Methods and procedures - Draft 1

Methods and procedures

The following are the methods and procedures used by the team for this project.

Firstly, job advertisements in the field of conservation hiring fresh graduates were referred to and it was found that good communication skills are almost always one of the most sought for skills by employers in this area.

Further research on secondary sources was conducted to explore need for communication skills in the conservation field. These sources have been referenced in the background section of our proposal and they serve to support the need for our research.

In addition, the team also conducted a research on compulsory communication modules that other universities are offering. This allows the comparison of the differences in the communication skills development that students from NUS undergo with students from the other universities.

A short survey focusing on the attitude of NUS Life Science undergraduates towards developing their communication skills in NUS was created, to target NUS Life Science students who are intending to be in the Biology concentration. This survey aims to explore the adequacy of NUS curriculum in providing these undergraduates with the necessary communication skills in conservation related workplace. It also aims to gather their opinions and attitudes towards acquiring communication skills in their study in NUS. The online survey tool used by the team is www.surveymonkey.com.

An interview was also conducted with Mr. N. Sivasothi, a Biodiversity lecturer from the Department of Biological Sciences at NUS, who is actively involved in teaching at NUS as well as numerous conservation efforts with the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research and other conservation groups. This interview was crafted to inquire the current development of communication skills in the NUS Life Science curriculum as well as the possible barriers that may be preventing NUS students from mastering these skills. The team also used this chance to discuss about the feasibility of the options and ideas that will be proposed during the oral presentation.

Lastly, the team plans to interview NUS students who have previously worked at the conservation related workplace, such as the Singapore Zoological Gardens and the Night Safari. From these interviews, the team aims to obtain first-hand information from the horse’s mouth regarding the communication skills required in these workplaces and the adequacy of the NUS education in developing these communication skills.

Challenges

There are several challenges faced by the team in the process of conducting the research. For the online survey, due to the difficulty in determining the actual number of students who are both in the Biology concentration and those intending to concentrate in Biology, the extrapolation of results from the survey may not entirely reflect the opinions of the entire population of Biology students targeted. Next, the interviews with the NUS students who worked in a conservation related workplace might be insufficient to determine the general picture of the specific communication needs in this workplace.

Nonetheless, with these limitations in mind, the team will make careful analysis of the data and information that would be collected in this process and attempt to make sound recommendations and conclusions.