An Online Research Portal-An Integrated and Transferable Fully Online Research System

Online education has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, however not all courses can easily be translated to the online mode of delivery, including those that require substantial academic research support and infrastructure, such as a traditional research project. To overcome this challenge, Monash University’s School of Psychological Sciences developed the Research Portal, a fully online research system, initially to support its fully online Graduate Diploma of Psychology Advanced (GDPA). The pioneering, expandable, and transferable Research Portal is a convenient and comprehensive one-stop capacity for scoping, designing, conducting, analysing, storing, and writing-up a research project fully online. One of the unique features of the Research Portal is the Virtual Lab which allows users to select and/or create psychological measurement tools, and to acquire human research data by conducting and contributing to the development of online experiments, surveys, and databases. This chapter describes the context, development, course application, and utilisation of the Research Portal. The chapter also presents findings from an evaluation of the usability and user satisfaction of the Research Portal. The Research Portal has bridged the gap between online and traditional research, which substantially benefits on-campus as well as online education and research. This world-first research teaching support system has made a type of course previously thought impossible, the GDPA, a reality.