- Times Higher Education
What can be done to improve research integrity? (Global)
These days, I’m asked to talk about reproducibility and replication in science at least as often as I’m asked to talk about my own research. And I’ve noticed a repeated pattern in the responses from early career researchers. “Working in an open and reproducible way all sounds very nice, but my boss would not approve,” they say. Or, in a similar vein, “If I take time doing things carefully and transparently, I will miss out on publications, and my career will suffer.” Looking through the written responses to the UK Science and Technology Select Committee’s recent call for evidence on science reproducibility, it is remarkable how many early career researchers make similar points. And their impressions are backed up by the Welcome Trust’s survey of research culture, 43 per cent of whose respondents thought that metrics are valued over research quality. Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of early career researchers had felt pressured by a supervisor to produce a particular result. In December, I was privileged to have the opportunity to give oral evidence to the committee, alongside Marcus Munafò, chair of the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN). We had to dispense first with some basic questions of definition. Reproducibility is often used quite broadly to indicate the extent to which you feel a result is solid and can be built on. However, technically, we can distinguish literal reproducibility – ability to arrive at the same result, given the same dataset – and replicability, which is obtaining broadly compatible results when an experiment is repeated with a new sample. Literal reproducibility may seem like a pretty low bar for research to achieve, but studies can fail this criterion if methods are only vaguely specified, data are unavailable, and/or if there are errors in data processing. Lack of replicability, meanwhile, does not mean a study was badly done: there are many reasons why results may differ, including random variability. But if a high proportion of findings don’t replicate, this suggests there is something wrong with the way we are doing science, given that our methods are supposed to guard against biases and error.
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- Hindustan Times
Key trends shaping the higher education in 2022 (Global)
The world of education continues to evolve and transform with the advancement of technology, the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the global pandemic. Technology has undergone countless changes over the years making it a beneficial asset for various sectors in society. The world of education continues to evolve and transform with the advancement of technology, the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the global pandemic. All these have had a tremendous impact on the educational sphere across nations, leading to numerous growing trends in the learning space. Technology has undergone countless changes over the years making it a beneficial asset for various sectors in society. It has become imperative for educators to properly engage their students; they must remain abreast of these latest technological, pedagogical changes and key factors that affect learning in the classroom. As educational institutions, teachers and students prepare themselves for 2022, let’s take a look at the key five emerging education trends to watch out for in 2022 for the post-pandemic recovery. 1) The rise of Hybrid Delivery in 2022 and beyond. While digital and hybrid programs were gaining momentum even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 and 2021 have witnessed an explosion in digital course offerings. Though post-secondary institutions are now transitioning back to in-person classes, the accessibility of online and hybrid courses will continue to dominate conversations around programme development and recruitment over the next decade. For educational institutions, online and hybrid courses offer an opportunity to influence a wider audience without necessitating significant additional physical infrastructure.
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