The Role of Research Methodology in Enhancing Postgraduate Students Research Experience

Abstract

Postgraduate student research experience is key to understanding the quality of postgraduate education. This article presents the critical factors that can enhance postgraduate students' research experience. The research explored postgraduate students' research experiences (n=116) at a research-intensive public university in New Zealand. The aim was to inform the development of a more personalised and scalable research methodology programme. The study identified several factors that can significantly enhance the postgraduate research experience, including the quality of supervision, institutional and department support, personal investment, and financial support. Also, the study found that courses on research methodology play an essential role in improving the postgraduate experience. In particular, providing research methodology education to students during candidacy enriches postgraduate research experience and contributes to the timely completion of postgraduate education. Despite the demonstrated significance of research methodology in postgraduate education, findings revealed that students are generally dissatisfied with the design and teaching of current courses on research methods. Students said courses on research methods are pedagogically monolithic, conceptual challenging, and inflexibly adaptive to individual future career trajectories. Findings also suggest that the way research methods are taught is disengaged from practical problems, with some teaching focused on the higher level of abstraction, with less opportunity to apply what is gained from research methods courses. This research contributes to the growing need to transform the way we design and teach courses on research methods, and the importance employing a research-led approach to  inform the transformation.