OUAN501 - COP2: What Is Research? (Part Two)

OUAN501 - COP2: What Is Research? (Part One)

OUAN501 - What Is Research?

Just before the Christmas break, we were given a lecture on research to aid us with the idea generation and creation of our second and third year Context of Practice essays. Research can be a difficult thing to acquire when stuck in a creative block or lacking motivation and some of us start researching and never give up, often leading us into the final dribs and drabs of our research whilst we're actually writing our essays (which is bad as research often changes our mind and our views on a subject we've maybe chosen to write about).

In my first week back from a long and tedious Christmas period, today in fact, we had our second lecture on research. Despite being up with the fairies throughout the lecture by plunging in and out of a daydream-like state, I somehow managed to take in most of what was said and explained, and managed to make some valuable notes. By blogging about both lectures together, I feel I am able to condense most of what I took in, and make it into less of a nonsensical two-hour Powerpoint and more of an easily understood series of points. Here we go:

1. "Everyone is a genius at least once a year.Success comes from having brighter ideas closer together."
2. You need to fail, fail again, fail better, quicker, and get all those failures out of the way so you can learn from your mistakes quicker each time and get on with doing things right.
3. "Stimulated approach: This is a conscious or subconscious search for inspiration from an external repertoire: in the surroundings, media, in discussion, libraries, etc. The main concern here is the development of analogies and associative approaches, which are then further developed into individual solutions." - Werner Gaede - Vom Wort zum Bild
4. "Systematic approach: This is based on the systematic collection and modification of components, characteristics and means of expression: such as by structuring and restructuring, enlarging and reducing, combining and extracting, replacing, adding, mirroring or reproducing." - Werner Gaede - Vom Wort zum Bild
5. "Intuitive approach: This is the development of thought process, which is primarily based on internalised perceptions and knowledge, that is to say an internal repertoire. This type of thought process may occur spontaneously, without being evoked specially. This is actually a systematic process that takes place subconsciously." - Werner Gaede - Vom Wort zum Bild

Although this seemed very technical and complex to me at first (due to my tiny brain that fails to retain information fired at me in rapid succession), I went over the key definitions and terms again and again and sort of came to an agreement with my brain that this information will benefit me very much and that I will use this to my advantage when writing my essays and researching for them.

What is Research though?

Research is a process of finding out information by asking questions such as "how?", "why?", and "what if?". It may involve collecting information from both primary and secondary sources such as books, the internet, journals, people, experiments, and others' works.

To put it simply, primary research is research you have conducted yourself. It is unique data that you will have acquired. Secondary has been found by somebody else and you are simply using that research to fuel your own research. Quantitative research focuses on facts and figures, things that can be measured. Qualitative research uses opinions and explores the beliefs of others without them being turned into numerical values.