Gimme A Break: Why LPPM Hardly Appeals to Lecturers

During the Quality Assurance Convention I, LPPM (Center for Research and Community Development) said that one of its problems is lecturers' low participation rate in research activities. The next two days the center offered a number of training programs in research methodology and social devotion activities. Well, while appreciating the incessant efforts of the center, I think it has missed the core of the problem. It's not that Ma Chung lecturers have low motivation or interest or good prowess in conducting good research, but it's the heavy work load of teaching and other tasks which so far have kept them from actively doing research. With an average of 14 sks (credit hours), they are busy preparing for classes, checking students' works almost after every session, giving scores, attending meetings, guiding students in the mentoring programs, and a few other tasks. What they need to have in order to focus on research is a month free of teaching classes and other non-research activities, during which they can concentrate solely on writing a research proposal or running their on-going research.

I believe that good proposals, groundbreaking research can only be conducted when lecturers exert their energy, mind, attention, and time to develop seminal proposals and then set out to conduct good research.

Smart, motivated, skillful lecturers are what we have had in hands. Their undivided attention to research is what we urgently need. An incubation period for research is what we should have.