Searching for synergy between research and teaching

The design of faculty work is predicated on believing that faculty members who are active researchers make better teachers, or stated differently, research and teaching complement each other to the point they become synergistic. While different universities may privilege research or teaching differently, the current political climate (at least in the US) may spark renewed interest in encouraging faculty to do both and do them well. As state and national legislatures increasingly call into question the value of higher education, universities (and their presidents) are forced to adjust to the climate. Finding those opportunities where research and teaching are synergistic may become increasingly important ways to articulate the enduring value of a college degree in comparison to on-the-job training.

Interestingly, while being asked to be equal parts great researcher and great teacher has long been the environment new Ph.D.’s graduate into, doctoral programs often spend far less time helping students develop strong teaching skills. Many of these students will join the tenure track at universities where teaching is a significant part of the job duties and a significant part of how those new faculty will be evaluated annually and at promotion and tenure time. It is a reasonably logical leap that if educating Ph.D. students on becoming good teachers is not a significant part of the curriculum in doctoral programs, helping them understand the complexity of building synergy is likely also missing. The real conundrum is that most faculty are not even trying to develop this synergy once they become faculty, often treating teaching and research as completely separate activities.

Regardless of the degree to which research activity supports good teaching (or vice versa), the majority of faculty find themselves in roles where both teaching and research are required, with limited time in which to support both efforts. Therefore, finding synergy between these roles is valuable to faculty well-being and success. Below, some of the research on the teaching-research nexus (or synergy) is explored. Examples of good practices are identified and preliminary guidance on how faculty professional development can become more supportive of this pursuit.

Research on the relationship between teaching and research

Researchers have attempted to empirically either substantiate or disclaim the deeply held belief that faculty cannot be effective in research or teaching unless they do both (i.e., these are synergistic pursuits). As one might expect, the findings are conflicting with some results pointing to a negative relationship between the two and some to a positive relationship.

No synergy between research and teaching

An attempt to find basic research on the relationship between research productivity and good teaching (i.e., the synergy argument), took us to research conducted more than 50 years ago. The Scarcity Model (Moore, 1963), using the dimensions of time, energy, and commitment, was used to argue that faculty members who are strong researchers tend to spend more time on it and, as a result, less time on teaching. Those who are strong teachers spend more time on teaching and concomitantly less time on research. The dimensions of energy and commitment could likely be interchanged in this argument. On this basis, the relationship between teaching and research is likely negative (Marks, 1977) because faculty must trade one set of investments for the other arguably because teaching and research are not a single dimension of faculty life but two separate dimensions (Fox 1992; Ramsden and Moses, 1992). Relatedly, those faculty who find ways to be equally productive researchers and teachers generally have simply evolved better time management and organizational skills (Andrews, 1964). Finally, acknowledging the scarcity of faculty time (and perhaps energy) has become a culturally appropriate rationale for lack of commitment to one or the other, either research or teaching (Marks, 1977).

It can certainly be argued that the content of information systems education is built on the cumulative findings of our academic research. Research must be funded, and faculty must be given time to carry it out and share their results as part of the evolution of IS education. Quality research being conducted today will likely have findings that make their way into textbooks or other elements of curricular content at some unknown point in the future (some things faster than others). This does not fully support the argument for faculty having job descriptions that emphasize both teaching and research. Faculty job duties could also be articulated as faculty members in group X conduct research and disseminate it to faculty members in group Y who deliver that knowledge in higher education courses. This does not require the faculty in group X to be teachers or the faculty in group Y to be researchers. As such, different job descriptions could be conceived that identify research faculty and teaching faculty. One might see some alignment in this idea with the shift to more non-tenure track faculty positions with higher teaching loads. The shortcoming of that thinking is this: non-tenure track faculty have lighter research loads, but many still have some requirement to conduct research, and tenure-track faculty are still expected to be both good researchers and good teachers (again based on the idea that there is synergy in this pursuit).

Research and teaching have some synergies

One could argue that teaching catalyzes new research questions by uncovering new opportunities to bridge theory and practice leading to more relevant research. This is perhaps most true for those of us teaching in executive MBA programs. This might be a great breeding ground for new ideas and a significant opportunity to workshop ideas to ensure research relevance. What about undergraduate education? For some, this represents an opportunity to engage in pedagogical education. There are good journals in which we can publish case studies developed for our classes and then share them with the field.

Surveys of faculty found that 90% or more of faculty believe an active research interest is essential to being a good teacher and that this belief is shared by their colleagues (Jauch, 1976; Halsey, 1992). However, only 29% believe that good teachers must do research (Jauch, 1976). Further arguments are based on the notion that the same skills are necessary to be a good teacher and a good researcher (Woodburne, 1952), and those common factors include disseminating and communicating knowledge.

While we may never answer the question of whether good researchers need to teach or good teachers need to do research, the joint emphasis on these tasks for most tenure-track faculty is real. As such, we need to confront this reality and find ways to thrive in it.

