THE RESEARCH SEMINAR PROGRAM: ITS VALIDITY AS AN

EDUCATIONAL TOOL
R. Guerrero, E. Oviedo, M.B. Fong, D.A. Mejia, V.H. Castillo, L. Siero
Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (MEXICO)

Abstract
Many higher education schools have in one way or another, a permanent seminar program, which
offers talks to the student body about the research activities that occur in or around the institution. This
kind of activity are very common and serve many purposes, including to satisfy the parameters set by
the department of research (or a similar). But more than a requisite, we believe that is an excellent
medium motivation and for science dissemination. But rarely is there an effort to quantify the success
of the program as it relates to the acceptance within the student body. In this work we present polling
results for a 2 year period of an ongoing university seminar program in multidisciplinary
engineering/design/architecture school. The survey was designed with the intent of quantify the
success of the activity in capturing the students attention and interest.
Keywords: Education, scientific research.

1 INTRODUCTION
The periodic seminar program is a staple in most higher learning institutions, in fact, in most cases
more than one is not unusual, and they vary, some are given in a basic level as to attract all types of
audience, others are highly technical and specialized, focused on peer to peer communication.
The question that must be asked is, why? Why spend all the time, energy and resources on these kind
of activities? Many answers can be given, some regarding commitments associated to research funds,
or administrative reasons, but we believe that a research seminar given in a dissemination or in a
specialized (technical) strategy can have a positive impact on the student body.
We are convinced that a well crafted and diverse lecture plan can be used as motivational/educational
tool for students, as they can find new and attractive alternatives to their particular interests, and in
some cases may rekindle their passion in learning and in this way reaching higher expectatives.
It is well known between educators that students are more prone to have a low interest in their studies
and be more concerned about other matters. This could be attributed to many factors, but the fact is
that a less motivated student will be less likely to finish his/her degree. In a public school this
translates into an investment loss by the state. It is the duty of a school to surpass the apathetic
tendencies of the students by offering academic activities that peak their interest.
The work that will be presented in this text is a statistical study based on polling the audience of a
research seminar over a period of over 2 years, and we believe that the results show that this kind of
activities are not only well received but has a tendency to generate interest in the scientific research,
and by implication a greater academic motivation.
The rest of the text will be distributed as follows: In section 2, we describe the background that leads
us to our work. Section 3 shows the pertinent results. Section 4 includes final comments and
conclusions

2 BACKGROUND
The results presented here were collected in the Campus "Valle de las Palmas" of "Baja California
State University" (Universidad Autónoma de Baja California - UABC) in particular for the
multidisciplinary school ECITEC (Escuela de Ciencias de Ingeniería y Tecnología – School of
Engineering and Technology Sciences).

Proceedings of ICERI2015 Conference ISBN: 978-84-608-2657-6

16th-18th November 2015, Seville, Spain 2769
ECITEC is newly founded (in august of 2009), and offers majors in Bioengineering, Aerospace, Civil,
Electric, Electronic, Industrial, Mechanics, Mechatronics and Renewable energy engineering, also
Industrial and Graphic Design, and Architecture.
The Campus is about 1:30 hour from downtown Tijuana which is a major population center (around 2
Million) and it is also 45 minutes away from downtown Tecate (Population around 200,000) and
around 2 hours to downtown Ensenada (population 500,000). Its geographic location can best be
pinpointed consulting Google maps in the following internet address:
https://www.google.com.mx/maps/@32.4534,-116.7314155,12z?hl=en
It can be easily seen that the school is on a remote location, and the students have to make a long
journey to reach it.
The school opened its doors in august 2009 to student population of about 600 and 20 full time
academics (FAs), by the summer of 2014 the population has grown up to around 3,500 students and
70 full time academics plus many partial time lecturers.
This rapid increase in the student and faculty bodies made it necessary to establish some kind of
periodic seminar, some attempts were made (some by the author) until on march of 2012 (with around
2,000 students and 50 FAs) the school faculty requested to the author the organization and direction
of a seminar program where the teaching staff could present to the school community their research
projects, results and student collaboration
Also we are trying to foment a program were the student builds the competences necessary for
questioning and listening in a respectfully manner, and the ability to reflect on the connection between
the theoretical and practical knowledge presented in the talks.
We believe that beyond being a formative and informative activity, it can serve as a motivational tool,
because in and indirect (or in a direct way if they join one of the research teams) way they are
presented with a concrete example on how the abilities and knowledge gained on their courses can be
applied to solve real world problems and research opportunities that would lead to innovations.
Due to the geographic location of the university, and the great distance that many of the students must
travel, in most cases in public transportation, it is not feasible have a given day and time so the
seminar must take place during the school schedule, and only those students without any activity at
that time, or those were the teacher allow the group to assist the seminar are present in talk. This has
greatly impeded us to reach a wider audience with the school, and the lack of a nearby community
does not permit us to invite outside guests as spectators to the activity.
Until September of 2015, the seminar has hosted 48 talks and around 4,200 attendees. In Table 1 we
show the talks presented from august 2013 thru September of 2015. During this period, table 1 shows
a total attendance of 2,288 students, we have excluded, teachers and other school personal from this
number. The topics presented in the talk range between education, mechatronic, mechanics,
aerospace, industrial Engineering, graphic design and architecture. In previous semesters different
topics were offered. During all the talks shown in table 1, the students in the audience were surveyed,
and the results found will be presented in the next section.
As the section deals with statistical results is necessary to determine if the number of answered
surveys satisfy the minimum statistical sample. To determine this we use the following equation,
!! ! ! !
!= (1)
!!! ! ! !! ! ! !

