SURVEY REGARDING THE COMPETENCE AND INTEREST TOWARDS RESEARCH OF ROMANIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The purpose of this study is to find out the respondents' opinion regarding their abilities and interest towards research. The survey was carried out on a sample of 51 respondents that are involved in research activities in the universities of origin. The participants are students from Faculties of Real and Applied Sciences. The results highlight the interest of respondents for their involvement in research activities, the need for support resources (other than the information in the university courses), the opinions concerning the possession of the main skills necessary to carry out research and the ability to communicate about the research in which they were involved.


Introduction
Research in the field of natural sciences is of utmost importance for the development of technology and the improvement of life quality.At the same time, students' involvement in research positively influences their cognitive development (Erickson, 2001: 85).Being an active learning process, research challenges students to formulate questions, to develop strategies for testing hypothesis, to analyze information, to formulate and support arguments, and to disseminate the results.Engaged in research, students learn to doubt on their beliefs, to tolerate ambiguities, to seek evidence and to rely on them in making decisions and formulating arguments.Students also learn to work with other colleagues as members of a research team.
Lamanauskas & Augien (2016:746) and Csermely (2003:825) suggest that research activities should be intrinsic component of universities education.In reality, things are not like this at all ( In terms of students' participation in staff research project Walkington (2015:10) describes five levels of involvement of students.In the case of first three levels, students are closely supervised by research staff: they are assigned to research tasks, they are informed about the research and about the tasks and their job is to carry out routine research tasks, following established methods (first level); students involved in the research are informed and consulted about the research (second level); staff design the research project but students can make decisions, can revise methods, and can assume tasks and so on (third level).In case of the fourth level, students are working independently, without any supervision from university staff, taking decisions alone.The fifth level refers to the students that design and carry out the research themselves, in consultation with university staff at a level determined by the student.
In fact, the situations that correspond to the last two levels are those when students have been working for a long time in a research group during their undergraduate studies and they are enrolled in a PhD program.Hunter et al. (2006:40) consider that the most efficient situation for undergraduate research activities happens when the student learn based on the mentors expertise, being encouraged to take primary responsibilities for the activities undertaken in the project and to contribute substantially to these activities.
In relation to the above considerations regarding the levels of student engagement in research activities, our investigation is based on the following research questions: "Why do students chose to take part in research activities during their university studies?", "What are the students′ abilities to research and communicate with regarding these investigations?"and "What are the resources students use in research activities?"

Material and Methods
The qualitative inquiry was carried out in the second semester of 2016-2017 academic year.

Instrument
The investigation was carried out by applying an online anonymous questionnaire to students who are enrolled in higher studies at natural sciences universities.The questionnaire was adapted from a paper that investigates the necessity of laboratory classes in higher education (Kirschner & Meester 1988:81).The items of the questionnaire are oriented towards the next aspects: motivation to take part in research activities (4 items), students ability to carry out the research tasks they are assigned and the resources they use for that purpose (3 items), possession of the skills necessary to carry out experiments (5 items) and the abilities necessary to communicate regarding the research they carried out (3 items).The responses assumed the agreement on the questionnaire items on a Likert-type scale with 5 variants of response (1-Total Disagreement and 5-Total Agreement).Descriptive statistical analysis (percent, frequency, average) was performd using Excel.

Participants
At this study attended 51 subjects, including 1 graduate and 50 students.Respondents are studying at natural sciences and technical faculties in Romania, most of them coming from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest (UPB), Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (UBB) and "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University (UAIC).38 of the participants are female and 13 male.The age varies between 19 and 32, the average being 22 years.
Volume 10 Number 3, 2017 74% of the participants are students enrolled in bachelor's degree studies, 24% are studying for a master's degree and only one participant is attending doctoral studies.
The distribution of students according to their level of studies is represented in Figure 2.This gives light to the fact that the percentage of students who participated are students in the first two years, roughly the same percentage of students attending last two years of bachelor's degree studies.
Regarding master degree students, there are 3 times more master degree students participating from the second year, than the first.

