Professional Project - Field of Research - Report Writing Assessment Answer

Assessment 1: Project proposal (40%)

This assessment will be completed in two steps.

Step 1, worth 15% of total unit marks: Single-page project plan.

This assignment requires you to submit, at the end of week 4, a single page project plan. This project plan will contain five components:

1. A statement detailing your ‘field of research’ - in this, you must clearly explain the relevance of your field of research for the profession, towards which you are studying.

2. A source of secondary data linked to your chosen field of research. You will be required to either include a website with a link to a publicly available raw secondary data set, or a short description of how you will use publicly available sources as raw secondary data.

3. A research question or questions that can be answered with the secondary data set you identified; this requires clarity on the questions and possibly a more detailed definition of variables or key themes to be explored.

4. The search terms you propose to use in Google Scholar to identify literature in the field of the research question.

5. Pick (at least) THREE peer-reviewed scholarly articles that arise from the result of your search and that you think will be suitable to become part of your project's literature review. Write two sentences that combine ALL THREE (or more, if you have chosen more) of these sources (referenced correctly) and provide them in a reference list.

A compulsory presentation of your research idea for assessment 1 step 1:

Prepare a three minutes tutorial presentation on your draft research plan in week 2 and week 4. This task has been explained in the assessment 1.1 brief in Moodle as well. Your Lecturer and Tutor will help you understand the task in class if you need further explanation. Distance students should contact the unit coordinator for support if required.

Tutorial presentation of assessment 1.1: Students attending the week 2 and 4 tutorials must come prepared to present their research project ideas for assessment 1.1 in three minutes. The presenters will be selected randomly by the tutor in week 2 and the rest of the students will present in week 4. The tutor will provide oral feedback after each presentation.The distance students will present their ideas via the weekly zoom sessions (link will be available in the unit Moodle site) in week 2 and week 4. The schedule of the zoom sessions will be regularly announced in news forum announcements.

You will prepare maximum two slides for your three minutes tutorial presentation based on your understanding of and preparation for the assessment task 1.1. This presentation is a prerequisite of assessment 1.1 and will not directly bear any mark. However, attending this presentation is mandatory for receiving early feedback from the tutor on assessment 1.1. If you miss the presentation in both week 2 and week 4 tutorials, there will be no feedback provided on your assessment 1.1 by the marker. Therefore, please make sure you attend at least one of these presentation tutorials before you submit your assessment 1.1. This presentation is a scope for you to receive feedback on your ideas from your tutor which will potentially increase your chance of getting higher marks in Assessment 1. Since there is no mark directly associated to these presentations, it is in your best interest to present in week 2 (the earlier week). It is also important for you to attend week 4 tutorial to learn from the feedback of your tutor on your fellow classmates' ideas.

Key aspects of the three minutes tutorial presentation:

This presentation is a mandatory prerequisite to assessment 1.1 but will not directly bear any mark. Moreover, attending this presentation is essential for receiving feedback from the tutor on assessment 1.1. The power point presentation should focus on the first three contents (1, 2 & 3) of the single page project plan listed above. These three points are important for the tutor to provide feedback. The duration of the presentation is only three minutes and therefore students are expected to go straight to the field of research, research questions and data link parts of their assessment 1.1 research plan. Students should not worry about presenting an unacceptable idea or displaying poor presentation skills. The purpose of this tutorial activity is to provide feedback to the students on assessment 1 and not to mark them on the content or quality of the presentation.

Step 2, worth 25% of total unit marks: Project proposal.

For this assignment, due at the end of week 6, you will be asked to use the feedback from step 1 to prepare a proposal detailing your proposed project. The proposal is to be written in professional report format and contains the following:

• a short, preliminary literature review that places your project within the context of your profession;
• a focused research aim, and at least one research question; and
• a research plan, including: an overview of your proposed methods of data collection and data analysis; Gantt chart schedule; and clear presentation of data sources.

The required length for this report is 1,750 words (+/- 10%), excluding preliminaries, reference list and appendices. You are required to include at least 10 suitable high-quality peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.