Some examples of synergy

Below are examples of where IS faculty may find synergy in their teaching and research. In example 3, IT colleagues who have truly found synergy in their teaching and research are identified.

Example #1 – scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL)

In institutions where teaching-related research is valued, such research can provide opportunities for synergy. For example, as great materials are created for our classes, such materials could be presented at conferences or published with teaching notes. This is especially valuable for faculty members whose research is applicable to their course in some way. For example, someone with expertise related to teams may be able to apply that expertise in their teaching, engage in some experimental manipulations and share that learning about best practice teaming in IT courses. If pedagogical research is valued at one’s institution, going beyond the sharing of knowledge with students in our classrooms and conducting classroom research that is publishable in appropriate venues could produce valuable synergy.

Example 2: technology transfer

While using students as subjects in our research has historical difficulties with many reviewers simply rejecting the generalizability, Compeau et al. (2012) provide a discussion of appropriate generalizability from student subjects. In their review of articles published in MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research from 1990–2010, 421 out of 971 published papers used student subjects in some way and 76% of those papers used students in lab experiments. It is concluded that students are appropriate subjects if 1) students are members of the population of interest or 2) the essential features of the study are similar in the experimental design and the population of interest (Compeau et al., 2012).

Twenty-three percent of the studies included in the analysis of the above-mentioned research were technology transfer. This category includes innovation, acceptance, adoption, and diffusion studies. When studying technology transfer with an interest in how novice users behave, our undergraduates are members of the population of interest. Authors using student subjects should adhere to five recommendations (Compeau et al., 2012): 1) be explicit about the population to which findings will generalize, 2) discuss the population in terms of task, people, and context, 3) still use appropriate sampling mechanisms and take care with the essential features of our research design, 4) clearly state limitations, and 5) maintain consistency in how the results are presented in terms of informing practice.

Example 3: gamification

The intersection of research and teaching is vividly exemplified in the integration of gamification principles into information systems education. Gamification, the application of game elements in non-game contexts, has gained traction in recent years as a pedagogical strategy. Research by Deterding et al. (2011) introduced the concept of the “gamification user types” and provided a framework for understanding user engagement with gamified systems.

Several faculty at HEC Montreal have invested a lot of time and effort into developing a simulation game around teaching ERP. The early results, and their willingness to help others get up to speed, helped them build a reputation about this teaching environment. After which, they began publishing work that offered additional insights into the pedagogy of teaching ERP (e.g., Cameron et al., 2012; Léger et al., 2011) which then developed into research projects that used the teaching environment to explore mainstream IS questions in the neuroIS domain (e.g., de Guinea et al., 2014).

Training future faculty

Within the IS field we have previously been accused of “eating our young” as a result of high research expectations (Valacich et al., 2006). We propose that our expectations of equal part strong researchers and effective teacher may produce similar results – faculty who find expectations untenable either because research expectations are too high, teaching loads too heavy, or the expectation of synergy is not met.

While the above examples are meant to help faculty consider how they might discover synergies between teaching and research, the complete advice to be offered here includes better preparing new Ph.D.’s to enter this world wherein they are expected to be equal parts effective teacher and strong researcher, their training needs to include this. Calls for teacher training as part of Ph.D. programs do exist (Rifkin et al., 2023). While this is far from a solved problem, there are strategies that can help Ph.D. students prepare for their futures.

Faculty advisors trying to help Ph.D. students learn about synergy could include undergraduate and master’s students in the research group, and help the future faculty learn to mentor them effectively in research. Working with these students requires understanding of their more limited background and shorter time frame on projects. Too often, new faculty members do not understand the challenges of working with such students and find themselves with disappointed expectations and lost time rather than positive experiences and research progress. Practical experience can prepare faculty to take advantage of opportunities to work with such students to help students and advance their own research. Research advisors can work with their students to help them recognize connections between their research and courses the students might teach, helping them look for opportunities to bring their research into the classroom. Department heads also need to see this as an opportunity to engage in new faculty development. More thoughtful teaching assignments can help new faculty find synergies. Research workshops delivered by faculty who have some expertise in finding synergies could be delivered.

Ultimately, advisors and department heads share one goal – to see new faculty achieve success and career satisfaction. However, we also face ever-changing environments that often ask more and more of faculty. Whenever an opportunity presents itself to help faculty work smarter rather than harder, we should take it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Traci Carte

Traci Carte is the director of the School of Information Technology at Illinois State University. She received her PhD in Information Systems from the University of Georgia. Her work has been published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of AIS, among others. She has also served in numerous conference leadership positions including program chair for AMCIS and ICIS, and she recently completed service as the VP for Conferences for AIS. She has spent considerable time trying to support faculty development in her role as school director and as VP conferences.

Mary Elaine Califf

Mary Elaine Califf is an associate professor of computer science in the School of Information Technology at Illinois State University and a former director of the school. She earned her PhD in computer sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. She has published work on machine learning for natural language processing and computer science education in venues such as the Journal of Machine Learning Research and the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching and has served as a PI on a grant from the National Science Foundation.