Relating Research and Teaching: Learning From Experiences and Beliefs

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Description/Abstract

The relationship between research and teaching has possible benefits and inherent tensions. Exploring the potentially beneficial relationship is of interest and possible value to faculty, students, and stakeholders. Much of the existing literature has described approaches using a vocabulary derived from the soft/applied social science fields of study, a view-point which may in some ways be problematic. This paper examines the relationship between research and teaching in the undergraduate curriculum from a perspective of the computing disciplines. It compares and contrasts evidence of the beliefs and experiences of faculty about the relationship between research and teaching. It presents and analyses the result of surveys which gathered data to explore their understandings inter-relationship of research and teaching; in the curriculum; and as it is delivered, and experienced in the lab, seminar room and lecture hall. This research builds on existing work developed in a preliminary study which examined ways in which synergies between research and teaching could be achieved, particularly in the ‘hard/applied’ areas of the curriculum. It analyses data from the ‘research-intensive’ and the ‘teaching-intensive’ institutions. Having identified typical activities in the computing disciplines, it places them in the context of existing theoretical models.