Results and Discussion
Participants' responses to the items referring to their motivation for engaging in research activities are presented in Table 1.As can be seen from the Table 1, the main source of motivation for students' involvement in research activities is curiosity, while the preoccupation for the graduation thesis is on the last place.The next 3 items are shedding a light to the ability of students to complete de research tasks they are assigned and the resources they use.The most widely used resources are: the knowledge from the lectures (item 5), information and protocols from science papers or internet (item 6) and the help of the teacher (item 7).Most of the participants agreed that they can complete a research in the laboratory with the guidance of a professor (82.35%) and with the information from books, science papers and internet (76.47%).Only a little over half of the respondents are using their theoretical knowledge from lectures to complete laboratory tasks (54.90%).The fact that student's don't rely on theoretical knowledge can also be seen when comparing the percentage of students who answered with "undecided" (item 5: 35.29%, item 6:19.62%,item 7: 13.73%).
In Figure 3 are represented participants answers regarding the skills they need for a research: the method proposal based on students' knowledge (item 8), recording the data of an experiment (item 10), processing scientific data to graphs and presentations (item 10), analyzing the results of a scientific experiment even if not the student carried it out (item 13), use of the scientific results to answer questions (item 15).Except for item 8 (m=3.65) for the rest of items) the average is in the range [4.

Figure 3. Respondents answers regarding their abilities to conduct a research
As can be seen in the Figure 3, the percentage of respondents who express their disagreement (total and partially) regarding these items sits below 10%.Instead, the percentage of subjects who answered with "undecided" is between 12%-33%, the highest one being recorded regarding item 8.The lowest level of agreement is reached at item 8 (56.87%) and the highest at item 11 (84.31%).Deducing from this that respondents are less confident in their ability to propose the scientific method appropriate to Volume 10 Number 3, 2017 the research task, but agree that they can graphically process experimental data, even if not necessarily they are the authors of the experiment.Also, they can use the experimental results they obtained to answer questions (78.43%), the can record scientific data (74.51%),they can analyze the results of an experiment even if they weren't the ones who carried it out (70.58%).The explanation is found in the fact that most of the time the research activities are closely guided by professors or protocols, and during the study, most of the laboratory hours exercise the student's ability to record and process scientific data.
The last set of items refers to the students' ability to communicate about the process they applied, data they obtained and the results of their research.The percentage of students who express their agreement to the above statements is over 80% (item 9: 84.31%, item 14: 80.39%).The explanation for this can be found in the fact that students are encouraged during laboratory workshops to practice these abilities.

Conclusion
The responses recorded for this questionnaire shed light on a few aspects highlighted by the high percentage of approval: a) The existence of intrinsic motivation to take part in research activities (curiosity and the need to bring contribution to science) b) Participants' need to be guided throughout the research and the necessity to have available other resources than the information that is studied in theoretical lectures.c) Respondents' ability to conduct a scientific investigation d) Participants' ability to communicate and discuss with reference to their research.Also, the answers on the questionnaire fit the respondent to the first two levels of Walkington hierarchy ( 2005:10) We consider important that the teacher who coordinates a laboratory class to be more implied in understanding by students of how a research is carried out, to let students take a higher grade of decisions and to harness more the importance for itself, for society and for the scientific world the research activity carried out by students.This way, students can be ready to take part in research projects, they can integrate easier in research groups and even conduct their own research.Implying students in research, requirement of the technological society we live in should constitute an important objective of university education.
University and policy decision-makers should understand that in the professional training of students, regardless of their specialization, increased attention should be paid to the development of research competences, scientific creativity and critical thinking of students (Lamanauskas & Augien, 2017: 224).

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Universities where participants are enrolled

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Students' distribution by years of study

Table 2 .
Participants' opinion regarding their abilities to communicate about their research activities