Research and Development

“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts. “

 -Bill Gates

We research things to know things. The development of the human kind is due to the curiosity and the desire to inquire about the phenomena surrounding us. So long as our innate curiosity lives within us and we seek the answers to question: ‘how it works?’ And ‘why it works like this?’, search for the answers =research will be the engine for the development and innovation. The contribution of us, teacher, apart from participating in research and advancement of our own fields, will be to guide our students to always think critically and ask these questions.

PREPARATION AND GROUP WORK

To prepare our research on research we met as usual 3 times online in AC. Initially we divided the task into three parts we were to investigate-research-development-innovation, and each team member was responsible for gathering information on his own part. We benefited very much from having a PhD student in our group who is actively involved in research on daily basis presently. Team work went smoothly, and we all contributed equally with the information included in our presentation. We designed a task at the end of our presentation for our students to practice finding the journals for publications. We also included in our presentation discussion questions throughout it as we believed that many of our students are rather experienced in research and they could share their knowledge and experience teaching at the same others with their research competence. I made the presentation this time.

SESSION
We started our presentation by defining research and the types of research (exploratory, descriptive, causal). It might have seemed to be a rather rudimentary start as 2/3 of my students were professional researchers. However, I believe that definitions of the major notions are important as we cannot trust our assumptions on what students know or what not. Usually there are students in the classroom who know more and who know less, and our job is to provide equal opportunities for meeting the learning objectives of a class.
We looked at the topic of development in education which touches upon the continuous professional growth of educational stuff, enhancement of teaching/assessment methods, improvement of the quality of student learning experiences. We discussed the current development trends in Finnish education and the projects funded by the Ministry of Education, which current focus is on digitalisation of education, promotion of research, speeding up the transition to the working life, cooperation in provision of education. Additionally we went through the ways how we can participate in the development of our respective fields such as : applying innovative methods in our planning, teaching, evaluate these methods, enhance in your practice, contribute with your observations and knowledge; become a member in a scientific/research community, association, union, attend conferences, seminars, workshops; research and publish your results.

OWLs started their teaching from making us the students go to the Flinga site and create a mindmap. Each student had to write their thoughts (ways) under 4 dimensions of RDI skills
– inquiring mind
– ability to explore and diagnose problem
– to be able to formulate the research problem statement
– careful research planning

In my opinion Owls choice to start the session with this activity was a success. I really benefited from being able to dig my knowledge on the subject, putting my thoughts to writing and visual representation of the thoughts of all the sessions participants, who are experienced researchers. The mindmap visual format made it easy for me to collect and connect the main thoughts.  The teacher gave precise and explicit instructions on how to complete the task and stayed motivating and supportive throughout the task implementation, giving praise for the students’ work. Well done, team Owl!
After the activity Owls continued with a lecture. They taught us about the skills, knowledge and steps required in RDI:

• inquiring mind
• ability to explore and diagnose the problem
• knowledge of the tools
• clear research problem statement
• careful planning of research
• publishing the research
• reporting the funding institutions

Owls taught us about the ethical principles required in RDI, which are 6:

•  Ethical issues in the use of human subjects (the risks to human subjects associated with research)
• Ethical issues in the use of animals (the issues related to the animal rights and the ham and risks that the research might cause)
• Scientific integrity (issues concerned with the researches supplying the exact, true and unbiased information and correct, not tampered with data, free of any bias).
• Collegiality (issues related to the relationships between the researches, intellectual property rights and being honest members of the research community)
• Institutional integrity (the institutional setting for research) – issues concerned with the relationships among the instructions involved in the research, including funding organisations.
• Social responsibility (issues concerned with answering the questions: Does the research bring value to the society? Is it a good value?)

We also discussed the predatory journals, journals that seek financial profit. They don’t have proper peer review process and the publishing standards are low. Researchers must be aware and stay alert in order to avoid the predatory journals.
The session was very informative; the teacher was professional, and I benefited a lot from participating in it.

BASTU. There were two teachers teaching from Bastus in our group. The groups presentation was rather interactive in the beginning and they did a good job in facilitating the interaction. One of the interactive parts was based on the pre-task given by team before the session. It was a very nice and engaging pre-task for me. We had to investigate on the recent research trends in our respectful fields and shortly describe the findings on a Padlet. This task gave a wonderful opportunity to research on current research of ESL and interesting readings. I believe the pedagogical choice of Bastu team members was very well validated as the task gave us, students, an opportunity to explore the topic related to our own fields. It was engaging, active and valuable. Good choice.
Bastus also gave us the links where we can explore the current RDI projects and journal databases, almost same information we were presenting as well. They chose to do it with sharing the examples of one of the teacher’s field of research. That was very nice decision, however, it was not so easy to follow due to the foreign to me scientific field and the intonation of the teacher. It could have made it maybe easier to follow if the teacher spoke louder, made pauses regularly and was more enthusiastic.
Bastus also elaborated on the benefits of teachers’ research for Finnish Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences, which are:
– better quality teaching
– valuable insights into the subject area
– stimulating the teachers
– promotion of lifelong learning
– state-of-the-art facilities , good laboratories, big libraries, specialist equipment.
Both Bastus teachers showed their deep knowledge and competence in the subject area, no doubt. It was a good educational experience for me to participate in their session.

OWN TEACHING

It was a somewhat nerve-wrecking session for me as I was to teach students who clearly are more qualified in the subject matter of research than me. I guess every teacher has to be ready for the situation that sometimes he might have a student in his class who knows certain things better than the teacher. How can I teach in order not to sound silly and basic and not loose my teaching authority in the eyes of my students? For two students in my today’s class the information presented on research might have been like a chapter in a book “Research for dummies”.  However, I believe the session went rather well, as the main objectives were met and the professional researchers in the group were, according to them, rather satisfied. I believe I presented rather confidently, I showed my own examples by screen sharing, my teaching was visual and logical. I believe the facilitation of the discussion also was a success as everybody shared their thoughts and experiences freely with no confusion of what they are asked to do. It was a successful session. Tip for the future: ask more questions throughout the presentation, to invite feedback and thoughts in order to make the lecture material less dry.