Postgraduate Students
In Australia there are two types of postgraduate courses: coursework and research. For research higher degree students, the links between research and teaching are evident. These students are typically required to complete a major thesis in a research area of interests to their academic supervisor, who guides the student through the research process.
The place of the TRN for postgraduate coursework students may, however be less obvious. Lindsay et al. (2002) conducted focus groups with a range of postgraduate coursework students from the UK. While these students reported both positive and negative consequences of the integration of teaching and research in their study, the majority of their feedback was positive. In the UK study, postgraduate students were more positive about the value of research in their learning if they deemed that it was relevant to their area of study.
Make the connections relevant, interesting and intellectually stimulating
Similarly, Business and Management postgraduate coursework students interviewed for this project questioned the value of integrating ‘too much literature research and not that much real-life research’ into their courses. These interviewees were international students with a particular interest in the relevance of research to their work. One interviewee particularly valued ‘academics that have been in their field ... and then gone back as an academic’. These people were highly valued as academics who could effectively connect learning with real-world research applications. Another student commented:
It’s a bit too much emphasised on peer reviewed journals … but there’s a lot of information out there [that is] not peer reviewed … I read magazines and newspapers and that’s where we get our knowledge from.
Arguably, the professional demands of many coursework degrees may limit the ways in which research can be incorporated into teaching. Nevertheless, given the value of research knowledge and skills in the workplace, perhaps more consideration should be given to infusing coursework with research, with an emphasis on its relevance to the real-world settings that are so important to these students.
Moreover, with the national and international emphasis on knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange and community engagement, postgraduate coursework programs offer particularly good opportunities for applying research knowledge, skills and processes to address real-world problems.
Significantly, another Business postgraduate coursework interviewee commented on the need for academic staff to present their research with passion and enthusiasm:
If it’s someone who teaches with a lot of passion, then that research becomes interesting … whatever the research is and whatever you’re teaching and no matter how hard it is, it just makes it so much more fun.
As always, the student voice highlights the fundamental importance of good teaching practice, no matter what the subject.
Another interviewee drew attention to the value of using research to challenge and stimulate thinking:
I think that’s where it becomes more interesting, to have someone that’s challenging our minds.
Reflections on undergraduate and postgraduate research experiences
Reflecting back on their undergraduate experiences with research, postgraduate coursework students across discipline areas tended to agree that they would have preferred to be introduced to research in the discipline earlier in their undergraduate study.
One Business/Management postgraduate student commented that the second year research methods course ‘was really good and they should make that a little bit more interesting … it should be taught in first year first semester’. Another commented, ‘research…that’s what motivates me’.
Similarly, postgraduate students in Medical/Health field commented on the value of research as being ‘something concrete’ that ‘cements the learning process and gives you something to take hold and actually understand’.
The Medical/Health interviewees, reflected on the disjuncture between the early and late years of undergraduate study in terms of their exposure to research. In the first and second years of study, ‘research would be kept a little bit separate’. However, postgraduate study was valued because ‘I think in postgrad they bring it together’.
The Medical/Health interviewees recalled lecturers in the undergraduate years bringing in ‘lots of research … mostly they had done the work and presented the data to us…it was sort of already done for us’. However, third year seemed to represent a watershed in these students’ experiences. One student remembered first year as follows:
First year … was more just stats based research and that’s it, knowing how to do analyses … they build up foundation stuff…just learn this, learn this, learn this
A second postgraduate student reflected on the change that took place in third year:
That was third year … already it felt, compared to how we had it a few years previously, it just felt like it’d been really tailored so that people felt after you were in third year that you were getting something that was useful.
And further:
I think for that stage [year 3] of your academic work, you at least think you’re taking some control of it because you think you’re getting examples
Clarifying terminology
In their study of New Zealand postgraduate students’ experiences with research, Willis, Harper and Sawicka (1999) found that the term ‘research’ seemed problematic for their student respondents: ‘they did not understand what was meant by research in the context of the course for which they were enrolled’ (p.5). For the majority of respondents in the Willis et al. study, research seemed to be synonymous with academic staff research outputs. These researchers found ‘no evidence that students had any awareness of research as a process of finding new knowledge’ (p.5).
This did not appear to be the case among the relatively small number of postgraduate coursework interviewees who took part in our project. Nevertheless, it highlights the importance of clarifying terminology when making connections between research and teaching, and when seeking feedback from students on their experiences with research.
View and download examples and case studies demonstrating teaching-research linkages at the postgraduate coursework level.
