|
Research Methods ResourcesTeaching Research Methods Resources Workshop |
|||||
| Home | |||||
|
Workshop held on Tuesday 31 May 2005 in Nairobi, Kenya |
|||||
|
Introduction |
|||||
|
Since December 2000, the ICRAF-ILRI Research Methods Group has been hosting a regional project “Capacity Strengthening in Research Methods”. Through this joint venture with the Flemish Association for Development Cooperation and Technical Assistance (VVOB), all kinds of support activities on data management, data analysis and research methods in general took place in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC. Since about 2004, more attention was paid to research methods at a conceptual level. We have been involved in a one-week training workshop on research methods for lecturers from a wide range of departments at the National University of Rwanda. As a follow up, two lecturers from NUR came to the Research Support Unit from May to August 2005 to work on a syllabus and training material for a course on research methods. The ICRAF-ILRI Research Methods Group also organised an essay writing competition with The East African on improving the quality of research in East and Central African public research organisations. All these activities gave better insight on existing problems, potential solutions and approaches. Since the RMG is based in Nairobi and there are a lot of universities and research organisations in Nairobi, we asked some of the people we quite often collaborate with (Parin Kurji from the University of Nairobi, Daisy Salifu of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Vincent Oeba from KEFRI) to exchange ideas on the subject. But one of those persons asked a pertinent question: why do you invite us? We are aware of the problems. Why not invite deans and directors of research? Then awareness on doing quality research will spread. And they are the people who can really start changing things. So we did. It doesn't take more to organise a workshop. Meanwhile the workshop was a good start for the lecturers from NUR. However, usually workshops remain workshops. Some weeks or months after the workshop you get the proceedings. And that's it. Now there is a unique opportunity to see the workshop as the start of an informal collaboration. |
|||||
|
Participants |
|||||
|
33 participants left their name behind at the registration desk. If we roughly divide them into 3 categories; 15 belong to “training and support”, 11 to “university” and 7 to “research”. All except two participants were at the moment of the workshop based in Kenya, the vast majority in or near Nairobi. 22 of the participants are Kenyans, the rest have the nationality of following countries: Belgium, Malawi, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Uganda and UK. For the contact details, click here . |
|||||
|
The sessions |
|||||
|
The workshop was divided into 6 sessions. It started with an overview of the current situation on the supply side (the universities) followed by an overview of the situation on the demand side (research organisations). Next, a range of problems as seen by the organisers were presented and discussed. And participants discussed how they could overcome the problems in a rather short term and at individual level. A fifth session focused on some existing initiatives. In the last session participants presented the result of the group discussions. Click here for the workshop program. |
|||||
|
Session 1 - Overview of the current situation on the supply side |
|||||
|
The first speaker was Callixte Gatali from the Faculty of Agriculture of the National University of Rwanda (NUR). He highlighted the framework of the university and gave an overview of the mission of the NUR. The university has a Research Commission that developed a research policy for the university. Contents of research method courses were presented and the way they are taught. Each year about 1,000 students follow a research method course in the different departments. Which shows already one of the problems the university is coping with: a growing number of students. Also a range of other perceived problems were presented, together with possible solutions. During the discussion following the presentation, it was mentioned that when teaching research methods, it is important to be actively involved in research. At NUR this is the case for only some of the lecturers. One of the reasons is a shortage of staff. There are only 95 PhD holders at the university. Then there are some structural reasons. Most research at the university happens through student theses. But there is not enough funding available for student research and there is not enough interaction between departments. Also, the government has decided that different categories of institutes play a different role. All extension work for instance is done by Minagri, which means that there is not enough interaction between the university and farmers. Click here to read the PowerPoint presentation. A more detailed version in MS Word format you can find here. The second speaker came from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Prof Lenga gave an overview of the university and then focused on research methods courses at the Faculty of Agriculture. Part of research methods (statistics and experimental design) is taught at undergraduate level, part at graduate level. After the end of academic year an evaluation is done to integrate new ideas and technology. Next year some new topics will be included to better prepare the students for real project work. These topics include writing a plausible proposal, report writing, impact assessment. Some practical problems to overcome are the cost of some software licenses, particularly SAS, and the increasing number of students. In the discussion, prof. Lenga mentioned several possibilities for better preparing students for project work. One is collaboration with other institutes, a second is to use real and relevant examples in the course. Relevant means both relevant examples within Kenya and relevant within the subject area. For teaching research methods at the Faculty of Agriculture this means the resource person should be an agricultural trained statistician (or statistical trained agronomist). Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. The third speaker was from Makerere University in Uganda. Dr Margaret Nabasirye presented an overview of the different departments in the faculty of agriculture, and how several htmlects of research methods are taught in undergraduate and graduate programmes. It was noted that the course outline for the research methodology course was very appealing. However, there remain some challenges, such as the fact that a common course is given without going deep into differences among different disciplines, limited resources for a large and growing number of students, not much flexibility on teaching methods, influence of several government policies and skills of teaching staff. Some of the changes Dr. Nabasirye finds necessary are a change in teaching approach, a review of the curriculum, a ‘personal mastery and soft skills' approach and more collaboration between departments and institutes. Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. Jean Claude Barihuta Mphizi from the National University of Rwanda gave an overview of how universities worldwide teach research methods: • which topics are included • what is taught to undergraduates, what to graduates • what kind of teaching methods are used It was a quick search, so it is not a surprise that mainly websites from North America and from faculties in the social sciences were found. In Africa, only some South African universities could be found on-line, none from East and Central Africa. The keywords used in the search were: research method course syllabus. Including the word “statistics” in the search would have given a different result. But given the prevalence of North American faculties of social sciences, it is still somehow a surprise that only 40 % of the courses included ethical issues in the syllabus and that class, cultural and gender issues occurred in less than 10 % of the courses. The presentation can be found here. The Excel spreadsheet with visited websites can be found here. There was supposed to have been a presentation by prof. Levi Akundabweni, acting Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Nairobi. Unfortunately at the last moment there was a hitch in his travel back to Nairobi. Click here to see the PowerPoint presentation he had prepared. |
|||||
|
CONCLUSION OF SESSION 1 |
|||||
|
In session 1 we saw a general picture emerging of following problems:
|
|||||
|
Session 2 - Overview of the Current Situation on the Demand side |
|||||
|
In this second session, 3 speakers from 3 different research institutes analysed the research skills of their researchers and drew conclusions about which skills are necessary for future researchers. The first speaker of the second session was from the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI). Dr Kigome gave an overview of the topics researchers at KEFRI should know. He noted with a lot of concern, that graduates are lacking some basic skills in research methods and mentioned explicitly problem definition, sampling methods and use of some software. The discussion following the presentation went mainly about skills of young graduates. The opinion at KEFRI about student attachments is that they didn't get enough exposure to real research at the university. This means research institutes have to invest quite some time in student attachments. Universities and students seem to be mainly oriented towards performing on exams and are not enough practical oriented. Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. Ric Coe, head of the ICRAF-ILRI Research Methods Group had done an informal survey among senior scientists at ICRAF. Those scientists see young graduates as young employees and as thesis students. The survey contained only one open-ended question: “What are the key improvements you would like to see in the way universities prepare students for research?” The qualitative answers were complemented with 15 years of experience and structured according to different steps of the research process cycle: observe, reflect, generalise, plan. Although there is much diversity between universities, faculties, individuals and regions, there was a clear consensus on common areas for improvement:
There was also a clear consensus that young graduates generally know enough subject matter and are committed. Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. The last person to present in this session was Dr. Ephraim Mukisira, from Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). He highlighted that, though graduates may be weak in some aspects, KARI always retrains its graduates where they feel the graduates (new recruits) are weak. The major challenges KARI faces are:
Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. |
|||||
|
CONCLUSION OF SESSION 2 |
|||||
|
The general picture emerging from session 2 is:
|
|||||
|
Session 3 and 4 – Problems to be solved and discussion |
|||||
|
Wim Buysse presented the problems as seen by the organisers of the workshop in the form of propositions. There exist all kinds of constraints to improving research in the region. The research infrastructure is underdeveloped, there are not enough funds, researchers lack access to relevant and recent specialised literature. And there are the 3 T's necessary to carry out a sound analysis: Thinking, Training and Tools. For each and every constraint except “the Thinking one”, examples were given where the perceived constraint turned out to be not a constraint. The conclusion is that the constraints are there but their relevance depends on all kinds of factors. They shouldn't be generalised. Perhaps the importance of most of those constraints is overestimated. Also, the last 5 years some change is visible in for instance access to the Internet, availability of computers, computer skills of researchers, … The conclusion of this presentation was that the main problems to be addressed to improve the efficiency and impact of research in East and Central Africa have to do with:
