Understanding the Process and Success Factors to Increase Synergies between Research and Teaching

Abstract

While the synergies between research for knowledge discovery and teaching are widely accepted, the evidence is mostly implicit, verbal and poorly documented, and many times contradictive. In an effort to better understand the interaction between these important activities, the main objective of this study is to collect knowledge illustrating their synergies through specific cases. A complementary objective is to identify the important factors, which professionals should implement or avoid for increasing the likelihood that these synergies will be derived. To collect the necessary information personal interviews have been used to address the research question. The same set of questions was sent to several professionals known to have extensive experience in the areas of academic research and teaching. The respondents were asked to: 1. briefly describe the knowledge area in which the synergies occurred; 2. For the specified knowledge area, to please describe in summary form but specifically how they derived the synergy between research and teaching; and 3. Based on their personal experience, to please identify the important factors to increase the likelihood that academic research will produce benefits for teaching, and vice versa. The results strongly corroborate the importance of academic research for effective teaching. Based on the results, a set of recommendations are made to faculty members and school administrators to further promote academic research as an important factor for more effective teaching.

Keywords

• Success Factors
• Research and Teaching