Digital Transformation in Research

Universities of Applied Sciences educate soon-to-be-professionals who should be able to do good applied research. The views and methods of (doing) research have been subject to change for as long as I have been working within education. Within applied research different routes are possible such as: participatory research, action research, design-oriented research. In addition, the development of new research methods does not stand still. Fortunately, research support moves along in the same cadence.

In the past period I (again) had the privilege of supervising a number of students during their graduation phase. Due to rapid developments, students, lecturers and graduate coaches are sometimes unaware of the development of useful (online) tools. These tools could increase the quality of the research. More importantly, I think a lot of these tools make the research easier and more fun.

Therefore, I thought I would review a few tools, then perhaps researchers, students and lecturers who read this could pass these tools along. Or simply start using them. Students who read this can actually benefit from it throughout their education. There are tips from choosing a research design and research method(s), to the final touches with spelling and grammar.

Methods for Research

The DOT Framework (which stands for: “Design Oriented Triangulation”). It is a framework that originated to make it easier for ICT trainees to do research. This is of course much more widely applicable! Within this framework a number of methods are well described, this can help if a student is not sure which method fits. (https://ictresearchmethods.nl/Methods)

In addition, a lot of information about writing theses and doing research can be found on Scribbr. There is a good description in the difference between qualitative and quantitative research and the methods that can be used within these types of research: https://www.scribbr.com/category/methodology/

Literature (and Cool Graphs)

Everyone uses Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/) these days. I think that is the best start to find interesting literature sources. Sometimes it is difficult, since not all sources are available for free. Of course, something has been found for that, as an extension for the browser (Chrome and Firefox): Lazy Scholar (http://www.lazyscholar.org/)

Sometimes you don’t want to search a little further, or know how certain information was created. That’s when I think I can share these great developments. Several tools have come on the market in recent years that show the concatenation of literature. So you can get to the source (the original thought) or see how that literature is used within a field (cited). This page shows five developments: https://www.litmaps.co/post/5-visualisations-to-accelerate-your-research.

If you have a lot of articles and in dire need to filter the right ones try: http://www.paper-digest.com/ or https://www.scholarcy.com/. This amazing tool turns an academic article into a summary that you can read in three minutes. Very useful for quickly reading through a large amount of articles.

Collecting Data Using WebCrawling

Sometimes a researcher wants to get a lot of information from the web for a project. For example, a product analysis which over many webshops, or information about competitors in a specific market. Then perhaps a web crawler, as data collector, is a solution?

With this tool you can have information automatically retrieved from (a number of) website(s). It does take some time to understand how this tooling works, but I think for a lot of research this can be very useful. In the end, it will save you time if you do a lot of research on information that can be found on websites. I would even say, learning the skill of web crawling is a must in this digital age.

There are too many (good) examples and many taste differences in web crawling. This website provides a good start: https://prowebscraper.com/blog/50-best-open-source-web-crawlers/ in addition to many features, a good explanation of the functionality!

Automatic Transcribing (speech to text)

Anyone who has done research with interviews probably knows the pain of transcribing. A time-consuming activity to get everything on paper to then analyze it. Slowly, fortunately, tools are emerging (see below) that can directly encode audio and video. However, these tools are still quite expensive. Unfortunately, for researchers it is still often required to convert everything into text.

There are several tools, such as https://www.amberscript.com (I have no stock in this tool). Usually these tools give away a few minutes for free, and then you may start paying (freemium). Please note that there are a number of preconditions for this to go well, such as a clear recording without too much background noise and a good pronunciation. And there is almost always a need to check the work of the tool. Still, it can save a lot of time if you do a lot of transcribing, then the help is great.

Coding of Interviews (, audio, video and pictures)

Qualitative analysis often requires coding. Often interviews are coded in order to subsequently perform a (thematic) analysis. Of course you can already do a lot in Excel if you are a bit handy with it. A free alternative is https://www.taguette.org/. This is a simple and transparent tool that allows you to get started quickly.

Nowadays there are more and more tools that can also include web pages, social media, video, audio and images in the analysis (codes). They often call this “mixed methods”. Unfortunately, many of these tools are paid and often not that cheap. Excel is often the better mostly free option for a student. Although I must say that https://www.quirkos.com/ for “only” 6 euros per month for students, does increase the fun factor of coding! (again, no affiliate, just a tip to take a peek).

Creating Schedules, Flows or Overviews

A lot of research asks at some point to create a diagram or an overview. This could be from swimlane to comparison, the elaboration of a SWOT or SOAR model, or the insight of a customer journey. Then there are several tools to be able to do this. MS Visio and PowerPoint are often very handy tools already. There are also various online tools. I myself am very charmed by the possibilities and diversity that Visual Paradigm offers, completely online and without cost or registration

Presentation, Brochure or Infographic (Design)

In this case PowerPoint (or a different name for the same) is a great choice. If you want completely custom design then Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator, among others) might be a good direction. The Adobe tools do require quite a bit of time investment to master. That time is not always available and probably not at all in a graduation program.

Making a special and unique presentation is fortunately becoming easier with online tools that quickly give a cool result. Tip: make sure you know in advance what you want to make and what information you want to share (target and message)! One of the tools I use is https://www.canva.com. There are of course more of these design tools on the web, I’m curious which one you use.

Always double check for Plagiarism

Of course, what you always want to avoid is turning in a paper that contains plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work (or ideas) ‘literally’ and pretending that the work is your own. This is usually not intended; it is often quickly seen as fraud. This is because it is a violation of the intellectual property of the original writer. To prevent this, there are free online plagiarism checkers for your document! Make grateful use of them.

If you do need to hussle up some tekst to prevent plagiarism, check https://quillbot.com/ of https://paraphrasetool.com/ . This tools support to convert the original text into one that you can use yourself again. Of course, make sure that your own writing remains original!

If you have any other hip and happening research tools, let me know!