4/9/2014

DAWSON
COLLEGE

RESEARCH INVENTORY REPORT 2007-2013

Office of Instructional Development | Dr. Kaila Folinsbee

Consultants | Serge Mnard, Dr. Cliff Pavlovic

Executive Summary
An inventory of past, current and planned research projects was carried out at Dawson College from
December 2013-March 2014. Data were collected from the Research Logs in the Office of
Instructional Development, and interviews were conducted with key researchers and administrators.
The main findings were:

Overall research revenue has grown by about 35% from 2006-07 in $567,672 to $727,891 in
2013-14.

The majority of external funding comes from provincial agencies rather than federal, with
about 40% of external research revenue coming from PAREA.

Research on learning and in the social sciences and humanities brought in three quarters of
total research revenue at the College over the past eight years.

Most proposals at the College are submitted in the disciplines of education/pedagogy (34%),
disability studies (28%), IT (16%) and math (13%).

25% of proposed research projects have potential to produce intellectual property.

Established researchers have more than twice the success rate of emerging researchers (52%
vs. 22%).

Recognized barriers to doing research at the College are: lack of time, limited space, poor
external funding opportunities, lack of grant writing skills and limited student time for
research.

Recommendations:
Targeted internal investment in research to support projects in development and to promote and
recognize research and researchers could help to increase the visibility and improve the perceived
value of research among teachers at the College.
The strongest areas of current research are in the fields of research on pedagogy and in the social
sciences and humanities. Coalescing researchers in these fields into clusters, and supporting those
clusters with resources would help to create a larger research community, encourage people who
have not yet engaged in research to participate, and help to promote research within and outside the
College.

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Introduction
In response to the articulated goal of research expansion at Dawson College (Dawson College
Strategic Plan 2010-2015), consultants were retained in 2012 to study research management and
identify potential areas for research growth. In August 2013, the consultants prepared a proposal for
a study of current research capacity at the College. From December 2013 to March 2014, the
Research Coordinator in OID (Kaila Folinsbee) worked with Serge Mnard and Cliff Pavlovic to
collect and analyze data relating to research at the College. Our findings are presented in this report.

Objectives
The goals of generating an inventory of past and current research at Dawson College are to: identify
areas of research strength and areas that can be improved, to assess the current success rate of grant
proposals and determine the factors impeding additional success, and to analyze the variables that
impact researcher success. Based on these data, we will generate recommendations for how to
expand and broaden research at the college in the future. In addition, we will be able to predict
where targeted investments in research by the College could have the greatest impact.

Research Questions
1. How successful have Dawson researchers been in acquiring external funding?
2. What variables are correlated with successful applications (e.g. type of agency, amount requested,
researcher experience, discipline)?
3. To what extent and in which areas is there untapped potential to develop projects with
Intellectual Property value?
4. What are the existing barriers to doing research at the College?
5. How can we better engage students and other collaborators in research?

Methodology
We collected and analyzed quantitative data on research projects over the past 10 years using the
logs compiled and maintained by the Office of Instructional Development (OID). In addition, we
gathered qualitative data in the form of interviews with researchers and program heads (Deans and
program chairs) to assess the barriers to research and the perception of the value of research to the
College.

Selection Criteria for Quantitative Data Analysis

We reviewed the Research Proposals and Research Release logs maintained by the OID, which
contain data on all projects submitted through the OID since 2007. In order to get a picture of the
most recent research, we restricted our search to projects submitted for funding since 2007, and only
considered projects on which an agency decision had been made (up to Spring 2013). In addition,
we eliminated projects that we determined were non-representative; these included projects that:

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Lacked a proposal with detailed budget information;

Were rejected by the agency before review (i.e. because of formatting); and,
Were led by a PI external to Dawson College

The rationale for rejecting projects led by an external PI was that the Research Office does not
receive notice of all projects submitted by external PIs; the Office is usually notified of successful
projects, but not of projects that were rejected. Therefore, including external projects would
artificially inflate the success rate.
Out of 73 projects in total recorded by the OID between 2007 and the spring of 2013, we pared our
sample down to 32 representative projects. Data were analyzed using summary statistics and graphs
visualizing trends were generated using MS Excel.

Questionnaire for Qualitative Data Collection

In order to flesh out the data from the research logs, we arranged in person interviews with key
stakeholders. A questionnaire on factors affecting research success was constructed (see Appendix
1) and subjects were invited to meet with the Research Coordinator for a 30-minute conversation.
Five researchers participated in the survey (3 emerging researchers, 1 established researcher, 1
professional) and two administrators participated. We report the key findings from these
discussions, and evaluate stakeholders perception of research and research support at the college.

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