Is university research good for teaching?

rsani@nst.com.my

THE main role of academics at universities is to teach and do research. There are differing points of views that argue the two activities could either complement or contradict each other. In fact, there have been allegations where academics who are too focused on research fail to bring the same level of enthusiasm to the lecture halls in their role of imparting knowledge to their students, thus affecting the quality, or bringing about a negative impact on teaching.

Associate Professor Dr Wan Zuhainis Saad, the director of the academic excellence division at the Ministry of Education’s department of higher education, noted that for academics it is very easy to quantify research work in terms of the amount of grants or number of publications, and in many promotion exercises, research outputs were given big scores.

“For young staff, the career path is very clear for promotion through research but not so in teaching. Subsequently, teaching staff will focus more on their research work and just fulfil the minimum requirements of teaching,” she pointed out.

“Research can be impactful in a positive way for teaching if researchers are able to connect their findings to the relevant courses or give opportunities to undergraduate students to participate in the research work in their labs,” Wan Zuhainis added.

But she remarked that it would be different or the other way around if researchers were doing research merely for the sake of it, with no connection to the curricula or undergraduate teaching.

PROFESSOR MAHENDHIRAN NAIR