A Research Boot Camp

A crash course in conducting research, from developing an idea to communicating the results in both written and oral form. This is the idea behind the course for PhD students in Business Administration and Management for which Thorsten Grohsjean, assistant professor in the Department of Management and Technology, has won the Bocconi innovation in teaching award for the PhD School.

"The course aims to provide students with a roadmap, going through every critical step of developing a research project. It helps students by breaking the research process into smaller, easier to digest steps and working on them from week to week," explains Grohsjean.

The six-week-long course, run together with Nilanjana Dutt, progressively focuses on developing a research question, constructing a hypothesis, assembling, and analyzing data and finally presenting results. Each step is discussed in the classroom and students are expected to write a short paper at the end.

"In contrast to most traditional PhD classes which often focus on reading research this course is all about doing research. It is also fully interactive. Every week all students must present their progress and it is discussed by all students. An important aspect of academic life is in fact providing feedback to others," continues Grohsjean.

"And dealing with feedback is a major challenge for academics. Learning early on how to use critical or negative feedback to improve one's work and develop resilience. To keep going is an important skill. So, we provide students every week with honest and developmental feedback," he adds.

"Doing good research is so important for a PhD and this course was so helpful in developing our skills," says Navya Pandit, Indian, in her 4th year of the PhD in Business Administration and Management, who took the course in 2018. "It was a really practical and hands on course and helped us understand the right way of thinking about every step of doing a research project, from beginning to end. With some very constructive interaction and discussion on every step we took. I developed a research on the topic of corporate sustainability."