Once you have developed your project aim, you can start to develop objectives, and later also choose a method for each objective. This means that you will shift your focus from what you intend to do (i.e. your aim) to how you intend to structure your work (i.e. your objectives and chosen methods) in order to achieve the aim. For this you can use a four-step process:
(1) develop objectives, (2) find potential methods, (3) choose methods, and iv) present details of the chosen set of methods.
A method is only valid and reliable within a certain range of uses.
If you consider validity and reliability issues when you make your choices, with regard to your objectives and methods, you will lay a solid foundation for what you can do in the later stages of your project
Method: A systematic endeavor to address a problem.
Each objective can be achieved by different methods.
You do not need to use the same method to address all objectives.
- In a project that uses a combination of methods, the issue of validity
becomes more complex. - The choice of methods have an impact on the quality of the resulting data and the conclusions you can draw with respect to the overall aim.
The examiner’s role: examine and evaluate the performance (The thesis and the oral examination) of the student and the results of the project (The thesis).
Typical roles of an examiner (Sect. 3.3):
quality evaluator and quality assuror.
The examiner may not give the student credit for including item X, since it is his/her own suggestion. S/he may reduce the students’ grade on the grounds of “lack of independence”.
Be aware of this dilemma (advice then no credit).
- The assessment criteria to decide the grade should be clear to the examiner and to the student.
- The examiner should have explicit criteria (plural) to reduce the subjectivity.
- It is also the easiest way of motivating and explaining a grade to a student.
The syllabus for a project course should have the expected “learning outcomes” or “expected knowledge outcomes”.
These should correspond well with the examiner’s criteria to set a grade.
Student grades should reflect to what degree the student has acquired the intended skills.
Several reader groups. One possible categorisation
Experts. People with highly specialised theoretical and practical knowledge in one or several areas. Often professionals in research and development in the business world or in academic environments.
Technicians. Have a high level of knowledge, often of a practical nature. Normally operate and maintain the things that experts have designed and developed.
Executives and business professionals. Make decisions on non- technical issues, e.g. business, legal, financial, or political issues. Typically they are nonspecialists with little or no technical knowledge of the subject.
Non-specialists. People with little or no technical knowledge of the subject.
Requirements of the Report:
The report should be written so that it enables the reader to:
Follow the chain of thought Be able to make sense of the approach and Apply the solution to a related problem elsewhere, Verify your results and contribution.
A report should be:
- Concise. Delete unnecessary redundancy in your report – omit needless words, phrases and paragraphs.
- Focused. Only include things that are explicitly related to your project.
- Clear. Avoid unnecessarily complicated terminology, and write at a level you
are comfortable with. - Properly typeset. Follow guidelines for typographical typesetting and formatting or use already developed templates.
- Well structured. The contents of your report reads well and the reader knows where to find things.
- Well written. The report should contain no spelling, grammatical or other language errors.
Structure of the Report :
A good report introduces the reader to the subject area, describes the problem clearly, and gives a detailed description of the methods and techniques used to solve the problem.
The report should include an analysis of the results, and the advantages and disadvantages of the techniques used for solving the problem.
A typical abstract is about 250–500 words.
This is not more than 10–20 sentences.
An introduction contains some or all of the following elements:
- Topic – the specific topic of the report; this should be done as early as possible, preferably in the first paragraph of the report.
- Purpose and situation – indicating why the report was written and what the purpose was.
- Target readers – indicating for who the report is intended.
- Topic background – provides key definitions and basic preliminaries
important to the reader; it should catch the reader’s interest.
- Overview of the report – describes the general outline of the report. This informs the reader what to expect, and it makes it easier to understand your material, and to make the transitions between sections.
The introduction can be seen as an extended abstract, it is generally a good idea to defer writing the introduction until the end of your project. Appears at the beginning, written at the end.
A report should contain enough detail:
For the study to be repeated. For the reader to judge them. To make it possible to transfer any of your solutions elsewhere.
Style of the Report :
Write for a target reader group, and make sure that this group will be able to understand the content easily.
