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10 Tips for Report Writers

Scholarship in the field of online teaching and learning continues to grow, reaching a wide range of stakeholders who are making decisions about student success, faculty support, course design and educational administration as a whole.

Tips for Report Writers

Download the 10 Tips for Report Writers

Our Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit team writes and reads several research reports each year, and in the spirit of giving back to field of online education, we created 10 Tips for Report Writers – a guide to be used as a final check before distributing study results. As researchers ourselves, we also see a need to formulate standards of quality that all authors can refer to when developing reports.

10 Tips for Report Writers is designed for practitioners and researchers in the field who present study results to online learning stakeholders.

  1. Know your audience
  2. Describe the larger purpose
  3. Be transparent about intentions, purpose and findings
  4. Include a methodology section
  5. Report the “N”
  6. Describe and contextualize data
  7. Visualize the data
  8. Consider length
  9. Carefully consider langauge
  10. Make report readable and accessible

Download the complete guide

Connect with us

Community in the field of online teaching and learning is at the core of what our team aims to create. We hope you’ll engage with us as you use this tips guide. And, please email us with your comments and suggestions of future iterations of this guide.

Report Reader Checklist

We want to empower all members of the online education community to feel confident in digesting study reports. We’ve also created the Report Reader Checklist, a comprehensive set of criteria that offers readers a guide to evaluate the quality and rigor of online education reports they may encounter in their work. Use this tool yourself as you read reports and share with colleagues who regularly review online education studies.