Lecture Series on "Learning and Self-cultivation"- The Workshop on "Topic Selection and Writing of Dissertation" Successfully Held

At 19:00 on May 25, the lecture on "topic selection and writing of dissertations" of the Lecture Series on "Learning and Self-cultivation" jointly sponsored by SSDPP's academic counseling office and the academic department of the research association was successfully held online. Xu Xiaoxin, an associate professor of SSDPP, was invited to attend the event as a guest speaker. Many students from various colleges and universities took part in the meeting.

Mr. Xu delivered a speech titled "personal experience exchange - from research issue finding to dissertation writing", talking about research issues, literature management and research design. The first is the research issue. Issue is the starting point of scientific research. Mr. Xu believes that the research issue can be determined in two ways. The first path is "gradual convergence", that is, from a large research field to the research topic, then to the research issue, and finally to a specific problem or question to be addressed or answered. The second path is "abstracting from reality", that is, from doubts in work and life to defining research interests, and finally clarifying research issues to gradually realize the transformation from life language to academic language. To study an issue, Mr. Xu believes, there must be a real problem and realistic needs, and we should have an international vision and theoretical abstraction to see through phenomena.

The second is literature management. Mr. Xu believes that literature runs through the research. He introduced his experience in literature retrieval, literature classification, literatures sorting and literature management tools, proposed to read the best academic journals and learn literature management skills of major academic groups in the field. The third is research design. Mr. Xu first explained the difference and comprehensive application of the framework, theory and model, emphasized the importance of the theoretical perspective of research, introduced the difference between quantitative research and qualitative research methods, and explained in detail the methods of case study, in-depth interview, participatory observation, etc.

Mr. Xu's experience sharing greatly inspired the students. In the link of Q&A, the students enthusiastically asked questions, such as "what kind of research issue is a particularly good issue?" "How should we select research methods?" "What should we pay attention to when using qualitative research methods?" and "how can we make the theory fit the data better". The teacher patiently answered the students' questions.

At the end of the event, the participants expressed their gratitude to the teacher and looked forward to the next series of lectures on "learning and self-cultivation". Finally, we took a group photo, and the event came to a successful conclusion.

Pictures by: Wang Yazi, Jiang Xiaqing

Text by: Liu Siyu

Reviewed by: Tang Xiaofeng