 Now let us take some practical example to illustrate the differences between undergraduate or course based education and research education and how some of the misconceptions persist even to a until the end of the research. So flawed perceptions about research, the role of scholar and his or her guide. Now here let me quote to you an example, a practical case. Now one of the institutions in North Indian universities, the research scholar was defending her thesis. Now you know the process of research, it involves doing research work writing it up in the form of a thesis and then the thesis is sent for couple of experts for their assessment. Now these experts will raise doubts and will tell you about the strengths and weaknesses of your work and you may have to revise your thesis and so on. So normally a viva or defense is held right after the experts send in their comments. This viva or defense, the research scholar has to defend his or her thesis and answer the questions raised by the reviewers. Now in one such defense after the research scholar presented her work, the reviewer commented that he was generally happy with the care that was taken to recover the experiment set up, collect the data and the amount of data that was collected and so on. But there is one thing that the reviewer felt the thesis was weak about and that was in the interpretation. So while a lot of data has been carefully collected and lot of effort has gone into this, the interpretation part was not very convincing and therefore the reviewer was persistently questioning the scholar on the interpretation. So after some time the scholar you know was pushed to the wall and so said the scholar first I will tell you what the scholar said in Hindi because that is how it happened, the exchange took place and then I will translate it into English for the benefit of others who may not understand it. The scholar said, data lena hamara kam hai, interpretation guide saap karthe, isli have guide saap se pujiye. So the scholar meant that it is my job to collect the data whereas it is the job of the guide to interpret the data, at least that is what the research scholar thought and therefore she said that you please ask my guide about the interpretation aspect because I have done my job of collecting the data. Now unfortunately this sort of a perception about research persists among many that you, what is a PhD, you join under a guide, the guide tells you everything what courses you should do, what problem you should solve and what is the experimental set up you should rig up and so on and you are just like the guide's hand and you do what all he asked you to do and then you collect the data that he or she asked you to collect and then go back and give all this information. So in summary many research scholars feel that they are assistants. Now assistantship is not PhD, please understand this. As I have already informed you that a research scholar should take interest in deciding what courses he or she should take up, what problem he or she should solve, formulate the problem and also interpret the data. So research scholar has to be an independent thinker and a manager of one's own learning. So this is the point that this particular case emphasizes. Next is the meaning of a thesis, many times students feel that thesis is nothing but a description, a detailed description, in-depth description of something. Now that is not really correct, a thesis is not merely a description but analysis and explanation of a topic. It is a position that you wish to argue about, defend or maintain. So merely describing something in great detail in very good language is not really a thesis. So I would strongly suggest that you do a Google search on the word thesis and try to see what a thesis means and spend some time in internalizing the meaning of a thesis. So it is some position that you take which you can defend and this position is something that is new that other people may not have taken earlier and you are doing all your work to bolster this particular position and defend and show how this position is correct. So research entails prolonged and arduous labor and needs doubt rather than ready acceptance, extensive reading, persistence, points which professor Sukathmiya has already mentioned and good relations with your guide and fellow scholar. So I will not discuss this in more detail. Let me quickly make a few more points and then go on to the next topic namely productive thinking. That is what we would like to discuss in detail. Now research means go back and search until we find that is explore. So the spirit of research is as Ralph Emerson says do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path. So that is a spirit. So someone asked can we just take up things which other people have done and do some incremental work? Well that is really not research. You must do something significantly new. Okay. There are a few other points in this slide. I will not touch up on each of them because you know the slides are with you you can go through them. So as we said that we would like to be very practical in what all we do. So what are the criteria of good research? So if you are doing research you please stick whether your work that you are doing satisfies these criteria then you know you are on the right track. So criteria for research newness is something you are doing new, something that has not been done by others. Truth accuracy if you are making measurements do you know whether they are accurate how accurate are they? Good technique, keen analysis, sound reasoning. So for instance when you send your thesis out for review these are the things which reviewer is going to look at and comment upon. So it involves questioning, doubting, verifying, sifting, testing and proving that which has been handed down observing and measuring the phenomena of nature. Now you might think that you know all these words you have come across. So you know what is new about it? See the important thing to note here is