Recognizing the need to upskill faculty members and researchers of Philippine higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing well-planned research designs and methods to generate evidence effectively and efficiently, the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA), in partnership with the Philippine Commission on Higher Education Institution (CHED), is conducting an Online Training Course on Research Designs and Methods for HEIs (Research4HEIs) in the Philippines. The learning event will start on 14 February and will run until 11 March 2022, via the SEARCA Online Learning and Virtual Engagement (SOLVE) platform. With 26 participants from 23 HEIs that are members of the State Universities and Colleges – Association of Colleges of Agriculture in the Philippines, Inc. (SUC-ACAP, Inc.), the online training course will be coordinated by Dr. Maria Ana T. Quimbo, Professor 12 of the Institute of Governance and Rural Development, College of Public Affairs and Development, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). Co-facilitating with Dr. Quimbo are 13 faculty members and experts in the fields of Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods from the Institute of Statistics and the Department of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, UPLB.
The 10-week online training course is designed to build the participants’ capacity to develop a research framework focusing on their objectives/hypotheses with a keen knowledge of the situations/conditions under which they are to conduct their research. A major output of Research4HEIs is a Re-entry Action Plan that includes developing a research proposal. This provides the participant an opportunity to apply the learnings and skills grained from the training to address specific and practical problems related to his/her field of interest or specialization, for which he/she will receive constructive and academic feedback.
The Research4HEIs is organized and coordinated by SEARCA's Education and Collective Learning Department- Training for Development Unit (ECLD-T4DU), with assistance from the Management Information Systems Unit (MISU).