Some of these example have come from the excellent 7 Steps to: Linking research and teaching
In all the focus groups and open text responses students highlighted that hearing academics talk about (their own or others) research and practice demonstrate that the content was current, relevant, and applied. From the student’s point of view, they are hearing about current and evolving information, from the academic’s point of view we get to speak on our interest.
“Knowing that the lecturers are doing their own research means that we're keeping up to date with what's being used in the current world”
“Having real life examples of research that has happened in a commercial setting or academic setting makes it easier for us to learn about various topics and gives us something to add to our work.”
When taught with enthusiasm and passion students also reported that it made the content more exciting and interesting to be part of even if it’s not your own direct research or practice.
“I love it when she's teaching because of how passionate she is she was showing us a video on YouTube about inside the cell and I’ve never seen anything like it she was just beaming it was lovely to see”
“One of my lecturers worked with Hawkeye on the goal-line technology in football and it is great because you appreciate the expertise within the department, and it gives you inspiration”
Information from research articles or your own practice can be used to illustrate the theory that is being taught. Data sets from your own research or generated by the students can be used to practice research skills and analysis.
Students can find learning how to use research methods difficult when data is separated from content. The exercise is perceived as technical with the relevance for their future employment being lost (Murnoten, 2005; MacInnes, 2012). Linking research skills and teaching them context helps students engage and understand the research process. It can facilitate the critiquing of research outputs and is an important vehicle in the development of critical thinking.
Use current research questions and real data to increase perceived relevance to students. Introduce real life scenarios and ask students to propose and critique research questions to develop an understanding of what constitutes an effective question. Getting students to collect small amounts of data themselves and involving them in current research projects by providing data you have collected for them to analyse or develop longitudinal data sets that students add to each year.
Research can often be seen as abstract and unconnected to applications in the workplace or society at large. Equally methods, theory and ideas can be observed in isolation of the application they support or the research that draws on them.
“Hearing guest speakers helped put the learning into context. “
“I think understanding what research has been done and how can we take this on is really important.”
When delivering core concepts follow up with how these ideas or theory is used in research and what the final applications maybe. This can be done through discussion in tutorials and seminars, at the start and end of a taught session or by providing further material on the VLE.
Students often struggle with the complex language used in research outputs. Typically, papers are written by experts for other experts to read. Especially at the early stages of learning students do not have the understanding and vocabulary to get the most out of research outputs. Interaction with the public and communication of your research is now a key skill. Many grant applications and media outlets ask for description for a lay audience, these can be shared with the students to help them understand the research process.
“Directing people to knowing the background and the papers of the lecturers and having those accessible is a good thing”
When you next publish a paper or practical guidance, write a lay description to share with your students. You can even blog these as a way of disseminating your own work more widely. As part of an assessment task, ask students to write the lay descriptions for research output. The ability to describe complex work simply without losing meaning is a key employability skill.
Students often struggle to find and then interpret relevant articles. Spending time covering Boolean logic functions (AND, OR, NOT) and the merits of different databases can help students access literature. Time within seminars and tutorials can be used to search for relevant information as a group. This works especially well when the literature searching is linked to an assessment task. You can also ask students to rank the validity or value of different data sources as means of critically evaluating information.
“Clearer guidance on where to find outputs and potentially an output or resource bank for research done by SHU staff / research centres would be excellent because then we know where to look”
“I think it would have been a lot more useful if we've just been like in a computer room and then been told oh try and find papers on this topic and to pick out keywords and then search through it.”
Structured worksheets or proformas can be used to help students think critically about the content
Emma Finney has created several resources through the learning centre that enable students to search and critic relevant research literature.
Link to library resource
Referencing – Assessment Essentials (shu.ac.uk)
Teaching toolkits have been updated to reflect APA 7 https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/referencing/studentref
Katherine Hubbard from the University of Hull has written extensively on enabling undergraduate students to access research literature (Hubbard 2017, Hubbard 2021)
The sooner and more frequently students are exposed to research-based experiences, the more they can contribute and feel part of a research community (Walkington, 2015). Inquiry, problem, project and team-based teaching approaches are all examples of teaching methods that enable students to practice research skills.
By embedding research skills throughout the degree you can help prepare your students for their dissertation type assessment. To do this have opportunities for students to undertake inquiry-based learning throughout their degree programme and flag the research skills being used. Learning outcomes and assessments can be rewritten to include inquiry, problem-based learning, and small projects.
Healey and Jenkins (2009) suggest that research skills are essential to help graduates negotiate the complexities of the 21st century: uncertainty, risk, the knowledge society, and the information economy. This is echoed by the demands of employers who want to see research skills embedded within graduate attributes. It is therefore important to make clear the links between research, teaching and employability.
When choosing research questions to explore in class, select appropriate sector, industrial, social and environmental – based problems and make explicit the vocational and professional dimensions of the research process and outputs. Bring in external speakers and promote knowledge transfer research partnerships using student expertise.”
Assessment is a key driver for student motivation, and so it is vital to develop ways of assessment that reflect and support research activity. As seen in the earlier sections, research is seen as an emergent property and the skills need to be built with time. Creating opportunities for formative and low risk assessment is a good idea to build confidence in the students (Boud and Falchikov, 2007). Assessment of research-based work varies depending on context but can include blogs, podcasts, research projects, group work, posters, peer review, briefing documents, conferences, publication in student journals and student-led seminars (Walkington, 2015).
When designing the assessment think about the appropriate points for introducing the research skill, processes needed to complete it and what the outcome will be. Use a range of methods which promote inclusivity and employability by assessment which reflects the applied nature of the work. Build in opportunities for students to reflect on participation in research as this develops their metacognitive capacity and can express learning in cases where outcomes have failed. The Connected Curriculum resource from UCL gives some good theoretical and practical ideas on how to do this.
“We came up with my project together and I was able to input my own ideas onto it which made me feel like even though I wasn't in the lab I was still like helping further the amount of information on a topic.”
“I find research enjoyable when I am passionate about the topic, I have done a research proposal and because I got to choose the topic it really interests me.”
Co-creation involves developing deeper relationships between student and teacher, and between students and other students. Education and in this case research is perceived as a shared endeavour where learning and teaching are done with students not to them (Cook-Sather et al. 2014)
Within research- and proactive informed teaching this can take many forms. Students can be allowed to pick their own topic for literature or written assessments. They can be involved in the creation or validation of questionnaire or focus group questions. Within research projects or dissertations students can be given the lead in setting parts or even the whole research question, guided by the academic. Students can be involved in collecting data sets (or parts of data sets) that are then analysed in class.
“When I have engaged with research projects at SHU I have had a really good experience. I support on the data collection of a live football finance research project and because I see the point in the research, I am interested in it and I buy into it.”