A recent SAGE White Paper about the use of video in higher education found that 92% of faculty members surveyed use videos as teaching tools, either to break up lectures or as assignments outside of class, and about 68% of the students said videos are part of their learning experiences. In a digital age, learning is moving beyond the textbook as the nature of the relationship between learning materials and students continues to change. SAGE is developing video collections that are matched against the requirements of each discipline to ensure that students, researchers and learners are equipped with material they require in the form most suited to their needs.
SAGE Research Method Video is a continuation of SAGE Publishing's commitment to championing, supporting and developing the field of research methods. Kiren Shoman, Executive Director of Pedagogy, SAGE, outlined the publishers' history with research methods, "From [the] first methods journals in 1972 to the QASS and QRM series published since the 1970s, to the launch of SAGE Research Methods in 2011" commenting that such involvement with the field has led the publisher through its "expanding support of data-intensive social science research", she remarked that it has been an "honour to serve social scientists at the forefront of research methods publishing for more than four decades".
SAGE Research Methods Video is the latest of the SAGE Video subject collections, joining Business and Management, Politics and International Relations, Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Education, and Media, Communication and Cultural Studies. It aims to help students and researchers learn and develop research skillsets and navigate the research process.
With more than 125 hours of content – of which 70% is exclusive to SAGE – SAGE Research Methods Video includes tutorials, expert interviews, case studies, mini-documentaries, focus groups, as well as a 15- hour introductory statistics course and a three-hour presentation skills course.
Hosted on the SAGE Research Methods platform, the videos can be streamed to demonstrate research in action, assigned to students ahead of lectures to stimulate in-class discussions, and used to expose viewers to alternative perspectives or a range of subject experts such as Gary King, Kathy Charmaz, Sara Delamont, David Silverman, John Creswell, and Ian Shapiro. Developed in partnership with an international editorial advisory board made up of methods experts, the collection also features short documentary films made in leading research centers around the world, including the Pew Research Centre, NatCen Social Research, Ipsos Mori, and NORC at the University of Chicago.
For teaching topics like research design, data collection and statistical analysis, video is an incredibly powerful tool and SAGE, through products like SAGE Research Methods Video, is committed to harnessing the opportunities that video holds for research and educational purposes, as Shoman concluded: "Together, the SAGE Video and SAGE Research Methods Video collections serve as the ultimate social science video collection spanning a broad range of the social science disciplines."