity improved their exam performance compared to students in a previous semester who did not. Courses Communication Research, Communication Theory. Objectives Upon completion of this unit, students will be able to (1) apply the concepts ontology, epistemology, axiology, methodology, and method to a research exemplar; (2) differentiate between ontology, epistemology, and axiology; and (3) differentiate between methodology and method.