young students are very susceptible to new influences from outside their familiar environment. Availability of internet at their finger touch is a blessing and curse depending upon how you use it.
How can a young student who is new to research use this self-isolation time to better equip himself?
Any suggestions are well-come.
Young and senior researchers both can utilize lock down time in conducting research utilizing meta analysis techniques.
Article Sepsis kills, antimicrobial resistance is real
How to stimulate research
I recommend that my students review recently published original research papers and submit letters to journals in response to these articles. As a doctor I recommend the BMJ because it publishes e-letters. There is a low threshold for publication online and some letters are selected for publication in the journal itself.
This process requires all the steps required to perform research except the actual collection of data. This can generate a lot of discussion between staff and students. It is also great motivation for the student to get a rapid publication (albeit of low impact).
The article below is an example of this.
Article Sepsis kills, antimicrobial resistance is real
Some other examples are:
Article Sulfonylureas as second line drugs in type 2 diabetes and th...
Article Manage uncontrolled hypertension as ‘treatment failure’ befo...
Article Regulation of carbohydrate intake may be better than treatme...
Reviewing these brief correspondence papers should give young researchers an idea of how to approach writing research letters.
Young and senior researchers both can utilize lock down time in conducting research utilizing meta analysis techniques.
Just try to learn one methodology and one software application.something which you would use in your research.
Use their scientific knowledge base, and progress it, by analysing the daily release of data on Covid19.
Examples of areas to analyse:
-epidemics progress tracking
benchmark what happens in one's country with what happens in other countries: time shift, and weighted geographical estimates for curve fitting and forecast
-person-level risk model
-your region versus other regions in the same country: resource (hospital beds, intensive care units, medical staff available) versus demand (population, people in hospital, people in intensive care units)
-Non-pharmaceutical Interventions (from Health Care Policy domain), decisions types, their timing (start, end) and impact: present, and past data.
By asking burning questions and reviewing: what have I learnt, which I can use? What am I missing and I should learn it?
students get a strong motivation to progress by themselves, understanding that their effort is immediately rewarded in this burning emergency: they would understand the world better
Does it help?
I think this is the best time for us to do more research and help out in one way or the other to help curb the spread of the disease. A good example is the ventilator built by my institution- The Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro , Ogun State, Nigeria.
Hello Raju Thapa
I think this was you question.
How can a young student who is new to research use this self-isolation time to better equip himself?
To better answer the question I think an appendage is required to this question. "Is it about what the students would do by themselves or with the involvement of their Lecturers, Tutors?"
I think that is why we are getting varying opinions here. However, notwithstanding that I think a good number of contributions have been provided by various members. Uduak-Obong Idiong Good contribution. Sunil Kumar Good contribution. Arbind Samal Good contribution. Muhammad Shoaib Ahmedani . However I would like to think that Renaud Di Francesco and Rajkumar Rajendram provided a very good angle on what can be done by Lecturers and tutors to keep their students very active productively during this lockdown.
For me it's the most right time to do moooooore and more research and learn new methodology techniques.
Great question because times like this changes the 'paradigms' of research. For years and decades (maybe even centuries), people have often followed traditional physical research approaches. People were hence reluctant to change. Now, amidst this situation, it compels us to re-examine the way things are done, including research.
But particularly in relation to your question, i would say that students should learn more about online research techniques such as online surveys, virtual interviews using skype and zoom etc. Even in the applied sciences fields, i believe there are 'virtual laboratories'. Students can also look at 'desktop' studies through the internet.
Universities can also set up virtual collaboration for staff and students. Previous manual processes can become more digitised. Also thanks to platforms such as this, there will always be global collaboration on research.
It is a best time for those who are writing. Utilize in writing thesis or paper. Those who are stuck due to lab work can either hang the present work and start reading new papers exploring new problem or People can also utilize their time writing the "Literature Survey" for the thesis. I think this is the hard part in writing the thesis. Those who are new in PhD can explore reading papers for the different problems. and write some survey papers
Dear Raju Thapa , good discussion in the sense of thinking about what to do in the face of this situation of isolation. I agree with the points raised and contributions that colleagues expressed Nitin Gupta , Sachin Suknunan , A. G. Radyuk , Samiha Chenag , Samuel Musungwini , Uduak-Obong Idiong , Renaud Di Francesco , Sunil Kumar , Muhammad Shoaib Ahmedani , Arbind Samal and Rajkumar Rajendram . I think that a good option as we are in this space expanding our academic networks, this can be a good way to meet other young or senior researchers and thus participate in discussions and with a common interest in establishing collaborations and cooperation in research. Use time and resources to exchange experiences and establish partnerships.
research=awareness
just by improving observation/exploring in all dimensions(perspectives)
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