Instructions.

This is a 10 hour unit (normally in two sessions of 4 hours and one of 2 hours) designed to help you with the process of research for your assignments and, most of all, for your placement report.

1. During our first timetabled session together you should:

• Watch the first 3 of my video mini-lectures / listen to me talking you through them.  [Subject to not being in confinement again], I will deliver them as lectures in class, but I will leave the videos for reference and ‘just in case‘ [all three can be found HERE] on the following topics:

• N°1: The Driven Process . You really need to understand the underpinning logic of the research process and why we do research in the first place. I am offering and recommending to you that you work at fully understanding and following this thing I call a ‘Driven Process‘ as it will keep you on target (it is easy to lose one’s way in research!).  Here is a phase-based representation of this process which you might be interested in looking at while I am talking you through it on the video.
  • Phase 1.  Your interests drive the topic choice and title selection.  The title then drives the Aims and Objectives.
  • Phase 2. The Aims and Objectives drive the selection of the secondary literature you research, review and critique.  In turn the literature review (in fact what does NOT exist currently) drives your Research Gap / Primary Research Requirement.
  • Phase 3.  The Primary Research Requirement drives your Methodology, and the Methodology drives the survey and questionnaire design and administration.
  • Phase 4. The survey responses drive the structure for your data presentation which, in turn drives the data interpretation/explanation, analysis and evaluation.
  • Phase 5. Your data evaluation drives the drawing of conclusions which (along with your creativity) drives the all-important recommendations.

• N°2: Choosing a Title that will work. (same link to video found HERE – just scroll a little further). I will talk you through it in class.

• N°3: Establishing Aims and Objectives. (same link found HERE – just scroll a little further still). I will talk you through it in class once again…

NB. I have also written something on choosing titles and aims and objectives  if you prefer to digest written words.

• You must choose a topic / an area to study that potentially interests you as an item for your assignment in this course.

NB. this topic does NOT have to be linked to MICAI or indeed to the commercial world (in fact, for variety’s sake I would even prefer it NOT to be directly MICAI-linked!).  It is your own personal interest which is of paramount importance here… [if it were me, for example I would probably be doing something to discover why, as a guitarist, a different guitar almost always makes me play (and thus compose) differently … and whether this is just me or might it be common to other guitarists ?]. 

2. Then, before/ready for our second class

• you will refine and focus down your chosen area of study/interest to create an ‘excellent’ title following my instructions.

• You will do this in accordance with the ideas and principles in my video on framing titles (and my lectures, of course) and explain and justify it using the techniques discussed in my lecture on the subject and my Research R1 materials online: question to answer / problem to solve / hypothesis to test etc.
• You will also develop and explain a set of between 4 and 7 Aims and Objectives [A & O] which PERFECTLY and ENTIRELY reflect the title you have chosen: no more and no less.

3. In our second class:

• You will come  prepared to present your draft titles and A&O to me and to your colleagues in order to receive feedback and constructive critique from your colleagues and myself.  NB. Clearly I will not have time to comment on everyone’s ideas – my intention is to go through quite a number of your propositions and give feedback so that you can all ‘get the idea‘ and that you can help refine each other’s initial ideas. In class I will talk you through my Intro to Research video mini-lectures page: just keep steadily scrolling down and through them…or you can review them ‘asynchronously‘ at your pleasure….
  • N°4: Literature Review and Research Gap
  • N°5: Methodology
  • N°6: Data Presentation, Interpretation/Explanation, Analysis & Evaluation
  • N°7: Conclusions and recommendations

• In addition, in class you will take time to seek out at least one good source in the existing literature for each A&O you have identified, explaining why you have chosen it/them and identify key quotations from such sources which you might think about using and cite, attribute and reference them properly in your text and in a bibliography using the Harvard Referencing System (See Bournemouth University’s Guide to this referencing system and my video on the subject of why you absolutely HAVE to use a recognised referencing system).

At this point you have all the input from me and all the prepartion work you need to be able to complete your assignment.

This is what you must submit in your final class:-

Background.  Imagine that you are writing a ‘Project Proposition’ to send to your ‘Prof. Référant‘ to introduce/explain to him WHAT you are thinking of doing as a subject for your ‘Rapport de Stage’ / Mémoire, WHY you are intending to do it, HOW you think you might go about it and WHERE you are heading: what is the ‘end point‘ or the ‘research baby‘ you intend to deliver?   As I have said before, you need to give us a fair bit to go on so that we can give you advice and, hopefully, a ‘green light‘ to go ahead. If we don’t know the what, the why, the where and the how it will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to give you and detailed advice.

