// M03: Research Project Application Info

For your up and coming research project you need to submit a Application for Research Project as your final assignment for M03. This assignment consists of two parts, a 10 minute presentation and a 1350 word written application. For both you need to take into consideration the following:

Project Summary

A good project summary will be an extremely condensed description of your project and its goals. Idealy this should be no longer than 100 words.

Aims & Objectives

Highlight what the aim of your project is.

Research Questions or Problems

What is your overal question that this project you are proposing will answer? You could take another angle and highlight a problem and try and find a solution, such as In X there are people Y whom do A in B way, this is C and I intend to discover how though D.

Research Context

Have people already investigated what you are doing, if so where they wrong? If not then why are you investigating the same thing? If you are building upon a pre-written context then you need to explain why. If you cant, then find another question. If you are writing about something completely new then its context is what it is related to, your line of discovery to finding it.

Research Methods

What methods are you going to use, Qualitive vs Quantative, audience research based, servays, questionares, etc. Not only do you need to explain your research methods, your methodology, but you need to explain why. Every project has a way of being researched, certain projects fall into certain memes where upon traditionally certain research methods are used, if you go against that tradition you need to explain why!

Time Table for Completion

Basically lay down how long you expect each area of your research to take, so will researching a certain thing take three weeks or a month? Will writing up about the research take a week or a fortnight? When is your deadline and how long before it do you aim to have everything finished and ready to re-evaluate and better.

Your Project

Working on your own, for your project you need to work towards developing:

• a working title for your project,
• a description of the rationale of your project and your proposed line of argument at this stage,
• an appraisal of the knowledge(s) required to fully cover the topic
  • what do you need to know,
  • can you find knowledge required
  • if you have to send away for texts, will they get back in time?
• identify the resources available and how they will be used,
  • do you need to purchase software?
  • do you have access to needed technology?
• a breakdown of separate stages of tasks involved.
  • an assessment of the time constraints,
  • identification of potential problems: deadlines, etc
  • is it all possible?

Assesment

You will be assessed based upon your argument, your understanding your research and how you structure all the aforementioned. You will be assessed in a similar way to the following:

Argument

Have they a proposed line of argument or is it simply a statement of fact. Is the argument new, or building upon existing context? Has this been said before, are they re-inventing the wheel?

Understanding

To what extent do they understand the subject they are talking about and their argument regarding it.

Research

• Is the research method proposed apporpreate?
• Is it sufficient to fully cover the topic in question?
• Is it of both sufficient breadth and depth?
• Is it relevant and appropriate?

Structure

How realistic is their breakdown of the seperate stages and the individual tasks involved in their research? Have they assessed their time constraints correctly, have they identified and explored potential problems.

These basic assessments are condensed into four questions that your assessors will ask of your project, to get maximum marks you need to answer the following four questions to an excelent standard.

Does the/Has the student:

1. Demonstrate and appropriate level of awareness of the plurality of methods used in communication and cultural research;
2. Demonstrate an critically informed understanding of the differences between different approaches and techniques and appreciate the relationship between theoretical presuppositions, research questions and methodological approaches;
3. Understand the principles of questionnaire design, interview techniques ethnography and other data acquisition and recording techniques, and their associated analytical techniques.
4. Design a research project with researchable questions and a workable and relevant methodology.

You can use all the above to base your presentation and research project proposal on.