Postgraduate Research Training Programme
The School of Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies (SIRGS), which is in the College of Graduates Studies (CGS), supports you in your postgraduate research journey through a series of workshops.
The postgraduate research training workshops are interdisciplinary in nature, and they should be useful to the whole Unisa postgraduate community. Remember researchers from all fields answer the same questions relating to their research:
- Why is it important?
- How and when is it going to be done?
- What resources are needed?
These workshops aim to give you a broader understanding of the research process. At the end of the workshops, you should be able to talk with greater confidence about research methodologies and the role of theory in research. Click here for more information.
Remember:
Research is a social activity that forms part of your unstructured learning in your career path. You will face many difficulties in undertaking this social activity. You will be called upon to be committed, resilient, work hard, display maturity, develop patience and understanding, and "grow a thick skin".
Your journey is likely to be smooth and rewarding if you use some of the tips provided in these research training workshops.
Master’s and doctoral research training workshops
Students registered for master’s and doctoral degrees are welcome to attend the research training workshops. The workshops are interdisciplinary and will accommodate all master's and doctoral students with a research component in their modules across all colleges.
The main objectives of the M&D research training workshops are to
- familiarise postgraduate students with Unisa's research environment and research ethics.
- provide information about the research process, and the functions and components of the research proposal.
- develop skills to utilise research resources such as the Library and available research technologies.
- develop an understanding of meta-theories, theories, concepts, models and trends within and beyond subject disciplines.
- provide postgraduate students with strategies on how to gain an understanding of and access to their scientific community.
- introduce postgraduate students to the concept of "graduateness" and the meaning of "making an original research contribution" (for PhD students).
- present and discuss their informed research ideas/projects under the guidance of facilitators.
- be assisted to interlink their research ideas to relevant theories, concepts, models, trends and empirical findings in their fields.
- be trained in research methods and the available electronic resources on research methodology and technology available at Unisa (eg SPSS & Atlas.ti).
- be introduced to descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as to basic and complex model testing using statistics.
The research training workshops will cover various themes, including the following:
- Introduction of Unisa's structure as a university and its research-related policies
- Library training as the foundation of the research process
- The research proposal: Components and structure
-
- Academic writing skills (writing style and structure)
- Conceptualising research: Formulating research problems/research questions/hypothesis
- Reviewing scholarship (literature review)
- Library training: References
- Academic writing
- Ethics and academic integrity
- Meta-theories, theories, concepts, models and trends
- Theoretical and conceptual frameworks
- Philosophical and foundational assumptions: Ontology, epistemology & axiology
- Research methodologies/methods
- Introduction to quantitative/qualitative research methods
- Introduction to mixed methods research
- Sampling techniques
- Research ethics and procedures: Ethical clearance
- Evaluation of the research proposal: Research evaluation tools
- Advanced research design
- Multi, inter and transdisciplinary research
- Multimethod: Triangulations vs mixed methods
- Research paradigms: Positivism, constructivism, transformative, pragmatic, indigenous
- Putting together a research report: Chapters
- Understanding similarity checking software (eg Turnitin)
- Understanding data analysis software (SPSS & Atlas t i)
Click here to access the recordings of the workshops on the CGS YouTube channel.
African Academic Student Development Programme
The programme is offered by the School of Transdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Graduate Studies.
The impact of Covid-19 has compelled us to immerse our postgraduate students in a comprehensive online support programme that reconceptualises the tenets of human involvement needs, with Covid-19 risks at the centre of methodological choices. As such, this has brought to the fore an emphasis on innovative online teaching options for developing the skills needed among our postgraduate students. It is within this context that the College of Graduate Studies (CGS) now puts forward its new initiative – the Unisa Accelerated Online Postgraduate Research Methodology, Academic Writing and Grant Writing Programme – to work alongside its other offerings.
Find out more...
The programme is
compulsory for all research master's and doctoral students. Honours degree, postgraduate diploma and coursework master's students are wecome to also
register for the programme.