we may know many things but that does not mean we practice them or that does not mean we internalize them. Let me give you another example, I give you an example of thesis defense right what happened with the research scholar in front of the reviewers. Let me give you one more example of how these things if they are put to us we feel we know but actually we do not practice. Let us take the sentence or the fact that research involves measuring phenomena of nature. Let me draw a diagram to illustrate this point. Now there was a student who was doing project with me. This student was a teacher from a college someone like you and he was doing an M Tech project. Now the project involved doing something in the area of biosensors. So let me first describe quickly what the student was expected to do. So what I have shown here is the top view of the device that the student was supposed to fabricate. So do not bother too much about the material to be used and so on because those details are not important for what I want to discuss here. So this is a piece of material insulating material in which a slot was created something like this by etching and a fluid was to be injected from this port. So let us call this port A to this port B. So you inject the fluid and place it here and then the fluid flows from A to B. Now during the flow the components of the fluid get separated because the flow happens at different rates for different components of the fluid. Now the components of the fluid are set in motion by applying an electric field. That was the particular device that he was supposed to fabricate and build up. So he started on the work and then one day he came and said sir I have made the device and I have completed the experiment. So I asked him what all he has done. He described to me this whole setup and then he drew a diagram that I have drawn here actually and after he did all and then he said that he did find that the components of the fluid moved in response to the electric field applied by the battery here. Then I asked him what is the voltage that you are using on the battery. This is actually a power supply not exactly a battery it was a power supply. Well he said sir it was somewhere between 0 and 10 volts I did not quite note how much it is. Then I asked him next question I asked him how long did the components take to move from point A to point B. He said sir I did not make note of the time I did not measure at what rate the components moved and so on. So like this when I asked him questions about various aspects I found that he did not really understand that meaning of a measurement is actually to get values to some level of accuracy. So it is not sufficient to say that I have applied some voltage and then the components of the fluid are moving at some rate. No, no the student would have done so many experiments during his own B Tech and M Tech and also he would have handled so many laboratory classes in his own institution because he is a teacher. But he does not he did not understand or internalize this fact that measuring phenomena of nature means measuring things to some degree of accuracy right. You must know quantitative values for the various quantities that arise in the that are there in the experiment. So like this one can actually spend quite some time to show how we might know some of the words that I have put on the slide there right. I might know all these words but that does not mean that I am putting all these ideas into practice. So this is why you must check whether each of these aspects are being put into practice. Let us go to the next slide. Now a few things about why do research so all progress is born of enquiry doubt is often better than overconfidence for it leads to enquiry and enquiry leads to invention. So if you really want a progress if every any nation wants to progress it must have people who are inquisitive any area of progress it requires inquisitive people right ultimately it is enquiry which leads to progress. Now here is an interesting quotation of Francis Bacon if a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts but if he will be content to begin with doubts he will end in certainties. What does it mean it means that if you take things for granted in the beginning and then start off you will find that many of the things that you encounter do not confirm to your initial assumptions and so you will end up getting lot of doubts. On the other hand if a person begins with doubts does not take thing for granted has an open mind and then you pursue those doubts ultimately you will end up getting certainties what does what do certainties mean here it means that you will end up getting you will get to know some aspect of the life that you are pursuing with doubts you will get to know them to some level of precision or accuracy right you will come to know correctly what does it mean so if you start with doubts then you will end up with certainties whereas if you start with assumptions take granted some assumptions then you will find that you end up with doubts the research promotes the habits of logical thinking and organization so a person who has done Ph.D. is much more organized thinker than a person who has not done a Ph.D. right now here are some more motivations for research you can go through the slide the one point that I want to emphasize here that there are two points here shown in black color right all other things are in blue so motivation for research enhance career opportunities and earning while the motivations that are listed here above are the more nobler motivations and normally lead to good quality work it is a fact of life that many people do research just to enhance career opportunities and earning so you want to gain a promotion right you want to earn more money and so you do research and some people do research not having any real aims and not knowing what to do so often if people do not have jobs they are advised that you join some project and do some research unfortunately this sort of