DelftX: Multidisciplinary Research Methods for Engineers

• describe what multidisciplinary research is and its associated challenges and opportunities in different disciplines.
• set up each phase of scientific research: the literature study, the theoretical and conceptual frameworks, the experimental and study design, the choice of research methods and data collection, the data analyses and the interpretation, validation and verification of the results and discussions of the outcome.
• understand and select the appropriate methods for a research question in terms of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods including formative and summative evaluation studies.
• explain and the importance of research ethics, data management and guidelines for human research ethics in your research design and practice.
• write a research plan for a multidisciplinary case, including formulating a research objective and research questions, research set up, planning and reflection.

Week 1: Introduction to research

• What constitutes multidisciplinary scientific research and how is it used
• Structure of research: Scientific method and engineering design cycle
• Language of research
• What to research and how to find out more
• What is a research objective and a research question
• How to formulate a research objective and a research question?

Week 2: Phases and methods of scientific research

• Research questions and hypotheses
• Desktop research, literature study
• Theoretical modeling and conceptual frameworks
• Experimental/Study design
• Data collection
• Evaluation, validation and verification
• Research ethics and human resource research ethics

Week 3: Research method selection and study design

Understand and select the appropriate method for a research question in terms of:

• Qualitative methods
• Quantitative methods
• Mixed method approaches
• Formative and summative evaluation studies

Week 4: Data collection and analysis

• Data collection and data management
• Data analysis (qualitative and quantitative)
• Data interpretation
• How to validate and verify data

Week 5: Research management, documentation and publishing

• How to report research results
• Reporting multidisciplinary work
• Reporting in different disciplines
• Project management
• Scientific publishing including open science

Week 6: Verified certificate only: Research plan writing

• Writing a project plan based on a multidisciplinary research case where students can choose from which discipline they approach the problem.