Written by Tadeas Dvorak, Student Digital Champion
Earlier this year, I wrote a blog post on the various pedagogies that support students to become better researchers. There I was making an argument for higher education to act as a platform for communities of practice (CoP), a learning partnership between learners themselves. CoP is a participatory approach to embedding research into curricula, where students practice research together. The University and Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching have delivered a set of activities that take a form of CoP, be it the Festival of Undergraduate Research or the Undergraduate Research Journal.
In the past few weeks, I explored the idea of a digital research database, that would run on CoP principles. This would be a database where students could register the topic, timeline and contact details for their research project. When starting on a new research project, students would be encouraged to check if someone else has explored a similar research question. If interested, they could contact the original research team to discuss the topic, share findings and tips on how to take that research question forward. Likewise, when carrying out a research project and in need of advice or skillset, they could add a note to their project page, asking other students for help.
There is a ton of student research projects being carried out at the University. The database could foster collaboration across disciplines and years, ensuring that research progresses, and we build on the findings of previous projects.
The database would work in line with pre-registration and open science. Researchers register their study in an online database (such as OSF or PROSPERO), this includes basic information about the research question and the study design. When developing a new hypothesis, researchers screen the database to ensure they do not duplicate an existing research project.
Digital Research Database – Is it worth it?
I began exploring the desirability and feasibility of this idea. Feedback received was positive and suggested the database could be benefit students, bringing them together and sparking new research interests.
‘I would love this, I’d find it so interesting to find out what others are doing, and to see who has had similar ideas to me before me, or wants to collaborate with me! And also, it might inspire people seeing the work of others, and get them thinking about what they could do. I would also be really happy to be contacted after graduating if I’d done some research that a student is interested in, as I think this boosts conversation between alumni and current students!’ [undergraduate student]
‘Great idea to rise. Primarily as when it comes to dissertations, this is always a very important place for this kind of resource to be available. Our course kindly made all past years dissertations available, and I personally am building upon the conclusions of a past dissertation so have found it invaluable.’ [postgraduate student]
It would however require a good deal of UX design to make the database efficient and easy to use for students.
‘I could definitely see myself checking it around my workload, although it depends how easy it would be to filter, as I wouldn’t want to waste ages just scrolling through tons of research that I’m not interested it, I’d much rather only see research I’d want to read / collaborate on.’ [undergraduate student]
Digital Research Database – Can we build it?
I was in discussions with BILT and an Engaged Learning Coordinator at the University to explore the feasibility of the idea. The University has previously run SkillBridge, a platform aimed at connecting external stakeholders and organisations with student researchers at Bristol. There is currently the myOpportunities portal run by Bristol Futures and Careers Services, aimed at advertising volunteering and skills exchange. There is however no platform that would exclusively act as a research repository, promoting research collaboration.
The Research and Enterprise Development (RED) team at the University manages database of ethical approvals. Most research projects at the University must be pre-registered on this database to obtain an ethical approval. RED stores basic information about the projects but there is no public or student-facing solution. This leaves space for discussions with RED, exploring whether the database could have a front-end solution, where every researcher at the University could go and see if someone has explored a similar research question.
Implementation of this database is beyond the scope of my Student Digital Champion role but I will be very pleased if this blog post inspires someone to explore the idea of a Digital Research Database further. Future Student Digital Champions and BILT Student Fellows, the floor is yours!