How to make a researcher — part two, the teaching perspective
At the beginning of 2021 Dahni Maisuria, a user researcher on BT’s design team, was part of a group that took on the challenge of developing an eight-week course to teach colleagues how to carry out evaluative research, using our Efficiency, Effectiveness and Satisfaction (EES) framework. Here is his story as a teacher on that course.
In the beginning
At the beginning of the year, I was introduced to the idea of developing a new research course at BT that would involve teaching and mentoring people across the Consumer digital team. The objective was to teach them about research methods, what research is and how to conduct it. I felt like it was a good opportunity for me and also I had some experience teaching in another area unrelated to research — I used to teach children and adults karate and I believed I could implement some of those skills into this training course.
The course aimed to help our colleagues understand more about user research, whether they wanted to conduct their own research or just wanted to know more about how to approach research at BT. The course was 8 weeks, at the end of which our students had the opportunity to do their own user research study, use all the skills they had learned, and play back their findings.
Setting the direction
Creating the course was quite difficult because this was our first time doing this. I was working with two other people in developing the course — Kim Porter (ResearchOps Manager) and Wendy Ingram (User Researcher).
Three things were important to me — that the course should be visual, interactive and fun.
Before Covid, research was a visual and interactive process, you’d always be face-to-face with people, you’d always be talking to people. You’d always be reading their body language or observing someone in a lab or a more natural environment. In terms of analysis and synthesis, you’d use affinity maps or you would have post-it notes in an observation room which you’d create as a team, so making it visual and interactive seemed like a natural approach.
Because we were doing the teaching virtually it made sense to make it as interactive and as fun as possible so that it stuck in our students’ minds. This helped them to remember the session better. I wanted to create loads of activities and tasks to make the course as understandable and enjoyable as possible. A lot of research is putting into practice what you have read. You can read a lot about research, but it’s totally different from actually doing research. Reading about it can become overwhelming — people research so many different ways, that there isn’t a right answer to research. I wanted to help them to do the tasks in their own way. There are obviously guidelines for doing research, but in terms of students carrying out research, as long as they follow those guidelines, such as not asking leading questions or being biased, they can run it in their own way. That is what I wanted to get across to our students.
Collaborative learning
I joined the pilot researcher course because I loved the idea of it. It was exciting because Kim and Wendy were working on it and it was cool to understand their ideas and their philosophy. It also gave me a sense of my own voice. I have been in this position before. I was an apprentice researcher on a research course three years ago, so it was good to share my knowledge with Wendy and Kim so that they could understand my perspective. That was the best bit.
Also, I loved being able to implement my own style of teaching because I taught three weeks of the course, which were focused on conducting evaluative user research. Being able to have the freedom to teach in my style and be able to do what I want and what I’m good at was super helpful and really interesting.
I really like teaching, I like sharing and receiving knowledge and I’m always learning. In terms of being a teacher, it is something that I’ve always wanted to do. I thought it was quite cool. I didn’t feel nervous. It was fun. We had a good batch of students. They were keen to learn and weren’t too harsh or too critical (it was a pilot, after all!).
Thinking about what I might do differently, I’d probably prepare more. I’m one of those people who does things quite intuitively. I’m quite reactive to events. I’m quite quick to present something. I wouldn’t change anything about the course content. I’d just make it slightly shorter so that it’s not such a long process. Maybe cut it down from eight weeks to six weeks. The goal is to eventually hold this course in an auditorium and show, in person, the value of research.
Being fearless
Towards the end of our course, feedback showed that my teaching skills were good enough and I’m capable of sharing the knowledge. This has given me more confidence to carry out my own work and also to carry on teaching people. The pilot researchers’ final research projects were amazing. It gave me a sense of reassurance and I really enjoyed teaching new people.
There are a lot of people who are keen to do research which is a very good thing. It’s reassuring that research is booming and very important to people. It shows that it’s something that everybody needs. I’ve learned that I’m better than I think I am — not in an egotistical way — it’s just that I taught the students how to carry out evaluative research, showing them how to analyse and they actually took that away and implemented it and came back with some really good results. It shows that I’m teaching them the right things and sharing useful knowledge with our pilot researchers. I’ve learned that I need to have a bit more confidence in myself.
Tips on being a good teacher
- Believe in yourself
- Make sure you are really familiar and comfortable with what you are saying
- Make it interactive
- Make it fun
- Make people feel included
- Give people a platform to ask questions or give feedback
- Be a guiding friend rather than a lecturer
I’m not stopping here
I want to continue doing this. It turns out teaching is a passion that motivates and drives me to become a better researcher as I need to learn more skills to teach more people and stay up to date. I like sharing knowledge and seeing people putting it into practice. If you want to have fun while learning research, come to my class!
There’s more of ‘Professor Dahni’ to come. In the meantime, let us know if you’ve done any user research training and what you liked or disliked about the course.