things give a feeling that research is something that is of a last resort right not something that is lucrative and it is this kind of motivations which actually are responsible for the poor quality of research so unless you have this higher motives it is not that I am saying that you know you should not use research to develop a career or earn more money but if that is all what you are looking for and you do research with that motivation its quality will not be good so the one of the reasons why the quality of research is not good is because the research is not being done with the higher motives listed here so research and scholarship go together here is how do I know whether I am a scholar right there is a quotation by Chanakya who was a very practical person practical philosopher so what he says what are the marks of a scholar how do you know whether a person is a scholar a greedy person can be won over by money a proud person by covering before him so if you want to win over a proud person all that you need to do is act humble and so on and then the proud person is won over a fool by agreeing with him you want to agree with a fool all that you have to do is to say that whatever you say is right okay but a scholar can only be won over by speaking the truth so scholar is not a person who can be won over either by money or by just merely acting humble before him or her or by just agreeing right that is why many times people feel scholars are difficult people to deal with they are not easily pleased okay so there is a reason for it why because a scholar can only be won over by speaking the truth so only a person who is after truth can be called a scholar so here is one more quotation by a well known mathematician we should not forget that solution of any worthwhile problem very rarely comes to us easily and without hard work it is rather the result of intellectual effort of days or weeks or months why should the young mind be willing to make this supreme effort the explanation is probably the instinctive preference for certain values that is the attitude which rates intellectual effort and spiritual achievement higher than material advantage so I have underlined this last few lines so this is what this great mathematician says that a person will do good research if his or her value system is appropriate so what is the word appropriate here appropriate for good research good work good intellectual work so he says that you must rate intellectual effort and spiritual achievement higher than material advantage right if you are more interested in intellectual effort than money only then you would be able to do good research work so successful completion of any major project requires integrated application of multiple skills and habits and these are what we are going to discuss in this course so this slide shows all the skills that are required for research thinking problem finding then technical communication experimental skills modeling skills time stress management and interpersonal skills so these are the things that we are going to develop later on and the habits are documentation I have already mentioned you must be taking notes during the course if you really want to get full benefit out of it you must also document ideas when you come across when you do reading I will discuss this point in detail in what to read how much to read and so on so reading and participation in technical meetings so we come to the end of this session wherein we wanted to highlight the difference between research and undergraduate education and explain what is the motivation of a course like this so no procedure technique skill which is relevant to your thesis should be exercised by you there for the first time you should have practiced it beforehand on a non thesis exercise which is therefore going to be less stressful and allow you greater learning so what this means is let us take this is writing so it is not as though you do all your work and then at the end you start writing up your thesis actually you should develop the habit of writing whatever you are doing periodically let us say every two months every three months you should write up what you have done in those two or three months so if you develop this habit of writing then when you write your thesis you will actually do a good job of it so if when you take up this is writing there is a first occasion when you have taken up any technical writing then the quality of thesis will not be good so in fact often the guides advice that the students write up papers and get them published before they write the thesis many times the research college do not follow this advice instead they start writing the papers after writing the thesis at least some papers and that is not good so you must be developing the habits over a period of time so if you have ten hours for chopping a tree spend five hours sharpening the axe so if you want to develop any skill it is important to prepare well for it so this quotation so shows that if you are asked to chop a tree then many times what happens is you start hitting the tree with the axe without bothering to check whether the axe is sharp enough because you feel that you may waste time in sharpening the axe since you have given a certain amount of time unfortunately with research scholars this happens very often they do not spend time in developing their thinking ability the writing ability communicating ability because they feel that all this is a waste of time they like to do more and more of coursework particularly in their own areas and not spend time developing their thinking ability their communicating ability and so on so now in the remaining part of the course I am going to talk to you and tell you how to develop your thinking right how to develop your communication writing or oral communication how to develop your ability to read and so on so that when you actually take up solution of your thesis problem it can be done in much much less time so like if you spend five hours