Research Stride

Mission statement

50 million of the most elaborately trained talents annually work on a project that often falls short of its rich potential: the academic thesis. The result is that students look back on their first scientific project experience with little enthusiasm. Consequently, students lose a large part of their belief in the applicability of scientific methods at the end of their studies.

How can this system be improved as a learning and support experience and as a generator of a lasting positive effect? Not only with “The Student’s Research Companion” but also with its digital sibling project, “Research Stride”, we try to capture and contribute to solving this problem. Research Stride is currently in its conceptual and prototyping phase.

We are working with committed students, researchers, and universities to develop a didactically meaningful, digital mentoring and management system for theses with the aim to leverage the potential that rests within the academic thesis project.

From a technical standpoint, we are working on a digital platform for mentoring and managing student research projects.

1. Eva finds her topic on the topic market and she applies within the app.

2. Within the app, the feature “Research Flow” greets her and provides her with initial guidance.

3. Also in the app, the feature “Instruct Once” provides her with an initial video message by her supervisor.

4. She starts working, but veers off target.

5. She realizes that she needs a mentoring session with her supervisor and sets one up in the “Front Desk” feature.

6. Eva meets with her supervisor and finds her path back on track to submitting.

7. Both her supervisor and Eva decide together that now, the project is so well aligned, that it’s time to publish her project to the “Thesis Observatory”, a feature that allows the university to share information on suitable thesis projects.

8. Eva uses the “E-Mentoring” features in the app for some final questions.

9. She makes one final appointment with her supervisor to discuss her findings before submitting.

10. Finally, she submits her thesis through Research Stride.

Eva required two interactions with her supervisor where, before, almost each of these ten steps would have kept her supervisor busy and herself waiting for the supervisor’s response. Delays were taken out of the process just like inefficiencies through repetitions and superfluous interactions. All that saves time in uncritical projects for those cases that truly need immediate attention – just like Eva did when she was at risk of going off course.