Research Skills & Interdisciplinary Problem Solving

Femi:
Research is used every day in our lives. You may not notice it, but every day when you encounter a problem you follow specific skills to arrive at a resolution. The same steps work for all environments such as school, work, and at home. For instance, you have to describe the problem at hand to oneself to gain a fair assessment. However through research you would look for solutions from multiple areas. You may turn to your father, a co-worker, or even a stranger to gain many perspectives on the issue. Based on the perspectives at hand, you’d select relevant information. This would help allow your input to become more efficient. The next phase would involve how you would represent the problem. Creating a map or diagram would suit the bill. However, in real life scenarios, you’d most likely fulfill this step mentally without even knowing it. Another step is to take all the advice at hand or information and make inferences between them. Synthesizing all of the perspectives given from each source will give you the best overall solution. These skills could also be enforced for future employment. For example, you would first find a place of interest. After you would ask around to get several perspectives for consideration from past and current employees, research about the company’s background, and first-hand experience through visitation. You would integrate all of the connections between all of the sources to make the best decision to whether the job fits your choice. Your ability to solve problems by using research will make you extremely valuable because you’ll be have the best solution 100% of the time. Most co-workers won’t search a variety of fields or perspectives to get the best possible answer. They are just in it for the quick fix and to get the job done. However, by implementing the research you’d get ah deeper meaning and will be highly favored by the employer. This could lead to a new promotion or other employee benefits.
Alexis:
This week’s topic got me thinking about cell phones. I wonder how many of you have cell phones with internet capabilities. Well, my phone has internet and I defiantly take advantage of that. How many times have you been with a group of friends and you were trying to figure out what last night’s basketball scores were? Or what the actual answer was of number 23 on the test you just took? Or how many calories that box of pizza had in it. Believe it or not, your ability to be able to find those answers comes from the skills you have obtained by doing research all throughout your college and even high school careers. Researching is an incredibly valuable skill to have in a collegiate setting and more importantly, a professional setting. Every project, every presentation, every interview, even down to almost every e mail you write will require you to do research. The next time you go on a job interview you will have to do some research on the company so you know I little a bit about who your interviewing for and what kind of questions to ask him or her. Being able to research from interdisciplinary perspectives is even more valuable to an employer because of the vast array of knowledge it is possible to obtain through different types of research that we know how to do and others don’t. As you think about what to post this week, we want you all to come up with a work scenario where your research and problem solving skills as an interdisciplinary thinker might come into play. Also, we would like to hear a little bit about some of the research you all are currently doing for your project and give some advice to your other classmates in this blog. If you all have any questions for us about research and its general application in the real world, this week is a great time to ask :)