UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Thi Ai Truc FACTORS AFFECTING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ACTIVITIES OF STUDENTS. CASE STUDY OF "EURÉKA STUDENT SCIENCE RESEARCH AWARD" MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2020 123doc UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Thi Ai Truc FACTORS AFFECTING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ACTIVITIES OF STUDENTS. CASE STUDY OF "EURÉKA STUDENT SCIENCE RESEARCH AWARD" MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION SUPERVISOR: PROF. TRAN HA MINH QUAN 1 – Year 2020 Ho Chi Minh City 123doc APPENDIX SUPERVISOR’S REPORT ON THE FINAL THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER of BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Final thesis title: FACTORS AFFECTING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ACTIVITIES OF STUDENTS.
CASE STUDY OF "EURÉKA STUDENT SCIENCE RESEARCH AWARD" Student name: Nguyen Thi Ai Truc Supervisor name: PROF. TRAN HA MINH QUAN 1. General comments: „ Remarks on the student’s attitude:. „ Remarks on the assignment’s academic quality:.
Overall assessment: „ Meet requirement for submitting. „ Not meet requirement for submitting. Other remarks: - Did the student follow the report schedule? „ Yes „ No „ Other. - The plagiarism percentage: Supervisor’s signature 2 123doc Executive summary .1 Center of Science and Technology development for Youth .2 Euréka Student Scientific Research Award .3 Problem Finding Process.
Initial Identification of Problem. The Existence problem. Final Cause-Effect Map. Solution for Solving Problem.
28 3 123doc Executive summary This thesis examines the factors affecting students' scientific research activities at universities in Ho Chi Minh City. The topic is made based on data from the Euréka Scientific Research Student Award. With the criterion of the award is to promote the scientific research movement of students, the award has been gathered by nearly 50 of universities, colleges and institutes in Ho Chi Minh City. However, the level of participation of many schools is limited.
This study will explore the factors affecting students' scientific research activities at universities in Ho Chi Minh City, thereby proposing solutions to promote this activity in universities which limited.1 Center of Science and Technology development for Youth Center of Science and Technology development for Youth (known as TST) is a unit directly under Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth Union. TST was found in August 03th 1989 by People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City. Our mission are mobilize and promote the movement of scientific and technical activities and creative capacity of the youth. There are several programs that Center being as organizer such as Euréka Student Scientific Research Prize, International Students Science Forum, etc.2 Euréka Student Scientific Research Award Student Scientific Research Award (known as Euréka Award) is the national wide prize for scientific research and creativity of students from universities and colleges.
It was established in 1999 and fasten become the only prize of Youth Union for student who have passion in term of scientific research. Table 1 Euréka Award data from 1999 to 2019 Euréka award data from 1999 to 2019 2263 2069 1758 1407 1385 1435 1200 1198 1165 1064 1106 878 903 858 844 734 768 777 708 709 596 648 621 493 496 500 507 516 517 430 334 373 324 398 345 371 409 221 257 156 116 97 85 106 100 19 21 18 17 24 21 23 23 22 27 26 30 34 34 34 36 46 75 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Number of Subjects Number of Schools Number of participants Source: Euréka Award’s announcement from 1999 to 2019 The purpose of Euréka Award is to discover and foster the creative ideas of students, promote the scientific research movement among students of universities, 5 123doc colleges and institutes in the direction of development, with the high scale and quality of research works. Besides that, the prize contribute to improving the quality of training, encouraging students to develop their potential in research and innovation. Moreover, Euréka Award is also contribute to the application of science and technology into production, business and life.
The table 1 illustrate that Euréka Award is develop in terms of the number of participating schools as well as the number of topics. From the beginning until 2014, Euréka Award organized only in Ho Chi Minh City. The award officially deployed widely in 2015 in the southern region and expanded nationwide in 2016. The Prize includes 12 fields, which presentative Chemical Engineering, Food Technology, Information Technology, Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering, Training and Education, Law and Legal, Economics, General Engineering, Agriculture - Forestry - Fishery, Urban Planning – Architecture – Construction, Resources and Environment Management, Social Sciences and Humanities.3 Problem Finding Process In order to find out the problem of Center of Science and Technology Development for Youth, the process will be conducted: - Collecting the data from Euréka Award’s annual report and Projects’ collection announcements of Euréka Award from 2014 to 2019.
- Referring the feedback from contestants on December 2017 - Conducting in-depth interview with contestants, employees, representatives of participating schools, and science council’s members. - Conducting the survey for contestants and representatives of participating schools. - Reviewing literature related to problem. - Conducting second in-depth interview with the manager to determine existed problem.
- Reviewing some theory framework to validate the problem importance.4 Symptom I used the result from the survey that TST conduct on December 2017 (see appendix B) and also conducted depth interview with two students, who are contestant Euréka Award in 2017 and received the First prize and the Third Prize (see appendix G and H). I used finding from the survey and depth interview to create questionnaire (see appendix I) for participants who took part in Euréka Award. The purpose for this action is to have an overview and find out the symptoms. I collected data for this research through email survey in the early of September 2018 by sent for about 500 contestants and received 100 responses.