This was further elaborated into a list of more detailed problems, grouped into 3 groups: the way researchers think, the way researchers work, the way research methods are taught. Some implications were given for teaching research methods if these perceived problems are indeed the real problems to be addressed. Click here to see the PowerPoint presentation Some modifications were made after an initial discussion but all participants generally agreed with the list. So the list of problems to be solved as perceived by the participants of the workshop is: Group 1: the way researchers think
Group 2: the way researchers work
Group 3: the way research methods are taught
After the initial discussion, participants split up into 2 groups. A first group concentrated on problems related to the way researchers think, a second group on problems that have to do with the way research methods are taught. Participants were asked to group possible solutions according to the time frame needed for solving the problem (short versus long term) and according to the organisational level where the solution has to be found (individual versus institutional level). They were asked specifically to identify those problems that can be solved in a rather short term at individual level. Participants were also asked to give recommendations to the NUR. |
|||||
|
Session 5 - Some tools, methods and existing initiatives |
|||||
|
The first speaker was Mr. Joseph Nyangon from ICRAF Training Unit. He presented the on-line learning resources in agriculture and natural resources from the CGIAR. CGIAR is the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research organisations, the group to which the World Agroforestry Centre belongs. He described the logical organisation (Learning Object Metadata, Repositories and Referatories), strategic partnerships (Ariadne, universities and national research institutes) and the software behind (Moodle). Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. Anouk Janssens-Bevernage , VVOB project coordinator of the Learning Resource Centre at the Kenya Teachers Training College gave her experiences on teaching critical and creative thinking. The problems that can be observed among university students and researchers are similar to those among secondary school students: lack of skills to think critically, lack of logical argumentation, problems with identifying bias, lack of skills to undertake a proper problem analysis, … Teachers have the responsibility to teach those ‘new literacies' but lack the skills themselves. The KTTC project has mainstreamed new literacies into ICT training and into the educational management programme. Linking 21 st century literacies to ICT training has reduced the resistance to change. An essential part of the educational management programme are quality learning materials. Finally it was stressed that there is a strong reciprocal link between what is happening at universities and in secondary schools since all teachers have been at university. When universities take the development of critical thinking skills seriously, the effect will also be felt at secondary school level (and vice versa). Click here for the PowerPoint presentation. The next presenter was Elly O. Bodo of the Department of Mathematics and Applied Statistics of Maseno University. He briefly explained a new style attachment programme of undergraduate students in statistics. The university puts a lot of efforts in placing the students in working environments where you would not expect to find statisticians, in different branches of industry, private sector and NGO's. The feedback they get from those employers is incorporated into the way of teaching. Roger Stern of the Statistical Services Centre of the University of Reading gave an overview of some existing tools that are available when teaching statistics and research methods. There is for instance the ‘SSC add-in' for MS Excel. Everybody uses Excel but Excel is absolutely not advisable for doing statistical analysis, it sometimes even gives wrong results (see http://www.reading.ac.uk/ssc/software/excel/home.html) The add-in is a first step towards better statistics among Excel users. A next step is specialised software. SSC has developed InStat. The price of the software has been kept low. Some categories of users can get it free. The software is especially useful for teaching undergraduates. For graduates there is for instance GenStat Discovery Edition. It is free for non-commercial users in Africa and there exist also a free introductory manual. Around the time of the workshop, the Discovery Edition has been made available to non-commercial users in a range of developing countries outside Africa. There exist also some books that can be useful in research methods courses. Although they are not free, the price has been kept low. Two examples are:
Finally, Roger talked about his collaboration with BUCS (Biometrics Unit Consultancy Services) of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Nairobi. He sees BUCS as an example of how to solve some of the problems faced when teaching large classes with limited resources. The biometrics unit wanted to involve MSc students to help in practicals. This way the group size could be reduced. It was however not possible to pay them for the work through the university. So, BUCS was created as a private entity, MSc students are paid through BUCS, BUCS can do other consultancies but profits are reinvested into the university. More information can be found on:
A copy of those websites is available on the CDs with GenStat Discovery Edition that are distributed within Africa. |
|||||
|
Session 6 - Summary of the discussions and the way ahead |
|||||
|
In this last session, both groups presented the results of their discussion:
It is clear from the presentations by both groups that it is possible to identify activities that can start soon, don't require changes to regulations, don't need a lot of resources and can be initiated by motivated individuals. It is also clear that some participants to the workshop started promising initiatives that can be copied throughout the region. This report is a reminder to those activities. The next follow-up will be through e-mail contact. This does not necessarily has to be initiated by the workshop organisers. Any participant is free to do so. (The contacts of the participants can be found here.) |
|||||
|
Reporting |
|||||
|
Wim Buysse Hillary Kipruto Kipchumba Peter Mwaura |
|||||
| Home |
|
|
|||