The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Caraga Regional Office conducted a webinar that spanned the whole day of May 19, 2021 on the topic of Strategies and Tactics: Moving Student Research Forward in the New Normal. This was in conjunction with the 1st National Higher Education Day and CHED’s 27th Anniversary.
Held at the CHEDRO-Caraga HEDC Building via ZOOM Cloud Meetings, the webinar featured resource person Dr. Genaro Virador Japos. A published and cited author, Dr. Japos is the first Filipino scholar to hold a distinction as holder of five (5) doctoral degrees namely Education, Management, Human Resource Management, Instructional System and Organization Development.
In his presentation during the morning, he emphasized the importance of instilling good research habits and skills early on to achieve the best results for the students’ research studies.
“Begin with the end in mind,” was the advice he gave, among many others.
An in-depth discussion on the step-by-step process of structuring a research proposal according to internationally accepted standards was discussed by Dr. Japos. His discussion also included updated practices that differ from classical methods locally, as well as various tools that students may use to help quality-check their proposals such as Grammarly.
Dr. Japos also encouraged students to seek relevant professionals from institutions all over the world as their research defense panelists, giving emphasis on the importance of receiving well-rounded feedback on their research studies.
“Your research needs to have a life of its own independent of you,” said Dr. Japos.
The students were also able to take the opportunity of the live webinar to ask their questions to Dr. Japos through a question-and-answer forum. This was moderated by host Dr. Frederick Amihan, Education Supervisor II.
During the afternoon, a workshop was conducted so that the ZOOM participants could apply what they have learned during the morning discussion. The workshop involved a demo by Dr. Japos of Library Genesis, a file-sharing platform where students can find free resources for their research. He then asked the participants to go hands-on and explore the site themselves according to their own fields of research. The same demo and hands-on was done with Pubmed, a database for agriculture, climate change, health and medicine. Other applications were introduced to the participants as well, such as Google Scholar, E-journals PH, and more.
Following the workshop was another question-and-answer session where students can ask more about the applications that were introduced to them.
Dr. Criseldo Calinawan, Education Supervisor II, then proceeded to give a demo on using the statistical tool he created to help users conduct research surveys in an easier way. The demo was broken down into four parts within the statistical tool: Sample Size Calculator, Reliability Test, Item Analysis, and Statistics. A question-and-answer portion followed this.
To end the program that afternoon, Chief Administrative Officer Ms. Alma Sy-Patron gave her closing remarks.
The weeklong activities for the 1st National Higher Education Day and CHED’s 27th Anniversary ran from May 17 to May 21, 2021. See the recorded virtual events at our official website, www.chedcaraga.ph, or at our official Facebook Page, www.facebook.com/CHEDCaragaPH.