Horticulture And Research II

Study Research with a Home Learning Course

Acquire and demonstrate research skills, with critical written and numerical assessment of information related to the social, technological, environmental and economic issues that impact on Horticulture today.

 

Lesson Structure

There are 7 lessons in this course:

1. Identifying Research Issues and Determining Research Priorities
   • Introduction: first, second, third steps
   • Finding research ideas
   • Brainstorming
   • Steps to brainstorming
   • Mind maps
   • How to mind map
   • Concept mapping
   • Determining research priorities
   • Beginning your research
   • Formulating a research topic
   • Is the reseach feasible
   • Formulating a hgypothesis
   • Terminology
2. Acquisition of Technical Information
   • Literature review
   • Research methods
   • Basic methods of collecting information: experimental, correlation, questionnaires, surveys, tests, document review
   • Naturalistic observation
   • Focus groups
   • Case studies
3. Specialised Research Techniques
   • Selecting a research method
   • Fishbone diagrams
   • Applications for cause and effect diagrams
   • Lateral thinking
   • Lateral thinking techniques
   • Pareto analysis
   • Observations
   • Root cause analysis
4. Research Planning and Designing
   • Project planning
   • Defining the problem, possible solutions and objectives
   • Problem tree analysis tool
   • SWOT analysis
   • Prioritise objectives and define activities
   • Allocate resources
   • Results and assessment
5. Statistics
   • Introduction
   • Data presentation
   • Measures of central tendancy
   • Distributions
6. Conducting Research
   • Collecting and logging data
   • Developing a data base structure
   • Data transformations
   • Analyzing data
   • Managing data
   • Analytical procedure
7. Writing Reports
   • Reporting results
   • Report structure
   • Contents of a research report (example)
   • Pitfalls to avoid

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Determine areas where there is a valid need to research processes relevant to horticultural research in today’s social, economic, political and environmental context.
• Acquire and demonstrate skills in locating and reviewing scientific and technical information.
• Develop and explain alternative research and observational techniques for a particular Horticultural research study.
• To design a quality and focused research project addressing a social, technological, environmental and/or economic issues that impact on Horticulture today.
• Determine and allocate resources needed (time, financial and human resources) for research.
• Demonstrate and explain basic statistical knowledge used for research with emphasis on your ability to present and monitor given data.
• Conduct a quality and focused research project addressing a social, technological, environmental and/or economic issue that impact on Horticulture today.
• Demonstrate skills in report writing.