Deep dives into university research practices around the world, including supervision, community engagement, funding and publication.

Research excellence

Many academics bring their valuable research into the classroom. The challenge is for them to frame and communicate their findings, ideas or even professional practices in a format that is accessible to students as non-experts. But if they succeed in doing this, the contribution from a diverse study body through the teaching process can broaden, enrich, stimulate and further inform the research.

The following tips are designed to help academics bring their research into the classroom order to boost the learning experience and also to improve their own work:

1. Highlight the universal values of research

The classroom is an ideal setting to shed light on the theoretical implications and practical benefits of detailed research projects. Teaching allows academics to illustrate why their highly specialised work has significance to broader society and why students and citizens should care about it.

For instance, in my study comparing the effect of political trust in Hong Kong and Singapore, as two hybrid regimes, in coping with the pandemic, I&nbsp;argue that long-term citizens, who have resided in the areas for some time before the Covid outbreak, generally have greater discontent towards government. This is expressed through their non-compliance with policies and measures, which hinder the effectiveness of pandemic control. Using the public health crisis as an entry point, this evidence-based study allows me to shed light on the dynamic interplay between the government and citizens, as well as essential governance qualities that help to maintain long-term development of regimes.

Academics should strive to present or adapt their specialised knowledge so it can be applicable to everyday situations. They should try to extract the academic concepts and technical language from the research papers and journals and contextualise them in a way that is accessible and relevant to students.

2. Present a strong research case 

Present your research projects as a whole in a way that flows seamlessly, from the initial challenge or question posed, to the set-up, design, implementation and results. Create a clear narrative around the project that makes it easy for your students to follow each step and the reasoning behind it. This process will help you improve the clarity, strength and logic of your research case and conclusions.

Academics are often guilty of weighing down their arguments with too much jargon and specialised terminology, which can mean students disengage. Keep your language simple, minimising technical terms, as if presenting to a general audience. Communicating complex ideas and concepts clearly and concisely is a challenge, but doing so is a useful exercise that will help you organise and streamline thoughts – and hone your communication skills.

For a research project comparing high-performing learning systems around the world, I&nbsp;am carrying out a comprehensive review of Hong Kong’s learning system, which involves changes and continuities over decades, as well dozens of interrelated influencing factors. The challenge is how to maintain a balance between breadth and depth. In the classroom, I&nbsp;need to introduce the system to those without prior knowledge as well as providing new perspectives for those who are highly familiar with the system. This preparation is an opportunity to revisit competing threads and clarify my thoughts.

3. Connect the dots within your discipline 

Effective teaching requires clear articulation of how different areas and topics within a discipline are interconnected. To achieve this when teaching a curriculum, academics need to step back from their specialised focus and recontextualise their knowledge within a wider scope. While research can have a particular focus, the learning experience for students should remain broad and comprehensive.

This leaves academics with no room for cutting corners as they must stay abreast of developments beyond their immediate study focus and ensure their relevance in the related fields. Academics need to prepare and collate effective illustrations and explanations that connect the dots between their research and other interrelated topics.

4. Explore the limits and possibilities of research 

Class preparation can help academics improve their own understanding of the background and context of their research. It can even help link their speciality to topics and approaches that previously seemed irrelevant and show how their specific ideas fit into the larger picture. The best, most innovative ideas often emerge out of the gaps between disciplines, when academics have pushed their thinking to the fringes of their specialism where it interacts with other ideas.

It is often in the process of explaining an existing concept to others that academics realise that current approaches, theories or paradigms are insufficient or inappropriate. This can pave the way for more sophisticated studies. Academics cannot merely do it once and leave, but need to constantly reinvent their thinking so that they stay at the leading edge in their research.

When I was preparing for a class on the development of higher education, I&nbsp;dug into the literature and found that the current direction of higher education curriculum design was lagging behind wider societal changes, responding rather than foreseeing.

Educators should nonetheless find ways to provide students with the tools to imagine the future ever-changing world, to take current or potential problems to the extreme, and to develop and even practise solutions that might tackle those problems. This resulted in my writing a paper about how the higher education sector should contribute to forward-looking curricula.

5. Use outsiders to refine research instruments and results 

Expand the practice of peer review to students. Academics subject their research ideas to stringent scrutiny and public criticism from fellow scholars, so why not use the same practice within the classroom?

