Abstract:
There has been substantial increase in the number and proportion of research students in recent years worldwide, especially in Asian countries. Assuring the quality of research supervision is of utmost important to tertiary institutions. With UGC-funding, HKIEd recruited the first cohort of research postgraduate (RPg) students in June 2010; they will start their research project in the next few months. Moreover, quite a few of the Institute’s EdD students who entered the programme when it was launched in 2007 are also in their thesis stage. It is therefore timely to consider how research supervision will be evaluated at HKIEd.
There are several approaches to evaluate research supervision, namely, reflection, interview, analysis of outcomes of the research process, and using a questionnaire. The aim of this project is to develop an instrument for the above-mentioned purpose. The Student Research Experience Questionnaire (SREQ) is widely used in the UK and Australia for evaluating the quality of research supervision, and one of the very few existing instruments with robust psychometric properties. This project will attempt to adapt, with revision if necessary, SREQ for use at HKIEd. On the other hand, little is known about the appropriateness and usefulness of SREQ in the Asian context, specifically in universities in Mainland Chinese. Hence, it is also our objective to translate the instrument into Chinese and perform a comprehensive validation using Item Response Theory.
Code:
T0096
Principal Project Supervisors:
Subjects:
Start Date:
01 Jul 2011
End Date:
30 Apr 2012
Status:
Completed
Result:
The outputs and deliverables of the project include:
(i) A comprehensive Technical Report has been prepared and attached to this TDG Final and Financial Report.
(ii) The HKIEd version of SREQ – this is shown in Appendix I in the Technical Report.
(iii) The Chinese version of the instrument – this is shown in Appendix II in the Technical Report.
(iv) A Research Supervision and Evaluation Sharing Forum – this has been described in section 7 “Dissemination Plan” above.
As shown in the Technical Report, the results of the project showed that the revised version of SREQ was generally appropriate for use to evaluate the higher degree supervision in HKIEd. For the details, please refer to the Technical Report.
Impact:
As a part of project outcomes/outputs, the (revised version of) SREQ will be used as one of the instruments for the evaluation of the quality of research supervision. Moreover, as can be seen from the HKIEd SREQ, domains covered in the questionnaire include not only research supervision, but also infrastructure and services, intellectual and research climates as well as training on research skills. All the items under these domains were included in the HKIED SREQ after consultation with both students and staff; and are essential in terms of learning and teaching (research training in this particular case) as well as the development and management of higher degrees with a research component at HKIEd.
Deliverables:
Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials
Lo, S. K., Wang, W. Ch., Lin, J. H., and Li, L. (2012). The HKIEd version of Student Research Experience Questionnaire (SREQ) (Chinese and English Version). The Hong Kong Institute of Education. https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/42414aec-03c3-4f62-ae07-6730...
Seminars/Presentations/Sharing Sessions
A Sharing Forum on Research Supervision at The Hong Kong Institute of Education in May 2012. (No. of participants: 45) https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/95120e12-ab61-4f69-ab39-0fb1...
Reports
Lo, S. K., Wang, W. Ch., Lin, J. H., and Li, L. (2012). A Technical Report on “Adaptation of Student Research Experience Questionnaire (SREQ) for Evaluation of Higher Degree Supervision in HKIEd”. The Hong Kong Institute of Education. https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/309426ad-a8f6-47ee-9490-6fdf...
Financial Year:
2010-11
Type:
TDG