You don't have to watch them in order to gain research points. Check your villager's details screen and see if they have any skill in research. If they do, they will initiate research on their own and continue to get better at it and produce research points each time they succeed. If they have skill in more than one area, checking the preferred skill box for research will cause them to prefer that activity over the others. If you want to speed up their progress, you can keep dragging them back to the table as soon as they start to walk away.