The scrutiny, feedback, comments, questions and critiques that students offer can be constructively critical or even novel and innovative. By responding to students’ feedback and sharing ideas for discussion, academics can sharpen new areas of enquiry, initiate untested questions, create new methodologies, identify flaws in analytical approaches, or test the reliability and validity of concepts that they are developing. All these can help academics to shape a more methodologically rigorous and theoretically sound research.

Adrian Man-Ho Lam is a course tutor in the department of politics and public administration and guest lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong.

Adrian Lam offers tips on how academics can use their teaching to refine, enrich and expand their research methods

How to refine, enrich and expand research through teaching practices

The pandemic has seen research yield some spectacular results. The most obvious has been the research leading to the production of the Covid vaccine. But this does not mean the UK’s research response has been all about STEM.If that wasn’t obvious before, it has become obvious now that vaccine hesitancy has mounted up the national agenda. Why do conspiracy theories arise? Why do some people, but not others, find them credible, and how do you stop them?A little less obviously, in the age of Instagram and the mobile phone, there’s no reason to expect diaspora communities in the UK to take their public health information from official UK sources when they can access global media in their own language. And yet some of those diaspora communities have included those most at risk from Covid-19. So, we need deep linguistic and cultural knowledge to understand what information those communities are receiving, whether it is reliable, and if it isn’t, how to make sure more reliable information reaches them instead.Resource collection: Creativity in higher educationHow to show employers the value in humanities and create internship opportunitiesConnecting research and humanities through creative collaborationsThis illustrates why the arts and humanities component of the overall UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) response to Covid-19 is so important; between the vaccine and good public health outcomes lie public health information and public attitudes, including whether people see that information as trustworthy. That area is covered by the arts and humanities.Responding to the pandemic with arts and humanities researchOf course, that’s not all there is to the arts and humanities response to the pandemic: the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI, has funded a large number of projects during this time – for example, on the effects of lockdown on the arts and cultural sector and on ways of mitigating them, be it technologies to enable dancers to rehearse together without occupying the same space, or the positive effect on mental health of digital engagement with culture.An important lesson lies in these examples. Some people may worry that the pandemic response was about dropping everything we had been doing before and suddenly striking out in a new “applied” direction. On the contrary, the trio of:creative industries, as in our Creative Industries Clusters Programme, which runs from the screen industries and digital storytelling to fashion and video gamesdigital access to culture through projects such as Towards a National Collectionaccess to culture’s role in mental health and well-beinghave been central themes of AHRC strategic programming for a while now.We, and the researchers we fund, were able to respond rapidly to the pandemic because of those strategic investments, and our response has in turn taught us something about how to take those strategic investments forward.The pandemic response is admittedly only one aspect of AHRC’s challenge-led research, and there are others, but it shows how different strands of challenge-led research can come together if they need to.Funding criteria for arts and humanities research: challenge, impact and discoverySo, should arts and humanities researchers think that they will only be able to get their work funded if their work is challenge-led? No. Nor is that true if the question is rephrased as about commercial benefit, even though our investments in the creative industries have leveraged impressive quantities of private sector match funding and we plan to intensify commercialisation activity in the coming year. But funds aren’t directed solely towards contemporary challenges any more than they are towards commercialisation. There are fellowships and open call schemes, and these are completely open as to topic, because we are committed to funding outstanding work that helps us understand ourselves across a huge range of subjects.In addition, the dual support system directs public funds to research via two routes – on the one hand, the research councils and on the other, the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Arts and humanities research is less reliant on research council funding than any other field, with about 70 per cent of the public funds flowing to arts and humanities research coming from quality rated (QR) research funding. About 25 per cent of a department’s overall REF performance will rely on impact but, by the same token, a much larger proportion of it won’t – which means that whatever AHRC does, there is significant scope within the current funding regime for arts and humanities academics to pursue discovery as opposed to more impact- or challenge-led research.And there is wisdom in that: we need a broad base of basic research in the arts and humanities, in part so we are ready to respond to the next big challenge, because we don’t always know what the next big challenge is going to be.Edward Harcourt is director of research, strategy and innovation for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,&nbsp;sign up for the Campus newsletter.

