Have a special look to text 2 using the Yellow hat style of thinking and give an advice to its author.

Read your own text that you wrote in task 1.9. and say which hat you put on when you were writing about yourself and your University studies. Do you want to change the color of your hat now?

 

 

Ž Thinking scientifically that is ‘in a university way’

At the university both teachers and students are engaged in research. We are researchers. It means that we watch the world around us in a special way making its elements objects of our research. We’ll show you what is a researcher’s way of thinking and give you 7 steps to acquire this way of thinking and apply it in your research activities: in writing course papers, diplomas and … dissertations of different levels.

Ñ 3.1. Look at Figure 1 “Sand clock: starting points of a researcher”. Read and translate the words. Explain in your own words how you understand the activity that is inscribed into this sand-clock (build hypothesis).

Use verbs: find, choose, set, define, carry out.

Field

 

Object

Subject-matter

Goal

 

 

 

Tasks

 

Methods

 

Topicality/Significance

Figure 1. Sand-clock: Starting points of a researcher.

 

Ñ 3.2. Let us study the upper part of the clock. Read the definitions and in according with the examples of the object and the subject matter give an approximate goal and name the field.

The field of my research (investigation field) – the research context (the discipline or, if a research is interdisciplinary, a set of disciplines engaged; research school, people who work in the field).

The object of my research (investigation object) – the phenomenon studied (in humanitarian disciplines it may be particular texts, one’s activities or experiences etc.).

 

The subject-matter of my research (investigation subject-matter) – this is what in particular I study (investigate, research) in my object. For example my object of research is text, so the subject-matter can be its structure or vocabulary or some particular information in it, some themes, etc.

 

The goal of my research (research or investigation goal)– a central (crucial) part of the sand clock. If you don’t consider it the whole clock doesn’t work (no reason to do). Here one answers the questions: why, what for the research is taking place? What’s the sense of doing it? The research is definitely to help to solve some (research) problem.

 

þ As you see with each new term followed the meaning of the research is more and more specified. With the help of these terms a researcher (a student) is following the path of self identification:

1. where s\he is (field)

2. what s\he studies (object)

3. where the focus of attention is (subject-matter)

4. why the activity is carried out (goal)

 

Read the text on one of university subjects and define its field, object, subject-matter and goal; in this way you cover the path of both the teacher and the learner: you’ll formulate what the teacher teaches and what the student studies in the framework of a particular discipline.

 

Informatics is the science of information, the practice of information processing and the engineering of information systems. Informatics studies the structure, algorithms, behavior, and interactions of natural and artificial systems that store, process, access and communicate information. It also develops its own conceptual and theoretical foundations and utilizes foundations developed in other fields. Since the advent of computers, individuals and organizations increasingly process information digitally. This has led to the study of informatics that has computational, cognitive and social aspects, including study of the social impact of information technologies.

(From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics_(academic_field))

 

3.4. Let us study the lower part of the sand-clock. Read the definitions of four terms and explain them on the example of the text in task 3.3. Thus you will know what you will do, how you will do, and, what is most important, should you do it at all or not.

Term 1. Tasks (steps) – the outline of a step-by-step realization of the goal;

 

Term 2. Method (also methodology, perspective, theory – everything that predetermines the way we operationalize our research categories) – a choice of a research matrix according to which we choose categories for analysis and methods, techniques, ways of their analysis which we consider proper for our goal realization. There exist 3 groups of methodologies (methods), that is the ones within logical, philosophical, and pure professional thinking. All three can be regarded by researchers as basic matrix:

 

¯3 kinds of methodologies:   1. Within the basic methods, first, the logical ways of thinking are named, such as deduction (from general to particular), induction (from particular to general) and abduction (hypothesis production); 2. Another group of basic matrix represents general philosophic perspectives. Among them there are such research perspectives as positivism (the priority of factual data), interpretativism (the priority of interpretational data), criticism (the priority of attitudinal and evaluative data), postmodernism (the priority of semiotics and semiological data), synergetic perspective or other integrative approaches ( for example casual-genetic perspective (the priority of interdisciplinary, synthetic, cluster-type of data); 3. a third group changes the focus of a researcher’s attention from general basic ways of thinking to particular ones (though for the discipline itself the methods of this group are still characterized as basic ones). This group of methods has, which is obvious, a certain time and space limit, while the 1^st two ones seem to be relatively profound

 

Term 3. Topicality – the acceptance of a research project within its own set of approaches (field-object-subject matter-goal-tasks-methods) as necessary for the society within the aspect “here and now”;

Term 4. Significance – the acceptance of a research project within its own set of approaches as necessary for the science, its development and\or its further revision (approaches and\or data verification).