BIT-Patna. Telegraph picture

A faculty development programme on upgrade of research methodology is on the cards, thanks to the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Patna, and Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR).

The programme on social science subjects, to be held from January 8 to 18, is mainly for those pursuing doctoral work, college and university teachers, and members of recognised research institutions engaged in doctoral work.

Vijay Agarwal, the head of the management department, said: “The major objective of this programme is to equip management faculty and research scholars with various statistical tools which are widely used in management research with applications of relevant software.”

Apart from updating the teachers and research scholars about various statistical tools, the participant would also impart information regarding thesis writing, and research paper writings.

The teacher added that conducting research generally depends on two types of data, primary and secondary. The secondary data are generally inputs collected from books, journals or research papers prepared by earlier researchers. The primary data is, however, the information collected by researcher from groundwork such as questionnaires, interviews and sample survey.

At the workshop, the participants would be briefed on how to prepare statistical data based on information collected by researchers by groundwork (primary data). Moreover, the key resource persons would also present latest research papers so that teachers and research scholars are benefited.

Agarwal said as the key persons would talk about important and latest research papers, it would be helpful to teachers in updating their knowledge.

BIT-Patna director S.L. Gupta, professor Naval Kishore from Ignou, BIT-Noida director Munish Makkad, BIT-Noida professor Meenakshi Sharma and NIT-Kurushetra professor Neeraj Kaushik would be the key resource persons attending the workshop.

The training programme is open for research scholars and teachers from across the country and the last date for applying is November 30.

According to sources, pursuing a doctoral course has become tougher after the University Grants Commission (UGC) Regulation, 2009, for PhD. The revised regulations for admission require each student to undertake pre-PhD course work for a minimum of one semester (six months). Only then would he or she be enrolled into a PhD course.

The research scholars have to know about all the basic tools of preparing research papers and the workshop would prove beneficial for them in this direction.

This time, the BIT-Patna administration has decided to organise the programme keeping in mind the recently launched MBA programme.