Master’s & Doctoral Research Training Workshops

The students registered for Master’s and Doctoral degrees are welcome to the research training workshops. The training workshops are interdisciplinary, and they should be accommodative to 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:

• Familiarise postgraduate students with the Unisa research environment and research ethics.
• Provide information about the research process, 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 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 (SPSS & Atlas.ti for instance).
• 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:

• Introduction of UNISA’ 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 (e.g., Turnitin)
  • Understanding data analysis software’s (SPSS & Atlas t i)

These workshops are recorded, and the edited version may be accessed on the CGS YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/UNISACollegeOfGraduateStudies/videos  

Feel free to subscribe to this YouTube channel by clicking the bell-shaped icon to receive a notification whenever we upload the recording.

Feel free to join our Facebook page for further interaction and feedback:

• M&D
  • https://web.facebook.com/groups/UnisaTrainingWorkshops

We wish you success and good luck with your research journey.