Finding arts and humanities funding post-pandemic 

Edward Harcourt on why the arts and humanities are vital to tackling societal challenges and what funding streams are available to research within these disciplines 

The arts and humanities have not been forgotten: finding funding post-pandemic 

Universities, as civic institutions, have a moral duty to support their communities of place, interest, identity or experience – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. One way they can do this is through public engagement. It can seem difficult to prioritise public engagement when there are so many other calls on your time, but there are two key points to bear in mind:Public engagement is more important than you might think.&nbsp;Public engagement is easier than you might think.Public engagement is important because propagating and democratising knowledge confers so many benefits on wider society. It improves health and well-being by nurturing hobbies and interests, offering new experiences&nbsp;and changing behaviour. It supports personal resilience by diversifying life experience, widening horizons and helping achieve personal goals. It boosts economic resilience by instilling knowledge, skills and ways of thinking, providing volunteering opportunities and raising aspirations. It builds social capital by extending community-university networks and increasing appetites for learning, and it strengthens civil society by developing skills in discussion and debate, supporting informed decision-making and giving people the opportunity to devise and participate in research themselves.Public engagement benefits researchers and universities by extending research networks and providing different perspectives. It develops transferable skills in researchers, boosts self-esteem and enhances the public reputation of the university. Public engagement contributes to the research excellence framework&nbsp;(REF) and knowledge exchange framework&nbsp;(KEF), which contribute to universities’ reputations and their income, and supports student recruitment.Whether your primary role is research, teaching&nbsp;or supporting public engagers, here are key tips based on my experience with PEARL&nbsp;(Public Engagement for All with Research at Lincoln), which we set up with UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding to enhance public engagement across the university. These actions can be applied at every level, from individuals to institutions.Get&nbsp;startedEstablish in your own mind what you want your public engagement to achieve and why. This helps plan and evaluate more effectively.&nbsp;Get help – sign up for any public engagement training at your university and check out the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) website.&nbsp;Don’t be afraid to start small. Even talking to friends about one aspect of your work practises public engagement as it builds fluency. Taking part in on-campus research festivals saves you finding your own audience, while contributing an activity to a national initiative such as Pint of Science or Being Human will come with ready-made PR.Think&nbsp;about your audienceConsider what your audience is likely to want or expect. Thinking about who will participate will help you refine your ideas and pitch your activity.&nbsp;Enjoy your audience and pay attention to them. They will value the authenticity of connecting with people who really are the experts and will offer you different and new perspectives. Asking for a show of hands in response to a couple of opening questions gets your audience engaging with you right from the start.Look for new audiences. These might be groups with interests in your subject (such as&nbsp;environmental groups, history societies etc) or organisations like U3A (University of the Third Age), which has local groups nationwide with a remarkably eclectic range of interests. Making a virtue of recent necessity, online engagement is now easy and widely accepted.Build&nbsp;support networksConnect with others – it’s insightful, inspiring and encouraging to share ideas and experiences with others involved in public engagement.&nbsp;Work across disciplinary boundaries – there’s huge potential in, for example, life scientists collaborating with performing artists to come up with exciting new ways of sharing knowledge.Involve people from different career stages and tracks. Students can contribute newly minted freshness and enthusiasm, senior researchers can provide confidence underpinned by decades of accumulated knowledge, staff heavily involved in teaching have honed communication skills.As you gain experienceTry new approaches, especially anything that turns one-way dissemination into two-way conversation or sustainable participation – from including polls in an online talk to asking people to co-produce research.&nbsp;Remember that public engagement can take place anywhere – indoors, outdoors, on campus, in the high street or in the back of beyond, on air or online. Think creatively.Be open-minded about taking up offers of help. The most important asset is enthusiasm – everything else can be learned!Capture the impactRecord the outcomes of your engagement. This will show whether you achieved your aims and help identify any improvements needed. It will also show others what you have achieved, which is hugely important for you and for the university. Any information, even a simple headcount, is useful, but it’s even better if supplemented by qualitative quotes from visitors’ books or quantitative statistics from feedback forms. Responses collected before and after the activity can show the difference it’s made, but such intensive data collection can be counterproductive – no one likes feeling like a lab rat when they are enjoying indulging their curiosity. Whatever approach you use, think what you want to be able to say about your activity’s outcomes, and draft your questions accordingly.&nbsp;Formally recognise and reward public engagement – include public engagement categories in workloading, staff merit programmes and student awards.Celebrate your public engagement successes within and beyond the university – in departmental meetings, in annual reports, online and in media communications – and even in research articles. It’s good news for everyone and will inspire others – completing a virtuous circle.Carenza Lewis is&nbsp;professor for the public understanding of research at the University of Lincoln.If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.

