Managing your Research

2012-12-27T20:43:00.001-08:00

This article is for those who are having their first research study and facing problems while managing their research study.

When you have your first research work and experience you face a lot of challenges. The main reason for this is that these things are usually not taught in universities research methodology courses neither your supervisor can help you in these things. Supervisor can only motivate you, guide you when you stuck and can check the originality and quality of your contents.

So, the first critical phase in your research is topic selection and proposal writing. Always try to choose a topic of your interest, that you think you will feel fine with this and will enjoy your research.

Before you choose any topic and write a proposal you must have background knowledge and have studied some prior literature. At the start you need to study at-least 10 to 15 papers for your proposal writing, topic selection and background knowledge. You can also consult books for background knowledge. After studying this do a critical Analysis of that, this will give you insights to the main issues of the area. Now choose an area for your prospective research. Based on this study you can now write a proposal. This may be called narrow downing your research.

Now start studying state of the art literature, which is most related to your area and topic.

Mostly initial researchers also face problems in writing other chapters and sections of their report, such as introduction, Methodology, validation, results and discussion etc. During my MS our research methodology teacher told us about “free writing’ which is very important especially for beginners. Just write down whatever you have in your mind, it may be scattered but combing, integrating and relating is not a big issue. So, free writing, boldness and confidence are the notable factors. Several times a person have very good ideas but they cannot document it accordingly.

A tactic which I personally use for this is that I do write all the sections like Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review, and so on. Now as I told earlier that during proposal writing you must have to study some prior research work, so, basically that is the start of your Literature review. Note it down in your literature review section.

At this moment keep in mind that each university has their own rules and standards for research. Like we had two research modules Independent study (IS) 1 and 2. During the course of IS-1 we have to study 15 papers (not older than 5 years) and have to write a summary, findings and limitations of each paper. We have to submit two reports from them a long in APA writing style and a short in IEEE format. Then in IS-2 we were bound to present something new. It may be a model, a framework or a tool properly following a research methodology, followed by validation, showing the results to claim the significance of contribution.

According to my opinion literature acts as a king for the entire research, because when you work on your research project, you will have to consult literature for many things and questions that arise in your mind, such as writing proposal, topic selection, introduction writing, methodology, validation etc. so whenever and wherever you stuck consult literature to know about how and what others have done. You will definitely find an answer.

Thanks.

Good Luck…

Research efforts and challenges in Pakistan

2012-12-06T10:38:00.001-08:00

Research efforts and challenges in Pakistan:

This blog is launched to provide a research discussion platform for those who want to share their research experiences or those who has some problems in their research. Mostly initial research students have lot of problems like in topic selection, problem definition, bibliography, papers selection and so on. This platform will help them to plan and manage their research study more efficiently; we will act like a consultant for you.

As far as my research experience (Computer Science and Software Engineering) is concern so,

1. The first thing that I have noticed here in Pakistan is that there is a lot of gap between industry and academia, which arise many challenges to the research students like those who do not have prior industrial experience remain un-touch with industry and ultimately their research remain theoretical and not market oriented. Due to this gap researchers face problems in data collection and validation of their research because when industrial and academic linkages are not present no one agrees to provide data and implement your research.

2. Universities research students have very less support for their research studies. There are very few Universities who provide support and grants for higher education, research and development. Similarly, Higher Education Commission of Pakistan has also limited resources for supporting Pakistani research Scholars nationwide and abroad.

Besides these challenges, we cannot ignore the efforts of Higher Education Commission (HEC) and National ICT R&D Ministry of Information Technology, Pakistan in past few years.

Higher Education Commission (HEC) efforts:

HEC invest millions per year on R & D. A short description of the activities and programs are mentioned below. Detail description and statistics are given on the HEC Site. www.hec.gov.pk

1. HEC offers several overseas, indigenous, and need base scholarships for Masters and PhD Programs per year to encourage research ethnicity.

2. Academic Linkages

a. Pak-US Joint Academic & Research Support Program

b. HEC-BC INSPIRE Strategic Partnerships 2010

c. Pakistan Program of Collaborative Research (PPCR)

3. Grant for Organizing Seminars/ Conferences/ Workshops

4. National Digital Library: Collection of over 50,000 e-books available for researchers.

But still total output of the research is very low. According to a report research output in IT and Engineering in 2010 was just 233 papers.

National ICT R & D Program:

National ICT R&D is funded by the Federal Government and the telecomm companies operating in the region are the key contributors.

ICT Vision is to enhance the research activities up to international standards and transform Pakistan economy into a knowledge based economy by promoting efficient, sustainable and effective ICT initiatives through synergic development of industrial and academic resources.

This vision is realized by pursuing the following goals:

• Provide industry and academia partnership by funding development and research initiatives at ease.

• Make Pakistan a destination for service oriented, research and development related outsourced jobs.

• Use ICT as a tool for creation and development for economically challenged groups of citizens.

• Spread the ICT activities on a national level.

National ICT R & D program is open throughout the year for call for proposals. They provide funds for the successful execution research projects and events such as workshops, conferences and seminars. Till now they have sponsored several research projects and events. ICT Program also offers scholarships at under graduate level.

Research and Development

Managing your Research

Research efforts and challenges in Pakistan