Research

The lecture for the week was based on the topic "research" where the class was taught how to conduct a proper research and different types of research.

What is research?

Research is the process of finding solution to a problem after a thorough study and analysis of the situational factors (Sekaran, 2000)

According to Sekaran (2000), a business research is an organized, systematic, data-based, critical, objective, scientific inquiry or investigation in to a specific problem with the purpose of finding solutions to it.

In business wise, research provides managers with the ability of identifying the problems in certain areas of the organization in order to find solutions and overcome them.

Data gathered in an investigation can be under two categories:

Primary data- This is often data that is collected through a primary investigation such as interviews, observations, questionnaires, surveys, etc. (Sekaran, 2000)

Secondary data- This is basically data collected through another researcher’s work which is mostly freely available through the internet mostly. (Sekaran, 2000)

According to Sekaran (2000) there are a few types of research:

·        Applied research

·        Basic or Fundamental research

·        Pure research

There are also two main types of research methods:

Qualitative- Detailed descriptions on specific situation(s) using ways like interviews and observations.

Quantitative- Numerical descriptions using statistics (frequency, average)

(University of North Carolina, 2008)

References:

Sekaran. U. (2000) Research Methods for Business- A Skill Building Approach.

University of North Carolina (2007), "Types of Research Methods", Available from: http://archives.gadoe.org/DMGetDocument.aspx/Types.of.Research.Methods.SERVE%20Center.pdf?p=6CC6799F8C1371F6C790A38569315032FE8B3FDBE6A7D64BCE3B4886D72BD474&Type=D Accessed on: 22nd November 2012.

Time Management

2nd session which marked the beginning of the syllabus started with a very important lesson to the whole class, Time management.

"You cannot manage time, you manage your events in your life in relation to time" - (10 strategies for better time management- University of Georgia)

The activity done during this session helped everyone in finding out roughly how many hours they have left from each day so that a few of those hours could be used for something more important and productive, for example studying instead of over sleeping.

This lesson also taught us to manage time and categorize how important each activity is, which helps decide which activity should be given more priority and which activities should be cut off and instead do something else. Activities were divided in to four categories as Urgent/Important, Urgent/Not important, Not urgent/Important, Not urgent/Not important. The most useless time consuming work fall under Not urgent/ Not important section can be reduced and the time allocated for them can be used in a more productive way.

This lesson is important because "time management" is a lesson for life, not just another part of theory.

References:

http://www.fcs.uga.edu/ext/pubs/time_management.pdf

Reflective Blog

The first lecture for the semester was an introduction to the subject as well as what should be done through out the semester.
The topic that was covered in this session was mainly about the components in the assignment which included a reflective weekly log and the project proposal for the final year project.

A 'reflective log' is reflective writing based on what's been discussed during each session along with more research and analysis.

The method chosen to maintain this log is through the online blog because it is easily accessible any where and easy to maintain than having written documents in papers.