18/05/10

Research is one of the 4 pillars of university life, the other 3 are teaching, administration and outreach.

Research without publication is a waste of time and resources Publish for impact (knowledge transfer), not just to publish Research is not an add on, it's an integral part of being an academic

• WHY do and publish research?
• WHAT are we researching?
• HOW can we do better to maintain a research culture?

Institutional and faculty IOP provides a framework for action, 8 strategic goals → taken from IOP, today will focus on enhancing research and innovation (no. 3)

There are 5 key strategies and domains for strengthening research from the IOP:

1. Identify niche areas (sport, AIDS, T&L) within broader faculty domains (doesn't preclude individual research that falls outside of these niche areas, but may have implications for institutional funding)
2. Develop collaboration and partnerships within and outside the faculty / institution
3. Capacity development of staff and students (PhD, NRF rating)
4. Development of innovation capacity and relationships
5. Research development management at departmental, faculty and institutional level
6. Supportive research environment

Centres of excellence (how have these been determined and geographically located?):

• HIV/AIDS (SOPH)
• Sport Science for Development Centre (SRES)
• Centre of Teaching and Learning Scholarship (SON)

Current research status in the faculty

• Unless more academics register for PhD's, the faculty won't reach the 50% target by 2012
• Throughput for PG students is low, even though there are many in the system
• Publication is not even close to target of 1.5 / academic (avg = 80, should be 200)
• Drop-offs in publication and throughput could be a result of losing high level academics to other institutions or retirement
• PG theses should each be a publication (in our dept, UG projects also have this requirement)
• Knowing what other people in other departments are studying could signal opportunities for interdepartmental collaboration
• Areas of publication in the faculty are not aligned to the supposed centres of excellence

Questionnaire responses: challenges and opportunities

• “All departments would like to be doing more” - shouldn't they just do more then?
• Research is linked to staff development
• Strongly linked to T%L:
  • Scholarship of T&L
  • Informing T&L (EBP)
  • Publication and research linked to student learning and promotion requirements
• Some departments: T&L has a higher priority than research, other departments suggest it's as important and not necessarily integrated with T&L

• Teaching and learning is a recurring theme in faculty research
• Tension between (departmental) strategic niche areas and individual interests, 2 approaches:
  • Niches as reflection / evidence of evolving critical mass (“we are there”)
  • Niches as strategic hubs to begin to develop critical mass (“we want to be there”)
• Competition - collaboration and jealousies
• Staff PhD research

• Facilitating high quality research requires
  • A culture of research
  • Mentorship
  • Role models
  • Money / funding
  • Time

• Inhibitors to high quality research:
  • Mindset and research culture
  • Time because of teaching / admin workload
  • Money
  • Time (are research days enough?)
  • Skills gaps in research and supervision (fund-raising, writing, communication, technical)
  • Restrictive UWC policies
  • Professional jealousies and fragmentation

• 4 year goals are not adequate e.g. at least 1 publication per academic isn't enough

SIDA university research capacity (find reference online)

• Challenge the idea that academic qualifications are linked to career development
• Be aware the the drive for research can be impacted by outside influences
• Make sure that we're aware of what we mean by “research”. What philosophy of research are we developing?
• How is a “supportive research environment” different to the environment we have now?
• A faculty research office could be useful to co-ordinate collaborative research and bigger funding proposals
• Using shared resources / OER / e-learning to teach Research Methodology

Centres of excellence and niche areas of research at the university What does it mean to house a centre within a department? What are the implications of a the geographical location? Does it have to do with control? Funding? What does it mean if they exist outside of the faculty?

• The interdisciplinary Centre of Excellence for Sport Science and Development (ICESSD)
  • Focus on the 2010 World Cup for this year
  • Recreational sport as tool for health, wellness, nation building, social change, community development

• UWC Centre for Research in HIV/AIDS (“HIV in context”)
  • “Trying to develop a centre for research”
  • Not just about studying the biology of the disease, but also upstream areas like behavioural, societal issues, etc.
  • Makes sense to have a centre because of the variation of studies being conducted across the university
  • The topic is necessarily multi-disciplinary
  • Foster synergies among researchers / teams
  • Could be used to aggregate smaller projects / research into bigger impact work
  • Activities engaged in: Symposia, Website (linked to institutional repository), Seminars, Recruiting / hosting graduate and post-doctoral students, Publication series, Research

How are they going to support research and development in these areas? All projects are registered with the university…why does a centre need to be involved to co-ordinate? I can co-ordinate by myself.

• Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning Scholarship
  • Focus on the scholarship of T&L (in nursing)
  • To enhance the quality of nursing scholarship practice in the Western Cape
  • Everything is about nursing (should be reflected in the name of the centre)? Contrast with Centre for HIV/AIDS, which clearly demonstrates how to link several distinct areas in the faculty and university. How is this centre different from the institutional Directorate of T&L? How is this centre of any benefit to the faculty?