The result illustrated that only seven respondents know about Euréka Award through website and 60% of participants know about the Euréka Award by school deployment. The application of social media in implementing prize information is limited. The information about Euréka Awards is directly transmitted in the form of issuing documents and announcements from Ho Chi Minh City Youth Union to the School Youth Union. This shows that the access to Prize’s information of the student depends heavily on the implementation of the school.
In addition, I created depth interviews with two employees, who have been working in the center over 6 years. The interview guide (see appendix C) was about evaluation of the Euréka Award from 2014 to 2019, especially to explored the reason why the number of project in 2016 is dramatically decrease although the Prize was expanded national wide at that time. They believed that the expansion is quite fast, and the Euréka Award’s awareness is still low and lack of widespread. The schools play an important role in term of encouraging student take part in research activities; especially participate in Euréka Student Scientific Research Award.
7 123doc Table 2 Proportion of top 4th university dominate Euréka award 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Total number of subjects 216 244 184 266 313 261 (1) = (a)+(b)+(c)+(d) Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology 46 65 56 97 137 97 (a) Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh 76 65 49 82 62 67 City - University of Sciences (b) Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh 48 58 44 41 60 60 City - University of Technology (c) Ho Chi Minh City Open University (d) 46 56 35 46 54 37 Ho Chi Minh city’ Number of projects 517 608 466 593 687 649 (2) Proportion (3)=(1)/(2)*100% 42% 40% 39% 45% 46% 40% Source: Euréka Award’s announcement from 2014 to 2019 The Statistics of the number of projects involved Euréka Award from 2014 to 2019 (appendix A) showed that there are four universities included Ho Chi Minh City University off Technology, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City – University of Sciences, Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City – University of Technology , Ho Chi Minh City Open University dominated the prize. The total number of projects participating in awards from these four universities is high in Ho Chi Minh City, accounting for over 40%. This means that the total number of projects for the remaining 44 schools is only 60%. The development of students' scientific research movement is uneven across schools in Ho Chi Minh City.
8 123doc Table 3 The number of school have low performance 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Total number of 40 40 40 40 48 49 School Total number of 517 608 466 593 687 649 Project Average number of 12.24 project per school The number of schools with project less than 21 27 26 27 32 33 the average Source: Euréka Award’s announcement from 2014 to 2019 The table 3 above illustrations that the average number of project in each school participating in the Euréka award is 13 projects in 2019. However, that up to 33 schools (accounting for 67%) have a lower number of projects less than 13 projects. Most school have low performance in term of participating the Euréka Award. Problem justification Part 1 presented background information about the Euréka Student Science Research Prize as well as how to find symptoms.
Part 2 will describe the use in-depth interview and literature review to find potential problems causes of this symptom, which includes identification problems, problem exist, and problem importance. Initial Identification of Problem In order to find the problems for the symptom, the in-depth interviews were conducted with several characters that may be symptom related from inside and outside. The informants ‘profiles be listed as below: - Mrs. Vo The Hanh, Chief of Office and Accountant of Center of Science and Technology development for Youth, 6 years’ experience - Ms.
Ngo Thi Tu Trinh, Head of Department of Creative Movement Development, Center of Science and Technology Development for Youth, 10 years’ experience. Nguyen Thanh Luan, Manager of External Communication and Science Technology Services, 7 years’ experience - Prof. Thai Van Nam, Deputy Director of Applied Sciences Institute, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, 20 years working at school. Le Thi Ngoc Tram, employee at Science and Technology department, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology.
- Huynh Tan Long, contestant participated in Euréka Award in 2017, Fourth year student at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, the Third place in 2017 Euréka Award with the project belong to Urban Planning – Architecture – Construction filed. - Nguyen Thanh An, candidate participated in Euréka Award in 2017, student at Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City - University of Sciences, the First place in 2017 Euréka Award with the project belong to Information Technology filed. - The report of the 20th years Euréka Student Scientific Research Award Seminar. 10 123doc To be find out the causes of symptom, the study gather several results from the interviewees.
Tu Trinh admitted that the trend of credit training and graduation exam is a reason that lead students just concentrated on leaning to complete and disregard science research activities. This creates many obstacles in encouraging students participate in research activities at the school. That also lead to the quantity and quality of research is low. Besides, the deployment of prize information depends heavily on the direct relationship with the Science Department and Youth Union of the schools.
TST cannot control does the Science Department or Youth Union of School deployed the information to students, who actually concern about doing Science Research. Therefore, the Schools play an important role to support and encourage student do research. Both of Ms. Tu Trinh and Mrs.
The Hanh agreed that TST still apply ineffective communication method to spread out the prize information, such as sending announcements by mail, poster, banner, telephone.