REFLECTION PAPER

Reflection of Teaching/Learning Incidents

Introduction

I attended a course on research methods in which we learned about the different researching types and techniques. The purpose of the course was to make us familiar with research methods and techniques and to transform us from people with no or little idea about research to individuals with good research skills.

Discussion

A few months back, I was attending a research based course at an institute. In this course, we were being taught the techniques of doing professional researches. The course instructor in one of the sessions told us about how he learned to do good professional researches. He told us the one thing he learned in life was that the most that a person can learn is only through practical experience. He also gave us the idea that a person can only gain knowledge about something from someone else but can only learn to do that particular thing by using that knowledge himself.

He asked us to pick up a research journal of our choice from the library and to go through it. He also asked to look at the pattern of the research report how it was organized and the different topics included in it. Once we had gone through the research, we were then asked different questions regarding the pattern of the report and the topics included in it. In the discussion that we had, we were also detailed about the reason of organizing the report in the way that it actually was.

Once the thorough explanation on each and every topic was given, we had now gained all the detailed knowledge about the composition of a research report. We had quite a long discussion on it and after the discussion ended, we were asked to use our knowledge practically by doing a short research project in groups, so that we can practically implement our knowledge and get some practical experience of doing a research. By this, we were told that we can enhance our research skills every time we do a new research. We will be a better researcher every time we start a new research.

When we started doing the research ourselves, we needed some help from our instructor in the beginning because we were doing it for the first time ever. The instructor kept on motivating us to complete the task and encouraged us to ask as many questions as we wanted ...