EDUCATING GRADUATE STUDENTS TO BECOME COLLABORATIVE RESEARCHERS: ENHANCING PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION THROUGH DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGICAL KNOW-HOW AND TRANSFERABLE RESEARCH SKILLS

The proposed conference presentation is based on a research study conducted over the past two years that shows the benefits of teaching basic research skills in a collaborative format to graduate students. Findings show that educating students to become collaborative researchers accomplishes several goals:
1) When they conduct research with class peers, students gain ability to: identify others’ perspectives and communicate across disciplines; work in concert to locate a common concern or goal and clarify a question with sub-questions that hold significance for each collaborator; frame research methodology that taps each student’s skill sets and promotes growth of new research skills through professorial and peer mentoring; work through online/web discussions to analyze results and come up with implications with action plans that serve collaborators’ needs and the greater good.
2) Both professor and students benefit from using various technology applications that promote flexible and enhanced communication within the class and between members of collaborative research groups as well as accuracy in research data collection, analysis, and planning toward systemic change.
3) Students’ practice in combining research and technological skills in a supervised university setting facilitates their gaining sufficient mastery to transfer learning into professional workplace practice, and through technology to broader audiences.

The presentation features two levels:

Level I. The first level focuses on software examples and techniques to show how technology was incorporated into each stage of teaching about research, including: review and analysis of scholarly databases to articulation of research questions; methodological construction of data entry points for studying the question; creation of data collection instruments; data collection procedure and management; data analysis; presentation of results; formation of professional action plans based on the results; and, communication with others toward systemic change.

Level II. The second level involves the course instruction and how integration of research and technology skills produced innovative results that inform changes in curriculum and practice. Several examples of how educational practice in teaching research skills is enriched by use of technology will be featured to show how a professor can: facilitate different/new patterns of professional collaboration, allow students’ unique learning styles to be addressed, and bring scholarship to light as students conduct their own theory based research studies. (As I write, a collaborative team of graduate students is engaged in one research project from 4 geographic locations.)

Conducting collaborative research mitigates students’ personal trepidations around lack of sophistication or time by promoting self-evaluation and initiative taking within a framework of social networking and accountability. “Cross-pollination” among colleagues in new skill development has proved an unanticipated benefit.
Further, cultivating shared excitement in discovering a new way of looking at a common objective amidst collegial companionship encourages students to repeat the experience, taking the transferable skills into the workplace, where they can be employed as life-long skills for exploring curiosities or burning questions that lead to increased collegial connections, understanding, and improvement of professional and organizational productivity.