"Before awarding the postgraduate studentship from HKIEd, I’m a lecturer from Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia. I earned my Bachelor of Science Education degree (2004) and Master of Physics Education degree (2008) from there. My research focused particularly on the science laboratory development via open source-based data acquisition. Due to rapid technological change, my doctoral research will be more focused on the development and evaluation of laboratory-based learning via internet. It is also known as web-based or remote-controlled laboratory.

Since I’m a newcomer, everything is new for me. Especially, the weather is totally different from my country. After 3 months staying here, I think I'm able to adapt the studying and living style in Hong Kong. In fact, I’m a very lucky person because my wife is willing to sacrifice and come to Hong Kong with me by taking unpaid leave for three years. Moreover, I have a very helpful and caring supervisor. He tries to provide support regarding everything of my new life in Hong Kong.

Additionally, he let me pick up as much experiences in doing educational research as possible by inviting me to join his ongoing national and international research studies. By participating in different research studies, I have gained different ways of conducting qualitative and quantitative research. For instance, I had the chance to visit, observe and interview the students in Hong Kong primary and secondary school. Recently, I’m also involved in an international study for science education. Similarly, I need to visit and interview the undergraduate students in Guangzhou, China. By taking part in these research activities, I become more confident and open-minded. In practice, it is very useful for my PhD study especially for the evaluation part.

Today, conducting research is undoubtedly important element of academic career preparation and development. Research can be expressed as a process of seeking, understanding and creating an efficient way of practice or study. As a new PhD student, I think it is important to know your research area or supervisor better. By performing this action, there are a lot of ways in reviewing your research area through multidisciplinary academic search engine, such as, Google scholar, Mendeley and HKIEd iSearch. Besides that, I would like to share another way to perform the citation analysis by using a free software that developed by Anne-Wil Harzing, known as Harzing’s Publish or Perish. It can be downloaded easily from http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm. As a reference, it also will help you to know the most-cited papers, papers per year and types of journal of your research area, supervisor or any academician.

Finally, I would like to take a moment to thank my family, supervisor and HKIEd. I will always appreciate the way you support, guide and afford me to join in the PhD program."

［Sharing extracted from the Graduate School Newsletter Issue 5 (July 2012).］

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