On December 13, 2021, Associate Professor CAI Yuzhuo from Tampere University delivered a lecture online on the topic of the idea and method of writing a dissertation opening report for IICE’s International Education Podium. The lecture was chaired by IICE Professor LIU Baocun and attended by faculty members and graduate students from the IICE.

Associate Professor CAI focused on the two questions of “what is the opening report” and “how to determine the research question”. In the first part of the lecture, he compared the opening report to an adventure plan, and introduced the purpose, content and significance of each part of the opening report. In the second part, he emphasized the importance of the research question, which is the basis for the theoretical framework, research methods and other contents of the opening report, and proposed six criteria for evaluating research questions, including filling research gaps, easy to understand, clear concepts, clear relationships between concepts, academic significance, and high feasibility.

On this basis, Associate Professor CAI explained the steps to determine the research question according to John W. Creswell’s “Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches” and combined with his own research experience, namely, defining the research topic, reviewing relevant literature, finding research gaps, thinking about readers’ concerns, clarifying the research purpose, writing a one-sentence research question and proposing sub-research questions. He pointed out that research questions are closely related to research gaps, and shared two ways to find research gaps. One is to read the research outlook section of the latest literature or the literature review paper in the research area, and the other is to skim the relevant literature and analyze the research results and shortcomings in the area by yourself.

At the end of the lecture, he had further discussions with teachers and students.