Developing Research Skills for Postgraduate Students Using Digital Platforms

Abstract

Utilizing digital platforms to develop research skills presents a transformative approach for postgraduate students, enabling them to navigate and excel in the ever-evolving academic landscape. The current study aimed to identify the development of research skills for graduate students using digital platforms and to achieve its goals; the researchers developed a tool that consisted of (45) items distributed in four areas: preparing for scientific research, implementing scientific research steps, writing scientific research, and ethics of scientific research, it was applied to a sample of (208) male and female graduate students at Amman Arab University in Jordan, who were selected by simple random method. The findings revealed significant skill growth, with an average score of 3.89 and a standard deviation of 0.62. More precisely, the topic of 'Research Ethics' had the highest ranking, with an average score of 4.07.

In contrast, the topic of 'Implementation of Scientific Research Steps' received a lesser average score of 3.82. The use of search engines was found to have strengths, while electronic reference criticism had shortcomings, according to the detailed investigation. The introductions were well-written; however, the tables and images' presentation needed improvement. Notably, the study indicated that students' skill growth was consistent across gender, college, and whether or not they had completed a course in scientific research methodologies, indicating that digital platforms were beneficial across all of these factors. There were no discernible variations among these groups, suggesting that digital platform utilization uniformly stimulated postgraduate students' research skill growth. The results of this study show that online resources are helpful for graduate students at Amman Arab University in Jordan to improve their research abilities. The analysis revealed a notable enhancement in skills, as seen by an impressive average score of 3.89, across four critical areas: preparation, execution, writing, and the ethics of scientific research. The most crucial aspect was research ethics. Some areas that may use some work include visually representing data and assessing references, but overall, I'm good at using search engines and writing introductions. The study's consistent findings across gender, college, and prior research course studies highlight the broad effectiveness of digital platforms in helping postgraduate students improve research competencies.