During this skill students will work on the following competences: conceptualization, analytical and critical thinking. As a result of the skill students will have an understanding of the need for new knowledge, resulting in developing a conceptual model, research questions/ hypothesis and appropriate research design.
The course is a good preparation for understanding academic articles and all the analytical work students will do in future activities.

This course is a continuation of the skills training “Reflections on academic discourse” in the first year. In that course differences between theories were discussed.
In this specific course students will get an understanding of how theories are built or in more general terms how new knowledge is created. Thereby paying attention to the aim of the research, formulating research questions and an appropriate methodology to answer the research question. Other topics are: the research process, induction/deduction, the research wheel, differences between levels of theory building and formulating hypothesis.
The skill is organized as follows. First, there will be plenary sessions in which students will be informed about the reasons of the research and the research process. Second, there will be small group sessions in which students 1) analyze the development of knowledge, 2) investigate a research process and 3) write a short research proposal. These groups will be organized by topical area.

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