Requirements. Your Project Proposition will involve the following (MOST of which will be familiar from the above association of lectures and pre-recorded videos, work in class, my  links and webpages):

• A well articulated title
• An explanation of the title: WHAT are its foci, its scale and scope (limits maybe) and the definition of any key terms you might be using.  You may also need to explain what is not in the title…
• A rationale for the title choice: WHY you believe it is interesting / necessary and WHY you are well placed to be able to do it justice.  WHERE you are going with it: a clear idea of what the end point / outcome of the research should be (what is the research ‘baby‘ you hope to bring to birth).
• A clear and logically-sequenced, bullet-pointed, non-overlapping set of Aims and Objectives which, taken together, directly and entirely address the title: no more and certainly no less!
• Deliver an abridged review of the secondary literature where you:
  • identify one good source from the existing literature for each and every one of the Aims and Objectives
  • explain why these are trustworthy sources and how they shed light on the particular A&O to which they relate
  • Cite these sources in your text in the form of quotations using the Harvard Referencing system for their attribution.  Also provide the full bibliographic reference for the source in a Bibliography. NB. For the purposes of this exercise, ONLY the Harvard Referencing System will be accepted.
  • IMAGINE what sorts of Research Gaps you might find [if you were to do a full Literature Review (i.e. where the existing literature is unlikely to shed much light on certain, more specific Aims or Objectives)] and list these with a very brief explanation.
  • Taking these Research Gaps into consideration, what sort of Methodology might you employ to fill these gaps.  Explain and justify your choice of methodology.

NB. I am NOT asking you to DO all this research (bar searching for a small number of  sources in the literature), rather I am asking you to explain the WHAT, WHY and HOW you might attack your chosen title.

DUE DATE,  FORMAT & ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

LENGTH:  This should be no more than 4 pages (plus 1 x page of Bibliography)  of A4 in 12pt.  I won’t penalise something if it is slightly shorter but is well edited and still meets all the requirements but I will penalise overrun..

FORMAT: WORD or PDF

DUE DATE.  Hand to me in our final Intro to Research class  without fail, please – penalties for lateness will be applied in fairness to all who have complied with the deadline.   This is a relatively short deadline, but I believe it to be appropriate for a number of good reasons:

1. all of my lecture and video material is up there for you from day one
2. there is very little time-consuming researching involved
3. this all relies more on your thinking than in depth reading
4. our coursework ‘in class time‘ will have enabled you to rehearse most of your answer with the benefit of formative feedback from me in the first two sessions.

TRANSMISSION.   In hard copy – handed to me in person in our last class…(18/10 in 2023)  .  I will then hand them back with marks and comments in my next class wth you in Intercultural Marketing after the Toussaint Holidays.

CRITERIA.  Inter alia, the following are involved:

• level of understanding of the nature and ‘flow’ of research and ability to understand and incorporate/apply the pinciples provided in the classroom and video lecture programme.
• ability to engage with and respond to the specific instructions given above
• particular attention will be paid to the ability to cite, attribute and reference properly using the Harvard system.
• ACID TEST: If I or one of my colleagues received this as a REAL Project Proposition, would I/we understand it, be convinced by it and prepared to give it the proverbial ‘green light‘  in full confidence that the student was capable of making  success of it…… (or not) ?

AFTERWORD

OK… so that is the lecture programme and your assignment ‘sewn up’… but there is still more to say on the subject. It doesn’t all finish when you take your pen off the full-stop at the end of the last lne of your recommendations…..

Please look again at my video lectures page :

Look at Videos 8 ‘Research Wrap’  and 9a + 9b which looks at the process of dealing with tutors etc and is called ‘Start to Finish’.   These might help you to identify what you should be doing and when…when it comes to the actual research in M2S2.

I have recently updated my series of research lectures for students on internship and organised them in a somewhat clearer, chronological order.  They are accessible under the ‘stagiaires’ tab on Tonyversity for further reference, but, for into and ease of access: here they are:-

Research Introduced: the what, the why and the how.  https://youtu.be/bf4A66pUmj0

Gathering ideas:   https://youtu.be/GsLpWLkpV1s

Title and A&O and why they are of critical importance:  https://youtu.be/f1R76qRmB8Y

Measurement and its significance:  https://youtu.be/Ki3yeWrZO88

Introduction  – setting it all up ‘right‘:  https://youtu.be/t3LNDdnl6Ik

Literature Review/ Secondary Research and the ‘Research Gap’: https://youtu.be/WYDSXqyp41E

Primary Research Methodology:  https://youtu.be/-9wNg4LMfLM

Questionnaires & Interviews:   https://youtu.be/j1CJe9M97ws

Data Presentation, Interpretation, Analysis, Evaluation and synthesis:  https://youtu.be/a0pVodcj_0E

Drawing Conclusions:  https://youtu.be/PFZ4sVBqnMU

Making Recommendations:  https://youtu.be/lX7PSbFQswM

Final Check & Submission:    https://youtu.be/cuvXil-3Phc

I hope these will be of use to you in M1, M2, on internship and beyond….

T