300/303COM Detailed project proposal
The objective of the detail project proposal is to help you refine your general research question down to a well-focused and achievable piece of practical research work.
The first section: “Defining your research project” focuses on your research question and the plan for conducting your primary method. The second section: “Abstract and Literature Review” is to help you identify current academic sources of literature that are highly relevant to your project and to help you get a head-start in producing your literature review.
Your detailed project proposal will be graded in the second semester – however, it is highly recommended that you submit it by the end of the first semester (04/01/2016) in order to obtain detailed supervisor feedback on your project.
There is no suggested word length for the detailed proposal – although 2000-2500 words would be in order.
The Detailed Project Proposal is worth 20% of the project mark.
300/303COM Detailed Project Proposal
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Section one: Defining your research Project
1.1 Detailed research question
Help: Your detailed research question is the statement of a problem within the computing domain which you will address in your project. Refining the research question involves narrowing down an initial question until it is answerable using a primary research method(s) that you will conduct during the time of your project. The refined research question must not be so general that it is answerable with a yes or no answer. It must not be so broad that you would be unable to achieve a solution during your project. The key to this is BEING SPECIFIC: Narrow down the method or technology you will use, narrow down the group that the question refers to (localize a general question) If the project is still ‘too big’, can you think of a way to work on a part of the problem? Avoid using words that cannot be measured, by you, without a huge research budget e.g. ‘effects on society’, ‘effects on business’. Example: The initial question “Does cloud computing effect business” needs narrowing down (for a start the answer is yes) What is meant by cloud computing? Or ‘effect’? Or ‘business’, in this question? Refining this first question will involve narrowing it down to something you, personally, can measure. A refined version of this question might be: “Does implementing a cloud based voting system improve the speed of decision making in a small company in Coventry?” This refined question is implementable: You can now identify a small company to work with, document their current decision making processes, implement a cloud based voting system, compare decision making speeds over a limited time period (say 1 month) and evaluate your findings. A small piece of genuinely new knowledge is produced.
1.2 Keywords
Help: Include up to 6 keywords separated by a semi-colon; what keywords are appropriate to describe your project in an online database like Google Scholar? Keywords should include the general research area and the specific technologies you will be working with. Example. A project that proposes a novel way of visualising large amounts of twitter feed data may have the keywords: Data visualisation; twitter; hashtags; database design; graphics libraries. For further help take a look at the ACM keywords list http://www.computer.org/portal/web/publications/acmtaxonomy
1.3 Project title
Help: The project title is a statement based on your detailed research question. For example, the research question ‘to what extent does a mobile application reduce the number of errors made in class registers at Coventry University in comparison to current paper based registers’ may be stated in the project title: “A Wi-Fi driven mobile application for large group registers using iBeacons”.
1.4 Client, Audience and Motivation:
Help: Why is this project important? To whom is this project important? A research project must address a research question that generates a small piece of new knowledge. This new knowledge must be important to a named group or to a specific client (such as a company, an academic audience, policy makers, people with disabilities) to make it worthwhile carrying out. This is the motivation for your project. In this section you should address who will benefit from your findings and how they will benefit. Example: If you intend to demonstrate that a mobile application that automates class registers at Coventry University will be more efficient than paper based registers – the group who would be interested in knowing/applying these findings would be both academic and administrative staff at Coventry University and they would benefit by time saved and a reduction in their administrative workload. If you are making a business case for an organization explain how the organisation will benefit from your findings.
1.5 Primary Research Plan
Help: This is the plan as to how you will go about answering your detailed research question – It must include a primary research method (an extended literature review is not an acceptable primary method). Think and plan logically. Primary methods may include experiments, applications or software demonstrators, process models, surveys, analysis of generated data …
Example: In the class register example above “to what extent does a mobile application reduce the number of errors made in class registers at Coventry University in comparison to current paper based registers” – the research plan may involve: 1) Collecting and analysing paper based registers in a given class on five occasions. 2) Identifying the error rate average on these occasions 3) Designing and implementing a mobile application that automatically records attendance in class. 4) Deploying the application in the class on five occasions. 5) Identifying the error rate average of the mobile application on these occasions. 6) Comparison of data and summary of findings.
This is the end of section one.
Section Two: abstract and Literature review (1500 words suggested)
2.1 Abstract
Help: An abstract is a short summary of a research project that enables other researchers to know if your report or research paper is relevant to them without reading the whole report. It is usually written retrospectively so that it can include findings and results. It is fully expected that you will rewrite your abstract when you come to write your final paper. For now, you should write an abstract of about 250 words that define the project described in section one. Before writing your abstract you MUST read some abstracts from conference or journal papers on Google Scholar or from portal.acm.org (to understand their style) and then provide your own abstract that outlines what your question is and what you ‘did’ to answer it.
2.2 Initial/Mini Literature Review (500 words – 750 words)
Help: A literature review is a select analysis of current existing research which is relevant to your topic, showing how it relates to your investigation. It explains and justifies how your investigation may help answer some of the questions or gaps in this area of research. A literature review is not a straightforward summary of everything you have read on the topic and it is not a chronological description of what was discovered in your field. Use your literature review to:
- compare and contrast different authors’ views on an issue
• criticise aspects of methodology, note areas in which authors are in disagreement
• highlight exemplary studies
• highlight gaps in research
• show how your study relates to previous studies
2.3 Bibliography (key texts for your literature review)
Help: Please provide references, in correct Harvard style, for at least three key texts that have informed your literature review. If you are implementing an application, select texts which demonstrate how other researchers have tackled similar implementations? The references should be recent and sufficiently technical or academic. Your markers will be looking for you to identify technical reports, conference papers, journal papers, and recent text books. Avoid Wikipedia entries, newspaper reports that do not cite sources, and general or introductory texts.
