Today's pre-registration colloquium was really good. The students and even the guides were grilled by the faculty members. One thing that was shown to the students was that the topics lack sufficient focus. Unless, the researcher knows what needs to be done and how the things are to be done, it would be difficult to carry out the research in a focused manner. Well defined research design and backing up the presentation with sufficient basic data are the expectation of the committee. Having too many objectives and hypotheses would also make the research out of focus.
As far as my students are concerned, they had collected some data and unfortunately was not reflected in their proposal. We were given the understanding that the proposal should contain emphasis on the objectives, hypotheses (if any), methodology and work done. Work done was indicated breifly but sufficient material to support the claim was absent in the proposal. I think it is a good suggestion that those things should be there in a proposal.
I think that we may think of coming out with a broad guidelines for preparing the proposal. It should be broad enough to allow the researcher to be innovative, if they want to. Some comments could have been avoided in the interest of encouraging the students and the novice guides. After all the overall objective of the colloquium is not to demotivate the students!
I have asked Sunil and Sudha to take the comments seriously and incorporate the suggestions. I told Sudha not to be too submissive during the presentation. Sunil should learn to take the constructive criticism in a positive way ... some time he tends to enter in to arguments even on a good suggestion.
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