THE Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) is conducting an Online Training Course on Research Designs and Methods for Higher Education Institutions (Research4HEIs) in the Philippines tapping University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) faculty.
The center said the online training course is in partnership with the Philippine Commission on Higher Education Institution (CHEd) to provide faculty members and researchers of HEIs with more advanced skills in developing well-planned research designs and methods to generate evidence effectively and efficiently.
The Research4HEIs was organized and coordinated by SEARCA's Education and Collective Learning Department-Training for Development Unit or ECLD-T4DU) with assistance from the Management Information Systems Unit or MISU.
The 10-week online training course kicked off on February 14 and will run until March 11, 2022, through the SEARCA Online Learning and Virtual Engagement or 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. or SUC-ACAP Inc.
SEARCA said the 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.
It said 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 gained from the training to address specific and practical problems related to his field of interest or specialization, for which he will receive constructive and academic feedback.
The designated training coordinator was Dr. Maria Ana Quimbo, Professor 12 of the UPLB Institute of Governance and Rural Development, College of Public Affairs and Development.
Co-facilitators are 13 faculty members – all 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 in UPLB.