Active learning approaches have shown to improve student learning outcomes and improve the experience of students in the classroom. This article compares a Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning style approach to a more traditional teaching method in an undergraduate research methods course. Moving from a more traditional learning environment to a student-centered approach proved an enjoyable experience for the students and the instructor as well. The learning method forces students into an active role in the classroom and allows the instructor to be the facilitator of the learning experience. Students are able to explore course content and gain valuable group skills in the process.

There is a longstanding divide between qualitative and quantitative research methods. In the field of teaching research methods, this divide has also been found (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2005) almost 20 years ago. With a mixed methods approach this thesis asks and aims to answer whether this divide prevails on a structural and content level. Specifically, the research question is: "Are there structural and content differences between the research landscape on teaching quantitative research methods and teaching qualitative research methods indicating that these two are seen as separate fields or are both part of the same overarching research domain?" Firstly, the research landscape for teaching qualitative research methods of the last 10 years was analyzed quantitatively (i.e. descriptive statistics, word frequencies in abstracts, citation measures). Citation measures identified the most relevant authors and documents. A rudimentary form of content analysis, consisting of deeply reading the documents and summarizing their content, was conducted on the identified documents. Subsequently, the same procedure was repeated on the research landscape for teaching quantitative research methods. While there is an overlap between the document corpora regarding relevant articles and the most cited references, there are also discrepancies. Specifically, there are structural differences such that the literature on teaching qualitative methods seems more disjunct. Furthermore, the dataset on teaching quantitative methods had a large emphasis on integrating qualitative methods and moving towards mixed methods compared to the literature on teaching qualitative methods focusing more on the actual topic of qualitative methods.