5. Incremental vs Transformational Research and Technology : Part 01 – Transcript

00:15Hello everyone. Uh today we are going to uh continue our discussion on research. Um in particular uh I'm going to highlight u aspects associated with uh research uh that relate to our uh background and how we uh come into doing our research and therefore uh what it is that we have to be aware of what uh uh you know uh things that we can maintain uh what things that we should consider

00:42you know making some changes in the way we go about uh our work. uh we will also talk about uh types of research. Uh there are different ways to uh classify research and uh this is not very uh uh you know very comprehensive in some sense because you're going to see various uh different ways in which you can classify research but this gives you a broad classification and uh uh the

01:05reason these are worth being aware of uh is that uh when you do your work uh you can have an idea of where it is that you are uh you know focused and therefore what uh aspects you should be a little bit uh more cautious about and you know or what are the advantages that you have given the area of work that you are uh sort of focused in. Okay. So uh the

01:31brief outline for our class is something like this. Uh first we will look at context context of our research. uh and in particular uh the idea that you may actually need to unlearn some things uh before you can actually learn and do some new research. Okay. So this is very important uh because most of the time we bring uh some habits with us to whatever it is that we do whatever work we do and

01:58so on. We bring some habits with us which come partly because of our own personality but more uh importantly because of a certain experience we have had and a certain type of training we have had. So when we come to our work with that experience and training, we tend to continue in the same mode and uh you will see that research requires you to step back and reassess what it is that you do and uh therefore you need to uh you know um undo certain things and

02:26then uh um at least you have to you have to be aware that the same process is not going to work. You have to do something different. If we will look at nature and types of research. Uh again as I said this is more for uh it does not change what you do but it is uh it tells you where you are in the general arena of research. Uh and what else is possible because later you will find that in your career uh you may eventually want to diversify. You may want to try something

02:51different. So having some awareness of what is different uh helps you make those decisions. It helps you tell that you know okay so far I have been doing certain things and now I would like to do something different. Uh in fact some of the great researchers have this habit that every five years or they said some some timeline maybe 5 years or 10 years or whatever they try to change their field. So this is not about field change. This is more about the type of research change but uh but nevertheless there are people who who consciously

03:19make those changes that every 5 years or 10 years they will change just so that they can start something fresh in some new area and they feel whatever I could do whatever I could think of in this area I have already done uh there's no point spending more time here I would like to go and do something else so again awareness of what is possible uh makes you uh you know more agile makes you seek out new directions to go once

03:45you decide to, you know, go into new directions. We will talk about imagination and research. Again, this is much spoken about. Uh lot of people talk about it. Um and uh there are challenges with how we do it. But at the same time, uh it is so crucial and such an important aspect of uh how research gets done. uh that we should uh become conscious of it. Uh so that uh you at least know that you're not being imaginative uh when you try certain

04:11things and then you know uh that you are kind of limiting yourself if you have certain approaches and therefore you have to look at other approaches and and we can only see this using some examples. So we are going to look at some examples which uh um uh you know help us uh recognize that we are limiting ourselves or we have started uh really looking at some new fascinating uh aspects.

04:36Okay. So here we are on our context uh and uh the fact that we bring with us a certain baggage. So generally in our education so we start off with our school. So most of us in fact all of us who are doing any kind of formal research have had lot of formal schooling. We have done plenty of formal schooling um know through you know early years of school and then high school and

05:02so on and uh and there is a uh today formal learning is a very important aspect of our uh education. So uh everywhere so much of effort across the world so much of effort is spent on formal schooling. Uh and usually it is similar. There are schools which are very different. I won't say every school is exactly the same. There are schools which are different and there are types of schools which try out different approaches to the learning process. But

05:28broadly a very large fraction of schools follow a certain form of learning and we will see what that represents. Uh and that is usually when you go from there uh to a professional workplace, right? Uh when you make that journey that journey from your school to a professional workplace, uh you you of course go through college in the middle typically uh you go through college in the middle and then you come to the

05:55professional workplace. uh in the professional workplace um broadly again I there is there's going to be a lot of variation in a professional workplace from place to place and type of work and so on lot of variation is there but nevertheless there are certain expectations of you in the professional workplace and uh those expectations also represent uh you know expectations in how you approach your work right so

06:21there's a lot of uh such uh constraints or anticipation or expectation ations on you when you are in the professional workplace and uh therefore the path that you're taking from your school to professional workplace which is through your college right that has to help bridge this gap and uh and we're going to see what is this gap and then we're going to understand you know that the need to