where, n is minimum statistical sample, N number of total population (here 3,500), the standard
deviation value of the population, !, is not known so is common use to utilize 0.5 in such cases, for the
trust value, !, we use the 95% i.e. ! = 1.96 (the usual value) and for the error range, !, we assigned
the middle value for an unknown population, i.e., ! = 0.04 (4%) [1, 2].

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 Table 1: Talk calendar for the "Research and diffusion seminar"
from august 2013 thru September 2015.

Title Date Attendance

Artificial intelligence applies to engineering September 13, 2013 44
PHEM transistor modeling in InP illuminated with LASER light September 27, 2013 44
Observation and control in the vermiculture process October 4, 2013 44
Composite Material modelling October 9, 2013 175
Modelling and tendencies for distance education in Mexico October 18, 2013 54
Comparison between fundamentals vibration modes in pre-
October 23, 2013 76
constructed concrete homes between 1 and 2 levels
Biocompatibility of artificial structures in tissue regeneration November 1, 2013 40
Accreditation and certification for distance education programs in
November 19, 2013 33
the international context
Creation of a centre for material reuse in CITEC November 26, 2013 128
Teaching mathematics in an engineering school, a focus on
February 27, 2014 134
linear algebra
Graphic Design as a Science March 12, 2014 176
Urban rivers, contrasting view points in the case of the Alamar
April 9, 2014 98
River, Tijuana
Design and construction of manufacturing cell HAS 200 April 28, 2014 47
Urban competitively May 6, 2014 57
Dental implant characterization May 23, 2014 41
Material characterization and fault analysis May 28, 2014 26
Numeric simulation in thermal system September 17, 2014 59
Simulation model for an air thermal collector September 29, 2014 60
Comparative study of urban habitation in three low income
October 15, 2014 62
settlements in Tijuana
Observational astronomy in San Pedro Martir October 23, 2014 123
STBC Applications for green communications October 29, 2014 27
Fabrication of composite materials using the resin infusion
November 12, 2014 46
method
Civil association: “Planting Love” February 9, 2015 40
Design and characterization of biodegradable screws for
March 17, 2015 32
dentistry procedures
Maintenance and evaluation of hospitals April 6. 2015 100
Rehabilitation of a residual water treatment April 29, 2015 46
Planning in non-conventional radiotherapy: An opportunity for
April 29, 2015 171
engineers
History and evolution of the hospital system in Mexico May 4, 2015 28
Biometric and multimedia recognition systems May 15, 2015 44
Mathematical modeling in linear algebra for engineering August 31, 2015 117
Additive manufacturing and composite materials September 17, 2015 116
TOTAL 2,288

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3 RESULTS
The data shown in this section are the results of surveying the audience in each of the talks presented
in table 1, in total we have around of 2,000 surveys, the final tally differs from the final attendance
because some participants did not answer the survey.
By using equation (1), we determined that the minimum statistic sample for a population of 3,500
students is around 494, far below the number (2,000) of surveys at our disposal; this allows
extrapolating the data found here to the full student body.
The results will be presented in four subsections 3.1) Audience and talks, 3.2) Knowledge and
attendance, 3.3) Quality, 3.4) Research projects.

