Research skills

OUTLINE

• Mission and Vision• What is Research?• Ten Steps for Good Research• Resources of Research • Types of research• Skills (Top_5 Skills)• Top_6 Advices • Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer,

ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper• References• Q & A

Mission & Vision

• Mission: Defines the fundamental purpose of a person, basically describing why he/she exists. Mission may be long term as well as for short term.

• Vision: Defines the desired or intended future state of a person in terms of his/her fundamental objective and/or strategic direction

Research

• Research is the systematic process of collecting and analyzing information to increase our understanding of the phenomenon under study and/or new technologies.

• Summary:• The process of searching – carefully– with a method

to understand and/or answer a question

Research Flow Topic

Idea

Research(Collecting

Info)

Simulation and

Analysis

ResultsReport and/or paper

Ten Steps for Good Research

• STEP 1: Formulate your question • STEP 2: Get background information • STEP 3: Refine your search topic • STEP 4: Consider your resource options • STEP 5: Select the appropriate tool • STEP 6: Use the tool • STEP 7: Locate your materials • STEP 8: Analyze your materials • STEP 9: Organize and write • STEP 10: Compose your bibliography

Resources of Research

1- The library and its resources. 2- The computer and its software. 3- Techniques of measurement. 4- The human mind.

Types of research

1- Theoretical– Theorems and proofs (Case study, Proposal..etc.)

2- Experimental– Hardware development, experimental results

3- System development (Combination 1 & 2)– Coding, testing, engineering, …

Skills and Talent?

• Most of the skills can be learnt or improved over time, if one wants

• Some talent is needed, but alone it is not enough– People with great talent and no skills obtain much

less than what they could do

OUTLINE

• Mission and Vision• What is Research?• Ten Steps for Good Research• Resources of Research • Types of research• Skills (Top_5 Skills)• Top_6 Advices • Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer,

ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper• References• Q & A

Skill 1: Patience• Good research needs time• Don’t expect great results

immediately– Theorems may be

hard to prove– Coding may take

more time that initially thought

– Experiments need to be tuned to show interesting results and lessons

• Allow ample time to do either theoretical or empirical research

Skill 2: Problem formulation

• A problem should be formulated in a simple and crisp way

• Everybody, even non-expert people, should be able to understand it

• An unnecessary complex formulation may hide the essence of the problem and also its solution

• Talk to others, define your problem to them, get feedback

Skill 3: Look for important problems

• Working only on the details of your latest results or theorem can be useful for the next paper

• But devote some time also to think about the larger picture

• What are the important problems in my field?• Read what others work on• Discuss with other students, your supervisor,

anybody you meet at the conferences

Skill 4: Review existing work• Being able to find and evaluate previous work• Look for what others have done before starting your research

project• It helps defining and tuning your problem• May give you ideas on how to solve it• Avoids reinventing the wheel and wasting time

Skill 5: Problem solving and adaptability

• Find suitable tools to answer a question or to solve a well-posed problem

• Be able to adapt yourself to the context– Turn a problematic situation into an interesting research

problem• Read, read, read• Don’t get discouraged, a solution can always be found

OUTLINE

• Mission and Vision• What is Research?• Ten Steps for Good Research• Resources of Research • Types of research• Skills (Top_5 Skills)• Top_6 Advices • Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer,

ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper• References• Q & A

General advice 1: Work hard

• Given two people with equal abilities, the one who works 10% more will produce twice as much

• The more you know, the more (and faster) you learn, the more you can do

General advice 2: Drive and commitment

• You should be committed to your research• This is not a 9 to 5 job• It should not be a sacrifice, but an opportunity

to do something you enjoy

General advice 3: Openess to other people

• Be open to others and to others’ work• Read a lot• Talk a lot with other people• Open vs. closed office doors

– People who work with a closed door produce more in the short term but obtain less, and less interesting results, in the long term

General advice 4: Collaboration

• Most great work comes out of collaborations with others• More than one point of view• Faster definition of the problem• More and more knowledge

General advice 5: Trust your advisor

• He is largely judged by the success of his students

• He gets great inspiration by working with graduate students

• He can learn a lot from graduate students

General advice 6:Clear about our goal

• Our goal is to produce good research results, to make advancements in science and technology

• NOT to get a job, or to make more money, …• If we do good research, these things will come, but

they are not the goal, they are a side effect • If we go for the wrong goal, good research will

probably not come, and not even the goal

OUTLINE

• Mission and Vision• What is Research?• Ten Steps for Good Research• Resources of Research • Types of research• Skills (Top_5 Skills)• Top_6 Advices • Hands-On exercise 1- How to: Search Using MMU Library(IEEE,IET, Since Direct, Springer,

ProQuest and hindawi) 2- How to: Read a Paper• References• Q & A

Paper?

• Research Paper: is a type of academic writing that needs more theoretical, significant and methodical level of question

Wikipedia

Paper’ Contents

1- Abstract (Index Terms): Gives you general idea about the objective of the research, tools and methodologies.

2- Introduction: Gives you general idea about the are of research, some previous works and “In this paper, we focus on….”

3- Related Works: Literature Review 4- Model and/or Problems formulations: Descriptions

of the system and….

Paper’ Contents

5- How to formulate your problems6- Some techniques used to solve your problems7- Simulation Results

Types of Papers

Paper

Survey Technical Paper

Without result

Withresult

How to Read a PaperSurvey Technical

Paper

Read from abstract to the last page including your

selected references

Do NOT Read the

PaperWhole

Read the first (4) pages

Skip and go to Simulation

part

Types of IEEE PapersIEEE

Survey and Tutorials Letters Magazines Transaction

Do Read All the papers

Do Read the first (4) pages and

simulation part

References

1- Francesca Rossi, University of Padova, Italy “power point slides” available on-line

2- Wikipedia.3- Paul D. Leedy, “Practical Research: Planning

and Design”, (prentice Hall) 8th edition,