06:47bridge this gap and you will see that in this process uh you will need to unlearn certain things uh before you can learn new uh ways case of doing uh uh things so that as you go from school to college uh to school to workplace you are actually ready for your workplace and this college represents everything it represents you know uh your undergraduate education your uh post-graduate education uh if you're doing a research as a researcher as a

07:14master student or a PhD student uh you're doing a bunch of different things through your college life right and then you arrive at your professional workplace so uh this learning uh you know this uh uh learning of new ways to handle uh your work as you go into your workplace is all going to happen in the college and uh if you're aiming to be an R&D scientist then the work that you do as a researcher is significantly going

07:41to impact your ability to function as an R&D scientist and all of that is impacted by this journey that you're making from your school days to your professional workplace and the need that uh to you know to look at closely how you have gone about you're learning in school and what exactly is expected of you in the professional workplace and therefore uh the need to make those adjustments.

08:06So here is a uh important uh uh slide which kind of captures what formal learning is in schools um and our at least our experience of formal learning. I won't say this is exactly what is intended but this is what happens [clears throat] and this is uh uh I would say nearly universal any place you go this is nearly universal although as I said there are schools which try to do

08:30things differently but this experience is uh relatively universal so let us say you have an important thing that's going to happen tomorrow which is for in this instance uh in your school life this is your exam day right so tomorrow is your exam day so if I ask you what will you ask your teacher today given that you have your exam examination tomorrow right so that's the question you're faced with what is what are the questions that you will ask your teacher

08:57today given that you have an exam tomorrow right you will find that the typical student almost anywhere in the world is going to ask these maybe the words they use will be slightly different based on uh know local usage of uh nomenclature and so on but fundamentally students are going to ask what are the portions right So u maybe the teacher has been teaching a bunch of different things and uh there are going to be uh you know some topics which are there maybe some topics maybe the ones

09:26that were taught just the last class or the previous class are not there whatever it is. So that is the idea of these portions that students are very curious about and uh will definitely ask their teacher uh even in those topics right uh what are the more important topics so they will always want to know are you going to emphasize uh you know certain types of uh phenomena in the question in the examination you have taught us I don't know let us say it's a

09:53physics course you have taught us about magnetism you have taught us about electricity you have taught us about optics optics but um you know you spend more time in optics that does that mean you're going to have more questions in optics so something uh of this nature they will ask uh what is the syllabus also syllabus in terms of exactly what topics they went into in those uh even in optics what topics they went into uh you know um is it uh you know ray

10:20diagrams uh or some other calculations that you're doing with those ray diagrams something like this uh this would also be an important uh aspect that students will uh they will also ask what are the important questions. So this is particularly uh I would say a very strong indication of uh uh how formal education puts you down uh into a tunnel. Um so important questions meaning uh the book has a whole bunch of questions. Typically the textbook that

10:48is used in schools there will be a very fixed textbook well- definfined textbook. uh every student will have the same textbook and u uh maybe thousands tens of thousands of students will have the same textbook and there will be questions behind the textbook. Uh depending on the uh you know board that is uh there some of them will restrict themselves to only those questions. Some will use questions like those but from outside that uh book and so on. And so students will invariably want to know what are those important questions uh

11:16that I should uh so let us say there are like 10 chapters and each chapter there is uh u you know whatever 15 questions. So you have about 150 questions and they may feel that you know with the exam tomorrow I cannot go over 150 questions now uh can you tell me you know uh are there just 25 questions which are more important and many uh many times we do have uh teachers with all good intentions trying to guide students towards important questions because

11:43maybe they feel that those questions uh capture the uh learning of that uh topic very well and so they will say these are the 25 questions that are more important and so So this is an very important aspect of uh how a school student approaches learning and uh how they experience learning. uh students also ask what will the exam pattern be right so will you have uh you know uh 10 questions and and there are there are

12:09institutes which have very standard uh patterns they'll say uh there will be five questions of 10 marks each um something like that right so uh so this this pattern will be fixed or there you know the teacher will tell you that this pattern will be there uh maybe it's an open book maybe it's a closed book all of that information will be given students also want to know as part of this pattern um are we going to have uh multiple choice questions? Are we going to have

12:35problems? Uh are we going to have essay type questions etc. Right? So you can see that uh the day before the exam uh there's a whole lot of questions that students will likely ask their teacher and what I have put here I have put six different questions out here. um very likely they're asking um I mean these are these represent most the most likely questions that students are asking their

13:02teacher right and it is not just about uh them asking this represents a state of mind uh this represents uh an expectation that uh this is how uh the process is going to unfold in front of us so this is how the process is going to unfold tomorrow uh and therefore I'm preparing myself for tomorrow and that's perfectly fine there's nothing inherently wrong with students asking these questions uh because they uh they