3.1 Audience and talks

As table 1 show, 31 talks have been given between September 13, 2013 and September 17, 2015,
with a total audience of 2,288 students. The lowest attendance registered on May 28, 2014 with 26
persons, while the highest had 176 on March 12, 2014, and the average participation was of
approximate 74, which is about half of the full capacity, of the conference hall assigned for this activity.
In Figure 1 we show the attendance presented in table 1 as split by semester of the attendee, the
percentages are show for each. Most of the majors offered in UABC are of eighth semesters, but is
not uncommon for students to take one or more semesters to finish.

Fig 1: The total attendance shown in table 1 split by semester of the student.

The semesters are academically split in to three stages, basic: 1st to 3rd semester, where the basic
courses are taken and the student choose their major, disciplinary: 4th trough 6th semester and 7th,
8th are the terminal stage where the main courses are taken and a final specialization is chosen, and
beyond are the final courses related to specialization and thesis. By grouping in this manner the
results of figure 1, we can describe the attendance in term of the stages (figure 2).

Fig 2: Assistance by academic stage of the majors.

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The results are in complete agreement with the number of students in each stage in the school, and
are encouraging as we can inform the newest students about the diverse ways they can participate in
scientific research.

3.2 Knowledge and attendance

Figure 3 and 4 show the percentage of the attendees who had prior knowledge of the seminar and
had attended one, respectively.

Fig 3: Percentage and number of attendees who had prior knowledge of the seminar. The main
graphic shows the total values between the dates in table 1, meanwhile the insert on the right show
the same values for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015.

It can be seen from Fig. 3 that 46.9% of de attendees did not have knowledge of the activity, while
56.4% had never assisted one, this numbers can be disconcerting, but this both figures show that
there is interest, 43.6% are previous attendees, this means that almost half of the total population find
the seminar interesting enough to participate more than one time. Also, if we review the insets
included in figure 3 we can see that through the years the percentage of the attendees that had prior
knowledge has continuously grown, this we consider is extremely important as per year almost 900
students are freshmen, and this trend is prevalent in the figure 4 inset where the yearly growth of the
repeat spectator.

Fig 4: The audience was asked if they had attended before to a talk of this seminar. The main graphic
shows the total values between the dates in table 1, meanwhile the insert on the right show the same
values for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015.

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The organizing committee must make a greater effort to generate more interest. So a basic question
that must be asked is, how did the students found out about the talk? We found after analyzing the
surveys that most of the students (73%) knew abbot the talk because of their teachers while 15%
because of the notifications posted through the school (around 100 such notifications are posted each
talk) while 8% found out by our facebook page and repost of the information, while 4% by word of
mouth between them. At this time is clear that the main way that students can participate in the event
is by a leave of the teacher from his class, but as we see 27% of the student participated out of their
free will, this is very encouraging, and we believe that by using electronic publicity, like social networks
(facebook, twitter, youtube...), massive phone texts, we can reach an even broader number of
students, in this we propose the addition of students as their input would be of great value in
managing the information in social media, we recommend the use of focus groups.

3.3 Quality
The results presented in this subsection try to quantify how the students perceive the quality of the
talks. In figure 5 we asked the students to grade in a five point scale the presentation of the speaker.
In general if we assign 5 to excellent and 1 to very bad, as seen in the figure, the average grade is
4.28. While in figure 6 the students were asked to grade how interesting did they found the subject of
the talk here the average grade is 4.28.
Both "grades" are fairly similar, as figures 5 and 6 are, this is not coincidental, how the student
perceive as interesting is closely related to the quality of the talk.
We believe that the social media can help us to get additional comments about what types of talks the
students would like to receive and would allow focusing the activity to the liking of the students so
increasing the total attendance.

Fig. 5. Grades awarded to the speaker by the attendees.

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 Fig. 6: How interesting did the students found the subject of the talk.

3.4 Research projects

We believe that scientific research and dissemination can have a positive impact on the academic life
of many students, but sometimes we forget that some students may not have prior knowledge of the
existence of research activities in our schools or that they can participate. As part of the purpose of the
seminar we are interested in informing the student body those research opportunities, and the many
options available to them, including research grants, thesis opportunities, internships in companies,
summer schools, and many others.
We asked the attendees the following questions: Did you know that there are research activities in
ECITEC? (Figure 7), Did you know that some projects include scholarship opportunities? (figure 8),
did the talk catch you interest enough to join a research project? (figure 9) and finally, are you
associated in any research activity? (figure 10).
Figure 7 measures what percentage of the attendees have knowledge of the existence of research
activities in our school, is very interesting that 78.2% of the students have this information, this number
has change very little, so a lack of knowledge in this area, appears not to be a significant obstacle.

