The Guidelines for Promoting and Supporting Research Development of Academic Personnel at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study the current conditions in conducting research of academic personnel at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi; and to study the guidelines for promoting and supporting academic personnel at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi developing more research. This qualitative research was conducted by collecting the information from two groups of key informants: the full-time academic personnel and the research administrators or assigned people. The key informants were selected by purposive sampling, and the research instrument was the interview form. The data from the interview were analyzed by content analysis.

             The research findings were found that 1) regarding the research conditions, the academic personnel had experience in conducting research as research project leaders and co-researchers. There were research projects both research programs and research sub-projects with internal and external grants. The reasons for conducting research were to meet the workloads of faculty, to extend the knowledge for teaching and learning development, to solve the research problems of communities, to receive a return and reputation, and to get an academic position. There were a lot of research facilities, but there was a lack of standard research laboratories. The research promotion and support of the university were research training, tracking, and supporting research publication as well as domestic and international research competition. The research challenges were a lot of teaching workloads leading to less research working time. Building opening and closing times were fixed resulting in being unable to work on research over time. Some chemicals or research equipment had to be ordered from abroad causing research delays. 2) The guidelines for promoting and supporting academic personnel to develop more research are providing the training about procedures of conducting research in order to proceed in the same way; providing the domestic and international research competition forums; providing research rewards and conferring an honor on the researchers as morale and encouragement. If the research facilities are not available, there should be the coordination with the domestic and international university network to allow the researchers carry out the research flexibly. Moreover, there should be the university research funding available in case of no external research funds. Also, the university points out the benefits of conducting the research.