When Making a choice between equally simple expressions, choose the most precise one.
When making a choice between equally precise expressions, choose the simplest one.
Be structured/organised in your presentation, i.e. make sure your report has a distinct outline.
Harvard style :
In the body of the text:
- Harvard style uses the form: author, date.
- In the text, the surname of the author and the year of the publication are given.
- Full biographical details are listed at the end of the report in the list of references.
- When citing work with more than two authors, you should, in the body of the text, only list the first author and substitute the remaining author names with “et al.”.
- When citing multiple references with the same author but with different publication years, you need only list the years, separated by “,”.
- Add “a” for the first publication, “b” for the second one, etc.
- References are listed in order of importance. If all the references are equally important, they should be listed in chronological order.
- When citing multiple references, by different authors, they are separated by “;”.
- To direct readers to an entire Web site (rather than a specific document on the site), it is sufficient to give the address of the site in a footnote.
- No reference entry is then needed.
APA Style :
n APA style the abbreviation et al. is not used in the reference list, regardless of the number of authors.
- It can be used in the parenthetical citation in the body of the text for material with three to five authors (after the initial citation, when all are listed).
- It can be used in all parenthetical citations of material with six or more authors.
- APA is more restrictive about capitalising words.
- APA style recommends the following: you should capitalise only the first word of the title of the report and of any subtitle, if there is one.
- You should capitalise names and significant words in the title of a journal (also true for book titles).
- Unpublished interviews do not need an entry in the reference list because they are what the APA calls “personal communications” and as such they do not provide recoverable data. Instead the interview is only listed within parentheses in the body of the text or in a footnote. For example, (J. Smith, personal communication, November 24, 2001)
Vancouver Style :
The Vancouver style, a.k.a. AMA style, was developed by the American Medical Association.
As opposed to the author-date format used in Harvard, the Vancouver style uses a numerical format.
In the text, the citation in the form of a number is included within square brackets.
This makes referencing simple since there are no differences in citing a reference with one or multiple authors (c.f. Harvard and APA style).
One can conceptualize information-related practices as consisting of three layers:
- Information searching – the performance of an activity such as interacting with a computer-based system (e.g. search engine), with the aim of finding information.
- Information seeking – often described as a process during which the seeker not only searches for information but also makes decisions about which information sources to use and evaluates already found information.
- Information behaviour – all human behaviour, passive or active, in relation to information and information sources.
An information search session will (hopefully) lead to a result that consists of lists of references, including abstracts, i.e. short summaries of the actual articles.
Information seeking activities:
1) planning your information search sessions, 2) carrying out the searches (information searching), 3) evaluating the results of search, and 4) (based on the outcome) planning additional searches.
Browsing: the act of following links between web pages and web sites in order to find information.
A common problem for information seekers is to formulate a focus .
This problem is caused by the fact that the information seeker is too eager to engage in the process of information seeking, so that s/he does not take the necessary time to plan and carefully define the task.
To define the core in the literature one needs to “get close to”, or learn more about, the chosen subject .
Characteristics of a good oral presentation
Include enough detail so audience can understand
Keep within allotted time
Clear, to the point, interesting, and inspiring.
Boring is more acceptable than lack of content (communicate a message rather than to entertain).
The time allowed is 20 min and that questions are asked after the presentation.
It is assumed each slide will take 2 min to present and explain.
Questions asked after the presentation can refer to the slide number.
It is not “forbidden” to look at your notes, but you should only need to look at them occasionally.
This “seven by seven” rule of thumb corresponds roughly with what most other authors suggest, and has the advantage of being easy to remember.
As part of your preparations for the defence, you may want to document some of your arguments. For example, you may want to make some extra slides of material which is not included in the presentation, but which answers questions that you think are very likely to be asked. Keep in mind, however, that this work is somewhat wasted if the particular questions are not asked, so it is not advisable to spend too much time making “backup” presentation slides.
The conclusion section should:
- Refer back to the aim and objectives
- Put results in wider context
- Analyze strengths and weaknesses
- Identify future work
gather data -> present data -> analyze data