Fig. 7: Knowledge by the attendees about the existence of research projects in CITEC.

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The students know that research is been done in their school, but do they know that some of those
projects have scholarship associated to them? We ask the polled students if they had knowledge that
some projects have scholarships, results are shown in figure 8. The main graphic show the results of
the 2,065 polls, and the insert show the break down through the years.

Fig. 8: Percentage of students who knew (or did not) that some research projects have scholarships.
The main graphic shows the total values between the dates in table 1, meanwhile the insert on the
right show the same values for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015.

These results are not entirely unexpected, as ECITEC is a new school with 6 years, and still growing,
much of the activities do not have an immediate recognition by the community. But we find very
encouraging that the percentage has been growing as the years go by meaning that the information
has been reaching more and more students and we believe that the seminar has been a big part of
this growth.
Figure 9, shows the results as presented by the survey, again by assigning a numeric value of 5 to "A
lot" and 1 to "nothing", and in between we can obtain a average number of interest, of 3.8, (meanwhile
at the end of 2014 this number was 3.61), that by returning to figure 9 would be around "indifferent"
and "some" this is very disconcerting, and not the expected result, but by remembering the we are
working with a statistical sample we can extrapolate the results to the total population, which means
that around 27% (almost a fourth, and higher than the value sup 2014 of 22%) of all the students want
to participate in research activities, this is very encouraging and a way should by found to try to
include them. Additionally, the last three values (indifferent, a little and nothing) are lower than the
results obtained calculated in 2014 (22%, 12% and 4% respectably).

Fig. 9: Evaluation of the interest generated thru the talk to join a research project.

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At the end of 2014 on 57 of the surveyed students (out of 1,016) had participated in research
activities, but now out of 2,065 survey students we found that 159 (7.7%) had or are participating in a
research project, that is an increase of more than 100 students. This results is very welcome, as the
continuous information activities has created more interest.

Fig. 10: Percentage of student associated (or not) with a research project.

Figure 10 does not reflect the results presented and discussed in figure 9, we believe that are many
reasons for this. In particular not all students are able to acquire a scholarship for joining a research
project, there are academic limitations.
The regulation that governs which student may be eligible for a scholarship by the UABC states that
only a student with a grade average of 80 or above may be eligible to receive such monetary
compensation and that student must have at least 50% of its academic credits, plus other particular
rules to each kind of scholarship [3].
Also UABC offers the student the ability to participate in research by doing research assistantship,
which is a semester long research activity related to his chosen major, this does not include monetary
compensation but it does include academic credits [4].
Also quite a big percentage of students in CITEC are from low income homes, and as such many of
them must study and work, which leaves them little time for other activities, plus as had show in figure
6 most students are not aware that that some research project offer compensation for their work.
We believe that over time as the student body is aware of these facts more of the number shown in
Figure 8 will increase (students associated)

4 CONCLUSIONS
We have shown statistical results from a survey applied to the attendees of the research and diffusion
seminar at ECITEC, from august 2013 thru September 2015, approximately 2,000 surveys were
collected.
The results presented have shown that students have found talks interesting and because of them
have considered joining (or joined) some kind of research activity, in the different modalities that
UABC offers. The analysis also reveals that the main way the audience has found out about the talk
calendar is by their teachers. Here we recommend to use more and more the used of social media.
We showed that the seminar has had a positive effect, as the number of students that have joined
research projects has more than double in 2015 with respect those reported in 2014.
The authors of this paper would like to thanks the many students that were graceful enough by
answering our survey.

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REFERENCES
[1] Spiegel, Murray R. Schiller, John. Srinivasan R. Alu. (2013). Probability and Statistic. México:
Mc Graw Hill.
[2] Yamane, Taro. (1970). Statistics and introductory analysis. Nueva York: Harper International.
[3] Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, scholarship rule book. Found in
http://fintecate.uabc.edu.mx/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/REGLAMENTO-DE-BECAS.pdf
[4] Universidad Autónoma de Baja California rule book for social service. Found in
http://www.uabc.mx/formacionbasica/documentos/reglamss.pdf
[5] Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Statue rule book. Found in
http://sriagral.uabc.mx/Externos/AbogadoGeneral/Legislacion/reglamentos/estescolar.pdf

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