FDP Session-3 Enhancing Research Excellence (facilitated by Dr. Prakash Vel, Associate Professor at University of Wollongong in Dubai)

The role of teachers in academia is of prime importance. Effective teachers should adopt RITS (Research informed teaching strategy) as opposed to being just research factories or third-party knowledge transporters. To this end, it can be assumed that the need for teachers to be active researchers is at the highest level now. Considering the importance of research in andragogic teaching and learning environment, it is vital to have a balanced Research informed teaching strategy – RITS. The major cornerstone of RITS is: ‘Research Excellence’ not at the cost of ‘Teaching Excellence’, but to add value to teaching. To realise the tenets and goals of RITS, building a well-planned research trajectory is important.

The aim of this session was to gain a detailed insight on the importance of RITS and how it will impact on enhancing educators research excellence. The session focused on the following topics; The modern “Global Student”, Contemporary ‘Andragogical framework’ and importance of research focus for academics, Dangers of staying away from research, RITS-Research informed Teaching Strategy, RITS Balance formula, SRT-’Scale of Research’ trajectory, Publishing your research etc.

Brief profile of Dr. Prakash Vel

Dr.Prakash Vel is an Associate Professor at University of Wollongong in Dubai and specializes in Marketing and related areas. He is backed up with 28 years of teaching and practicing marketing instance in the Industry with experience spread across Bahrain, India, Singapore, Malaysia and the UAE. His areas of research, consulting and training include Strategic Marketing, Consumer Behaviour, Marketing communications and Events Marketing and has trained and offered consultancy for more than 16 corporate clients in different countries in the world including Malaysia, Singapore, Kuwait, India and Dubai. He has published in international journals and has presented in international conferences at USA, Spain, France, Dubai, Finland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, London, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Prague, Japan and other places and was also awarded the ‘Best Presenter Award’ in the international conference at London. He serves in the editorial and review committee and also is the Associate Editor of international Journals. He serves as a co-supervisor for Ph.D/DBA candidates and is a member of the Ph.D examination panels of different Universities. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK). He was appointed as the Associate Programme Chair of the international Academic conference of the Academy of World Business, Marketing and Management Development that took place in Dubai in August 2014 in recognition of his efforts in organising an international academic conference successfully in Dubai. He was awarded by DTCM (Dubai Tourism and Commerce Marketing) in 2015 for organising this conference in Dubai. He supervised a ‘Marketing Strategy’ project on the title of ‘Repositioning Cadillac in the UAE’ in 2015, done by his 100 final year marketing students and was awarded with a commendation in 2015. He was recently nominated for the coveted Vice-Chancellor’s award for Excellence in teaching OCTAL ’16 by University of Wollongong, Australia. His recent presentation of a research paper on ‘IPSATIVE Teaching method’ was at an international conference in Hong Kong in 2018.His career goal is to make as many professional marketers, researchers and teachers as he can in his lifetime.