Multidisciplinary Research Methods for Engineers (edX)

The use of data to understand phenomena and evaluate designs and interventions in different disciplines is increasingly evident. As a result, engineers and other applied scientists frequently find themselves needing to collaborate in multidisciplinary fields when carrying out research to remain innovative.
This course will help you to become a successful multidisciplinary researcher in industry, non-profit, or academia, and be more efficient and successful as you will know where the pitfalls are! This course explains the fundamentals on how to plan and carry out state-of-the-art qualitative and quantitative research in different phases of an innovation or research project.
The course has been designed by a team of experienced, multidisciplinary researchers in education, engineering and research methodologies and will also feature experts in the field of research methodologies as guest lecturers. In the course you will be working towards creating a project plan for your research, giving you a head-start in your research project.
The interuniversity, interdisciplinary Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Center for Education and Learning is a leader in multidisciplinary technological research and innovation projects. Learning from leading experts in the field you will learn to apply the best practices in your own context.

What you'll learn

• describe what multidisciplinary research is and its associated challenges and opportunities in different disciplines.
• set up each phase of scientific research: the literature study, the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, the experimental and study design, the choice of research methods and data collection, the data analyses and the interpretation, validation and verification of the results and discussions of the outcome.
• understand and select the appropriate methods for a research question in terms of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods including formative and summative evaluation studies.
• explain and the importance of research ethics, data management and guidelines for human research ethics in your research design and practice.
• write a research plan for a multidisciplinary case, including formulating a research objective and research questions, research set up, planning and reflection.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to research
What constitutes multidisciplinary scientific research and how is it used
Structure of research: Scientific method and engineering design cycle
Language of research
What to research and how to find out more
What is a research objective and a research question
How to formulate a research objective and a research question?

Week 2: Phases and methods of scientific research
Research questions and hypotheses
Desktop research, literature study
Theoretical modeling and conceptual frameworks
Experimental/Study design
Data collection
Evaluation, validation and verification
Research ethics and human resource research ethics

Week 3: Research method selection and study design
Understand and select the appropriate method for a research question in terms of:
Qualitative methods
Quantitative methods
Mixed method approaches
Formative and summative evaluation studies

Week 4: Data collection and analysis
Data collection and data management
Data analysis (qualitative and quantitative)
Data interpretation
How to validate and verify data

Week 5: Research management, documentation and publishing
How to report research results
Reporting multidisciplinary work
Reporting in different disciplines
Project management
Scientific publishing including open science

Week 6: Verified certificate only: Research plan writing
Writing a project plan based on a multidisciplinary research case where students can choose from which discipline they approach the problem.