sharpening the axe you can cut the tree probably in six or seven hours similarly if you use the advises and suggestions that are being given in the course for developing various skills thinking management experimentation and so on then the problem that you take up you can solve much more quickly and much more effectively right and you will be able to communicate your problem much better now what does it mean it means if you develop communication ability and write up a paper if you write your paper well the very first time is likely to get published quickly right on the other hand if your writing is not good it may go through several rounds of review before it gets published that is how you spend more time in doing your research if your skills are not developed ok so with this we come to the end of this part we have this part has got extended because we were experimenting with our interaction and so on I would like to have a brief interactive session as I said I will go to three remote centers and seek their questions or comments on whatever we have done so far and then I will move on to the next topic namely productive thinking so Savita engineering college I will not why simulation is less accepted compared to implementation or analytical analytical work yes analytical work so the question asked is why simulation is less accepted than implementation or analytical work now first of all I feel that the statement is not very clear while what simulation means all of us know it is not here what you mean by implementation after all simulation can be one method of implementation ok similarly when you say analytical work when you do simulation ultimately of course you will have to do some analysis also so I think you need to clarify your question a little bit more give me an example to what you mean by simulation what you mean by implementation and what you mean by analytical work sir I am doing my research in the field of optical when I simulate in a simulation software implementation that is the experimental test bed is very costly which is not possible for a research scholar to do so I would like to publish my things in a simulation environment only so is it necessary to go into this experimental bed and implementation part ok now I will answer your question there is no doubt that the ultimate ultimate test of anything is the real experiment simulation is only a virtual experiment now in simulation you make some assumptions about the models so whatever output you get out of a simulator depends on the assumptions models assumed now the models assumed may or may not be correct representation of the real situation therefore whatever you get out of a simulator unless it is compared with experimental data there is no way of knowing whether what you have got has any relevance to what happens in practice whether these results can be of any use so usefulness of the result the practicality of your results can be known only by comparison with experiment now if you do only simulation without comparison with experiment that work has no value right unless you are trying to come up with you are trying to introduce a something like a very new concept which cannot be realized by people in with in any simple way so in practice I do not think that is the kind of concept that you are taking up for simulation therefore it is safe to assume that your simulation will need comparison with experimental data point I am trying to say is you may not have the experimental setup to generate the data but you must collect the you must do literature survey and get the data from literature now having obtained the data from literature you must show that your simulation results match the experiment and you must explain why the models that you have used in your simulation are real now this is where some analysis is coming right if you simply do some work in which you input some values into your simulator get some output and get some curves nice looking curves and nice diagrams that is not sufficient for publication or that is not significant research right so what I am trying to say is a good work will combine simulation and analysis definitely right and it should also involve a comparison of your simulation with experimental data it need not be that you have to rig up the setup if it is very expensive but comparison with experiment has to be there in some form and explanation why the agreement or disagreement with experiment is there this is where some analysis will be required okay have I answered your question thank you sir faculty engineering avinash lingam for women professor can you brief us about quantitative and qualitative research see the word qualitative and quantitative is used in the context of all science and engineering work the quantitative means that I must give some numbers I must associate with numbers with ideas that I am talking about qualitative research means research related to only ideas concepts without any measurement without any dimensions and values for dimensions and so on so every research has to be quantitative it is not sufficient if it is qualitative any explanation of phenomenon has to be qualitative as well as quantitative so normally what we do is we start with the qualitative explanation and then go to a quantitative explanation right so both elements have to be present in that order so first qualitative and then quantitative but quantitative aspect has to be there you cannot stop with qualitative so merely qualitative discussion means for instance explaining a phenomenon in logical terms without using any equations okay so when you go to equations definitely you define quantities and then you want to evaluate you have to assign numbers so that is where writing equations and so on solving equations is a quantitative aspect okay and then finally getting some numbers and showing that whatever numbers you have got out of your theory match with the numbers that are measured so both elements have to be there in research qualitative as well as quantitative.