Use research projects to build academic skills

Design small research projects to build academic skills.

We have a fairly good understanding of how to get better at music, or sport. But when it comes to improving academic performance, it can be difficult to describe exactly what this looks like.

Based on our understanding of expert performance in other domains, any programme aimed at improving complex skills should include:

  • Observing the skills you want to improve, to better understand how they work.
  • Practising the skills to familiarise yourself with all its components.
  • Getting constructive feedback on how to improve your performance

If you’re familiar with the work of Anders Ericsson, you’ll recognise this as the process of engaging in deliberate practice. However, it’s not always clear how to achieve this, as most academics do their work behind closed doors; it’s rare to see people working in public, which makes it hard to observe them.

The best way I can think of to improve academic skills, is to design a project that’s structured around the features of deliberate practice. And to my mind, a postgraduate-level research project fits into this framework very well.

When it comes to PG research, there are many examples of what ‘good’ looks like. Research is well-understood, has many guides and resources to support your progress, and has to be focused in order to satisfy research committee requirements.

I’m not suggesting that everyone goes out and signs up for a MSc or PhD programme. However, I am suggesting that the process and practice of postgraduate research has structure that supports the development of rare and valuable skills. And, if you take this idea and scale it back, you’ll find a wide range of potential projects you could use to improve almost every aspect of academic work.


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