Connecting the Dots in the “Teaching-Research Nexus”

“The goal should not be publish or perish, or teach or impeach, but we beseech you to publish and teach effectively.” Hattie and March (1996)

I initially set out to write an evidence-informed blog on how wonderful the teaching-research nexus was. I wanted to demonstrate that it was the pinnacle of academic activity. In my mind, conducting it would access the higher orders of learning to achieve a zen-like state for students and staff alike. Unfortunately, reality got in the way and there are issues! All is not rosy in the garden of the teaching-research nexus, but there are things the individual can do.

Linking teaching and research in higher education is a goal of many academic institutions. There is an expectation that academics should be both active researchers and teachers, although the time allocated to each task can vary widely. Research is how you generate knowledge, teaching is how you disseminate that knowledge. We want our students to develop high order enquiry skills and undertaking research is one way of achieving this. Giving students access to cutting-edge research through their taught programs can lead to them gaining key skills and abilities in independent enquiry. Although not all academics conduct research in the disciplines in which they teach, through effective scholarship they can produce students of high quality with all the skills needed to progress in their chosen careers.

What do I mean by research? For this article, I am framing research in terms of the act of novel investigation leading to the generation of new knowledge. Typically, academic outputs are expected to be peer-reviewed articles and publications. In terms of the teaching-research nexus, I am classing the following activities as examples (Healey 2010) and (Griffiths 2004).

Curriculum Design and the Research-Teaching Nexus. Based on Healey (2005)

Through teaching, new directions can be sought, emerging from conversation with students who often approach a problem with a fresh set of eyes unencumbered by past experiences.

What is the evidence that good research leads to good teaching?

Numerous studies have demonstrated that there is a poor correlation between teaching excellence and research output (Stappenbelt, 2015). In a blog posted in June 2017, WonkHE presented a correlation between the UK Teaching Excellence Framework and the 2014 Research Excellence Framework outputs. The data was striking in its complete lack of correlation between the headline metrics of teaching excellence and research. At an institutional level, the ability to produce world-class research did not help nor hinder the teaching metrics of student satisfaction, employability or progression. This conclusion is not new, with Hattie and Marsh in 1996 effectively demonstrating that the correlation between measures of teaching and research excellence is effectively zero. Zaman (2004) records that the links between effective teaching and research are weakly positive at best, although stronger at postgraduate level. A very important point to note is that the correlations here are near zero, not negative (Hattie and Marsh 2004). The act of performing research does not negatively impact on the quality of teaching.

 

Many academics choose to stay in research as they have a deep interest in their subject areas. So should we really be comparing headline figures? A better question is not “how does research output affect student satisfaction in the course“, but “are the students stimulated by the teaching“. When the UK National Student Survey (NSS) results for Q3 – “The course is intellectually stimulating” – are compared with REF output, a moderate positive correlation does emerge (r = 0.5 p >0.05). Those institutions that are strong in research tend to have students who report being intellectually stimulated. No correlation was found with any other NSS question.

REF GPA intensity score was taken from the WonkHE. Data for the 2018 NSS Q3 was obtained from Office for students. TEF 2017 results have been used to code the individual data points. The colours represent the TEF award for each University (Gold, Silver, Bronze). An r-value of 0.503 was calculated with a significance at p >0.005.

Where is the barrier to creating the nexus?

“When you co-locate teaching and research you reduce your efficiency in producing both.” Lloyd (2009)

Pulled apart by the wild horses of research and teaching.

Communicating with a research audience is different from communication with a teaching audience. The two skills are separate with an individual typically excelling in one or the other. A research-led syllabus runs the danger of becoming overly focused on the interests of the individual and lacking breadth, with students exposed to a limited perspective. However, being an expert in a given area does allow a depth of content, but is that effective teaching?

The culture of the University and the broader environment in which the academic finds themselves has a significant influence on the success of linking research and teaching. Where academics perceive their teaching and research roles as separate they tend to struggle when integrating the two activities, while those who took a more integrated approach integrate their activities more successfully (Colbeck 1998). This is, however, simplistic and the methods by which an institution supports and evaluates the link between teaching and research determines the value placed on each activity.

What do the students think about research?

When effective, a creation of synergies between teaching and research can be a time-efficient and rewarding activity. It is crucial to understand that continuous scholarly activity and curiosity are required for effective teaching. Jenkins (2004) states that students appreciate the fact that research enables their course to be up-to-date, with the academics involved in the teaching being more interested in the subject.

Several articles in the literature and my own studies would indicate that students have an awareness of the research being undertaken within their institution, and do see a benefit to their learning (Jusoh & Abidin 2012). Students typically become aware of the research over time, usually gaining direct experience in their final year. Healey et al 2010 report that teaching research has many benefits including enthusiastic staff, up-to-date content, enhanced credibility and the kudos of being taught by well-known researchers. On the flip side, the lack of access to these researchers was negative and academics may prioritise research over teaching, proving hard for the student to track down or interact with. Jenkins (2004) noted that a student can perceive a disadvantage from teaching staff involved in research and did not consider themselves stakeholders in the research conducted by academics. In one case, the students report that they do not appear to gain from individual teaching staff involved in research Stappenbelt (2013). The reasons for this may be varied but are likely to include the limited time that students can spend being directly involved in the research and their relative inexperience in performing it.

Practical ways of embedding research in teaching

Get the most out of supervising independent research projects: Although these are often short-lived (6 to 10 weeks) meaningful outputs can be gained.

• Pool your resources. Supervisors will often have more than one student to work with (I often have six). Create projects with interlinking elements, such that the students are all working on the same topic but investigating different aspects or using a different method. The students can work together but still have their individual reports.  In the end, you can pull together all the data and you have created a community.
• Use projects to gain preliminary data for grants. Students can focus on one element of the work during their research with the outcome being the figure you need to gain funding.
• Create a defined output. In my own work as a biochemist, students often generate new materials or programs that are then used in further research, e.g. new plasmid vectors or variant proteins.
• Try out that crazy idea (pump priming). From the student’s point of view, the act of conducting the research is the aim. They walk away with a valuable learning experience regardless, it does not have to work and so you can take risks in the project aims that you would not take with funded work.

Embed your own research into your assessments: Bat smarter not harder.

• 30 minds are greater than 1. When I have needed to keep up with the literature I have set that topic as an essay title. In that way, when marking I am reading an area I am interested in and am exposed to a wide base. The students might well pull out a paper I have not seen.
• Allow students to design the research. In a final year module, we require the students to develop workflows for a given topic based on current practice. In this case, I set active research problems for them to develop solutions.
• Set open-ended questions, based on real research problems. The assessment is not what they can recall but how they have applied their knowledge. Is the answer feasible? Could that research be performed?

Manage your time and set realistic expectations: This one is much harder as you may well feel like the individual pulled apart by the wild horses.

• Finding large blocks of time to write during term time is hard. Instead, break the grant or paper down into small tasks achievable in 2 or 3 hours and build the output over time.

The act of conducting research is intellectually stimulating, operating at the highest levels of learning through synthesising and creating new knowledge. From a teaching point of view, it gives a personal sense of ownership to the taught material – “I created that“. It is a personal view that this is more than scholarship, it is a way of informing what is taught and how it is taught.

 

*Thank you to Mel Green for all the help, with structuring and editing this blog. It takes a lot of work to make these blogs read as well as they do.