Multidisciplinary Research Methods for Engineers

Week 1: Introduction to research

• What constitutes multidisciplinary scientific research and how is it used
• Structure of research: Scientific method and engineering design cycle
• Language of research
• What to research and how to find out more
• What is a research objective and a research question
• How to formulate a research objective and a research question?

Week 2: Phases and methods of scientific research

• Research questions and hypotheses
• Desktop research, literature study
• Theoretical modeling and conceptual frameworks
• Experimental/Study design
• Data collection
• Evaluation, validation and verification
• Research ethics and human resource research ethics

Week 3: Research method selection and study design

Understand and select the appropriate method for a research question in terms of:

• Qualitative methods
• Quantitative methods
• Mixed method approaches
• Formative and summative evaluation studies

Week 4: Data collection and analysis

• Data collection and data management
• Data analysis (qualitative and quantitative)
• Data interpretation
• How to validate and verify data

Week 5: Research management, documentation and publishing

• How to report research results
• Reporting multidisciplinary work
• Reporting in different disciplines
• Project management
• Scientific publishing including open science

Week 6: Verified certificate only: Research plan writing

• Writing a project plan based on a multidisciplinary research case where students can choose from which discipline they approach the problem.