Nottingham is a research-intensive university, and we attach a great deal of importance to research activity and the connections between research and teaching.
Bringing research into teaching:
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makes the subject lively and up-to-date
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makes research more relevant and interesting
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develops research skills for use in future careers
Someone who has direct access to research, so somebody who is teaching directly from their own experience is very valuable.
Dr Angus Davison
School of Biology
The enthusiasm generated by discussing current research questions can be infectious and forms a part of engaging and motivating our students.
Research-informed curriculum
Most obviously, a relationship between research and teaching can be found in the sharing of current work with students. While there can be ample opportunity at postgraduate level for involving students in exploring research questions, it can be harder at undergraduate level if students are not conversant enough with the specialism to be able to engage with the complexities and subtleties of research study.
However, some colleagues have found that telling students about their work and talking about what they could do if they became a professional in the field is obviously interesting to them.
Students as novice researchers
Learning a subject at university level has a lot in common with the research process itself. The quest for understanding, and learning how to to ask questions are important outcomes from our teaching activities. At early stages, we wouldn't expect ground-breaking results, but the excitement of making new discoveries can be seen.
Some teaching will develop the skills that students need in order to progress to postgraduate study or an academic career; core skills that are also valuable in employment outside of a research context. As students develop as novice researchers, we are building an ability to:
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question books and articles and read between the lines
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analyse evidence and come to well-argued conclusions
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use material to form their own opinions
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demonstrate an understanding of different research methods, and they can work together
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master the mechanisms of research – select and use research methods, obtain ethical approval, carry out data collection and analyse results
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find the right literature in response to a question and come up with an informed opinion.
Hear staff and students...
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Linking research and teaching
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Alan Jenkins on mainstreaming undergraduate research
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Bringing research into the classroom
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Gina Wisker on supervising students
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Connecting international teaching with research
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More Videos
We must give students every chance to do the best work in the profession, so I ensure that new evidence that I've been developing with colleagues here at Nottingham is put before our students.
Professor Paul Crawford,
School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy
It's not about the answers, it is about how to ask questions. We explore with our students that academia is not about condensing things into textbook-style information: most interesting is what happens between the lines of a textbook, and how the people who wrote it gained the information that appears in a textbook.
Dr Katharina Lorenz,
Humanities
Case study: Publishing Student Research
At the e-learning community of November 2009, Dr Martin Luck gave a presentation on BURN (Biosciences Undergraduate Research at Nottingham), which is part of an intiative to get student research more widely published. You can see the powerpoint presentation and the video of the presentation.
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