Carenza Lewis shares a step-by-step guide for embedding public engagement into your institution’s research and teaching 

How to embed public engagement into your teaching and research activities 

All universities have a responsibility to engage with and support the communities in which they are located. This can be done in many ways but a key tool in any university’s repertoire is its research.So, how can universities shape research projects to ensure benefits are felt by local communities? One way is by inviting community participation in research projects that&nbsp;seek to address key issues or challenges faced by local people and groups.These will vary according to the institution’s&nbsp;remit and its locality. So, the starting point for any university or academic looking to develop such a project must be a thorough understanding of local issues or major challenges faced by local people.Shaping research to community needsUse existing networks: When initiating new community-university research partnerships it can be helpful to draw upon existing research networks that have connections to targeted groups within the community. The Our Health programme, which aims to reduce health inequalities through community-based participatory research, has built upon relationships that have emerged out of associated clinical research grants. Doing this not only reduces the initial workload in terms of seeking out community partners but it almost always leads to a “natural fit”&nbsp;around shared research interests and long-term goals.Clarify the research focus:&nbsp;To effectively&nbsp;shape&nbsp;your&nbsp;research to respond to community needs, it is important to be clear about what, and how, you are seeking to investigate. The Our Health team focuses on research related to health and well-being. We work in partnership with socio-economically disadvantaged communities to improve health literacy through participatory research and empower patient and community groups to take greater control of their own health. By establishing the overall aim of the community engagement and understanding the research methods involved in achieving that aim, you will be better placed to keep the community engagement on track and participants working as a cohesive, strong and motivated research team.Use existing resources: A valuable starting point for any academic or practitioner who seeks to understand community needs around health and well-being would be resources such as the James Lind Alliance (JLA), which has&nbsp;useful guidelines for forming and working in research priority-setting partnerships. The Our Health team were guided by the evidence base the JLA had compiled of health-related research questions posed by the wider public, as well as conducting our own focus groups with local community groups to hear directly what research needs they felt were important and would want to participate in.Make it interdisciplinaryWe have shown through a qualitative case study of the Our Health programme that interdisciplinarity enhances community-based participatory research processes by providing flexibility and more research solutions and options through the range of disciplinary knowledge. When interdisciplinarity crossed a wide range of disciplines from the sciences and social sciences the shared learning environment provided was particularly rich. We would encourage others who are interested in setting up their own community-based participatory research programmes to harness the power of interdisciplinary collaboration. It is possible to facilitate meaningful local change by bringing together teams of researchers and mixed-level students from across the university to work on university-community research partnerships.Embed community research into curriculaStudents participate in these projects because they want rich experiential learning and skills training. They want to make a difference in the communities in which they live and study. We have found that students report gaining&nbsp;confidence in conducting research, in working outside their disciplines and engaging with professionals and the wider public. To offer these experiences to a wide and diverse student body and maximise impact, these opportunities should be embedded within the curriculum with sufficient financial and staffing support. Think long termDeveloping community-university research partnerships takes time. If you want to reap the many benefits that these partnerships offer, you need to think and plan for the long term. The research relationships need to be fostered and respected and this means that all participants need to commit their time and energy to ensuring the relationships remain healthy and productive.The real-world research questions presented by community-based research&nbsp;are complex and often problematic. Unpacking questions of this complexity may take several years but doing so&nbsp;provides potent, long-term learning experiences for community partners and students. The length of time it takes to answer community-posed questions and the length of university programmes means that students come and go from teams. This can be a challenge in terms of building&nbsp;relationships  between community partners and students. To mitigate this, try to ensure there is a constant, core team of academic staff.&nbsp;This will allow a natural student and community partner turnover to occur without disrupting the overall programme.Helen Szoor-McEIhinney is Our Health programme lead, Alette Willis is senior lecturer in health in social science, and Liam Gilchrist is Our Health research associate, all at the University of Edinburgh.If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,&nbsp;sign up for the Campus newsletter.&nbsp;

 How can academics shape their research around key community needs and encourage participation from multidisciplinary faculty, students and local people? Helen Szoor-McElhinney and colleagues offer insight 

Directing research to engage and support local communities  

Helen Wolfenden from Macquarie University presents a podcast offering advice on publishing or communicating research in new formats beyond the scope of traditional academic journals

Making practice publishable: a journal article-cum-podcast

Deep dives into university research practices around the world, including supervision, community engagement, funding and publication

Research excellence

How to refine, enrich and expand research through teaching practices

The arts and humanities have not been forgotten: finding funding post-pandemic

How to embed public engagement into your teaching and research activities

Directing research to engage and support local communities

Making practice publishable: a journal article-cum-podcast

Discover

More from THE

Sign up

Collaborate with THE

About

Legal stuff