How are centres going to be monitored? Who will they report to? The DVC feels that they are not part of the faculty. You don't need centres for writing retreats or collaboration.

Collaboration and partnership in research Small group discussion, see handout

• Researchers choose to collaborate when the project is large or well funded
• Allows for sharing of expertise and combining strengths
• Allows for different ways of looking at results
• Can potentially move forward more quickly
• Adds value beyond the individual

Issues:

• Legal implications e.g. intellectual property rights
• Agreements – forming and dissolving them
• Limited partnerships where not all partnerships receive dividends e.g. communities
• Finance and accounting
• Reporting

Research capacity development Small group discussion

Identify needs, gaps and strategies:

• Researcher
• Departmental
• Faculty
• Institutional

Needs:

• Young researchers can lack knowledge, skills in certain types of research → supervision / guidance may be necessary. Writing retreats may help to develop capacity (research mentoring), funding scholarships e.g. Mellon
• Infrastructure in place (e.g. equipment, people, expertise, software), people with expertise who are available for guidance
• Productivity in research linked to higher academic qualifications → supervising junior researchers (skills in supervision)
• Interdisciplinary research presentations for staff development
• Dedicated research office, resourced and staffed (e.g. deputy dean and other administrators, statistician) to co-ordinate research strategies, funding proposals, etc. This will cost money, may be able to come from author's funds (will have to negotiate with institution to take a portion)
• Database of what type of research is happening in the faculty, may facilitate collaboration
• Implementing policies that limit the amount of time a student can stay in the system? Students may have to re-register if they are taking too long to complete → has implications for throughput. Policies exist but not always implemented
• How many students can a supervisor (adequately) supervise? How do you appropriately divide time between different components of workload?

Strategies:

• Collaborative efforts within and outside university (e.g. commercial), partnerships
• Alternative funding strategies e.g. scholarships, soft funding, proposals directly to government / DoH
• Integrated undergraduate research into a publication / research stream, feeding into staff projects → publications
• Narrowing the focus of research for short cycles
• Beginning research methods in 3rd year to increase research capacity earlier on
• Workload formula

• Mentoring of both junior and senior staff (PhD is not the end of the road).
• Skills needed to be a mentor
• Research is a part of your job, so there needs to be a culture of research that might need a mindshift in how you approach your work
• Lack of a research culture could lead to resistance in terms of implementing a comprehensive research strategy
• Look at how we teach e.g. over-assessing

Goalposts at the university have shifted e.g. need to be more accountable in terms of how we use university funding, will have impact on promotion

• Practical ways to address issues
• Small writing groups within the department / institution
• Student support groups
• Provide dedicated time to write
• Must be able to create and sustain a research culture. How can this be done?
• PG school within the faculty? E.g. research methods module for everyone in the faculty

Research development management Research structures in the faculty

Research

• Institutional → Senate Higher Degrees / Senate Research and Study Leave Committee (Ethics)
• Faculty → Higher Degrees Committee (degree purposes) / Research and Study Leave
• Department → Seminars, proposal presentations

Administrative support

• Institutional → Senate committees, PET project (under Prof. Holtman), Research and Development office
• Faculty → Administrator for the Higher degrees committee and Research and study leave committee, ??PG administrator
• Department → ??PG administrator

Resources

• Institutional → Funding for teaching relief, conferences and projects, PG labs, free access to journals / databases
• Faculty → Process to facilitate success (e.g. check lists), PG database, PG lab
• Department → Qualified staff, ??PG labs

Research Grants and Study Leave Committee function

• First level decision-making before going to Senate Research Committee ( → Health Research Ethics Committee)
• Applications
• Project registration and ethics clearance → methods and ethics are not separate, but are looked at together (lends itself to good science, see Research Ethics Policy)
• Research funds → new form favours “active” academics
• Progress reports on projects → new funding requests only considered after submission of reports re. research and overseas conferences (must specify outputs (e.g. peer reviewed publication)
• Reports on national / international conferences / sabbatical
• Applications to attend national / international conferences → new funding system “it pays to publish”. Only funds every 2 years
• Applications for study leave / sabbatical → must be able to specify clearly what the outputs for sabbatical will be
• Guest lecturer fund

Conclusion

• CHR is linked to research capacity building
• Primarily staff who register projects
• Staff need to be strategic e.g. register student projects with view to publications
• Activities should be underpinned by the notion that the work should be published
• Alignment of CHR-CHD-SRC research activities should lead to best practice science

Key priorities for faculty

• Research office and PG co-ordinator in the faculty are a “nice to have”
• There are issues with recognition for mini-theses at Masters level → can be addressed by designed towards a publication from the outset
• Publication output → learning how to write (proposals), frequent workshops
• New (junior) staff in departments → self-evaluation is important in order to determine where we all stand, what are we working towards? Where do I want to be in 5 years?