Researcher Development Office is determined to maintain an evidence-based, research approach to the development of our researchers. This is part of our commitment to our researchers and their research experience at Koç. We believe that it is essential to know more about what our postgraduate researchers are thinking in terms of their development as a researcher and how they experience their studies at Koç. It is through feedback mechanisms like these that meaningful change occurs, and we aim to achieve that.
Academic assessment and numerical information about our postgraduate researchers are the visible parts of their experiences at Koç. There is a constant need to focus on the unnoticed part of their experiences that tends to remain hidden, and understand the impact of Koç’s practices and processes on our researchers.
Researcher Development Office uses different methods to evaluate the impact of researcher development activity and here is a list of what the office has been doing so far:
RDF Planner Pilot and Trial Survey –
March 2017
RDF Planner was introduced by the Koç University Career Development Center as a tool for PhD researchers to broaden their skills and become more employable at the end of their studies. A pilot for the tool was run with 14 PhD researchers, which was finalized with a RDF Planner Trial User Survey.
Please find below some of the testimonials from those Koç University PhD researchers who volunteered to take part in the RDF Planner Pilot Study for a month in 2o17:
“The RDF Planner helped me to clarify my goals as a researcher. It allowed me to reflect upon my career goals and align my efforts with those goals. One can easily get lost in the daily rush of graduate studies. The RDF Planner provides an opportunity to get out of the daily hassles and reflect on the future, and how to get there.”
“I started to think more structurally about my developmental needs after
using the RDF Planner. It was more of an ad-hoc process previously. The RDF Planner increased my efficiency as it helped me to streamline my
efforts with my goals. … It is not only a reflection on the future, but also an
account of the completed and ongoing work.”
“I think the ability to see all your achievements and documents that
demonstrate your progress in one place is one of the best features of RDF
Planner. … It also allows you to tag your past achievements that you want to include in your CV. … Once you identify the domains that you need to work on, you can create specific actions and a time frame to attain your goals.”
You can find more information about how we make use of the RDF Planner at Koç by clicking here.
New Year’s PhD Resolution Event –
20 December 2017
This event was organized in order to introduce the newly established Researcher Development Office to the PhD researchers at Koç University. 58 PhD researchers attended this event and shared their thoughts and socialized.
Another aim of this event was to hear from PhD researchers and understand their urgent needs. Major topics mentioned during the New Year’s PhD Resolution Event were about: (i) doctoral strategy and governance; (ii) skills development; (iii) international activities; (iv) collaboration; and (v) well-being.
After this event, it was decided to arrange a focus group discussion with the PhD researchers from different departments in order to gain a deeper insight to their diversified needs.
Focus Group Discussion with PhD Researchers –
24 January 2018
Following the New Year’s PhD Resolution Event, Researcher Development Office decided to invite PhD researchers to a focus group meeting in which they would be sharing their experiences as being a PhD researcher at Koç. This focus group discussion was actually designed as a follow up activity of the New Year’s PhD Resolution Event that took place on 20 December 2017. We were eager to go deeper into the major topics that were mentioned in the previous event. The focus group session was led by Dr Ufuk Coşkun from Learning and Teaching Office and a full report regarding the session was provided after the session.
The information that came from the focus group discussion informed the new workshop titles that researchers drew attention to. For example, especially doctoral researchers suggested that they were having difficulty in terms of writing for funding applications. We then introduced three workshops into KU-RDP 2018 specifically about how to find about funding opportunities and how to write a winning proposal : “Writing for Funding” –two different sessions, and “Writing for Impact Generation”.
Focus group findings also informed how we structured the forth-coming Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) questions, which would be sent to all masters and PhD researchers at Koç University in March 2018. “What skills or additional training would help you work more productively or effectively during/after your study?” question was added into the survey in order to understand the current needs of our researchers and give weight to those areas that call for instant backing.
Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2018 –
Between 9 March-16 May 2018
The Researcher Development Office is persistently looking for ways to enhance the learning experience of our master and PhD researchers, and to do that, we need to know what our research students think. With the goal of putting researcher feedback at the heart of our decision-making, we decided to participate in PRES, which is administered by the Higher Education Academy (HEA), an independent non-profit organization committed to support student success in higher education. Koç is the first university in Turkey to take part in such a survey.
The survey has seven core scales relating: responsibilities; resources; research skills; research culture; professional development; supervision; progress and assessment; well-being. In order to sustain the validity of the survey results, we made sure our researchers would know that their participation or not would have no effect on their grades or the future support they get from us or their graduate schools. We also guaranteed that all responses to this survey would remain completely confidential.
The survey was launched on the 9 March 2018 and remained open until the 16 May 2018. Out of 1020 master and doctoral researchers , 276 students completed the survey with a 27% response rate.
Survey data is assimilated into the package of data, and the information is provided to each related department for the review process, including the Graduate Schools. This helped us build a picture of strengths and weakness and informed development and enhancement plans. After an in-depth analysis and discussion of the results, the main points were gathered in several reports, conclusions were presented, and action recommendations were made by reflecting upon the results.
PRES results also provided us with an opportunity to benchmark Koç University against other 65 participating institutions, measuring our performance in relation to the rest of the higher education sector.
The aggregate score at Koç is 62% and PRES acted as a guide and gave us tangible and clear structure that facilitated Graduate Schools and other units of our University to address the whole researcher experience at Koç. We are now at the stage of taking concrete actions to meet the needs of our students. Please click here to get access to the HEA report presenting the findings of the 2018 survey from all 66 participating institutions across the UK and internationally.
Event Evaluation Questionnaires
After each of the event that takes part in the KU-RDP, an event evaluation questionnaire is given to each researcher that attends to that particular event. The Researcher Development Office is fully aware that collecting feedback after an event is critical. Attendee feedback coming from our students assists us refine future events and helps us meet researcher expectations. At the end of each KU-RDP event, researchers are asked to share their experiences about the content and instructor of that event, and also give ideas about future events that they would like to see among KU-RDP.