Department of Architecture and Built Environment

Assessment Brief

Submission of work

Your completed work for assignments must be handed in on or before the due date. You must keep a copy or backup of any assessed work that you submit.  Failure to do so may result in your having to repeat that piece of work.

Electronic submission:

This is normally done via WOLF. Any special instructions will be available on the upload tag or within the assessment brief.

Paper submission:

Your assignment should be handed in at the student office on the ground floor of MI building. It should have a barcoded front cover (available via eVision) and be neatly presented, preferably in a suitable plastic cover.   Any item handed in must have, clearly written on the front:

your name and student number    

               the module number, title and the module leader’s name

               the date of submission

Penalties for late submission of coursework

Standard University arrangements apply. ANY late submission will result in the grade 0NS being allocated to the coursework.

Procedure for requesting extensions / mitigating circumstances

Retrieval of Failure

Where a student fails a module (less than 40% for undergraduate modules, less than 50% for postgraduate modules) they have the right to attempt the failed assessment(s) once, at the next resit opportunity (normally July resit period).  If a student fails assessment for a second time they have a right to repeat the module.

NOTE: Students who do not take their resit at the next available RESIT opportunity will be required to repeat the module.

Return of assignments

Assignments will be normally returned within three working weeks.

If you have any questions regarding your feedback you normally have two working weeks from the date you receive your returned assessment and/or written feedback or receive your exam results to contact and discuss the matter with your lecturer.

Cheating

Cheating is any attempt to gain unfair advantage by dishonest means and includes plagiarism and collusion. Cheating is a serious offence. You are advised to check the nature of each assessment. You must work individually unless it is a group assessment.

Cheating is defined as any attempt by a candidate to gain unfair advantage in an assessment by dishonest means, and includes e.g. all breaches of examination room rules, impersonating another candidate, falsifying data, and obtaining an examination paper in advance of its authorised release.

Plagiarism is defined as incorporating a significant amount of un-attributed direct quotation from, or un-attributed substantial paraphrasing of, the work of another.

Collusion occurs when two or more students collaborate to produce a piece of work to be submitted (in whole or part) for assessment and the work is presented as the work of one student alone.

Contents

Introduction to the assessment 4

Task 1: Critical review of literature in the form of an academic review paper for conference/journal publication. 5

Research Paper Format/Template. 6

Task 2: Research Proposal 12

Research proposal template. 13

Task 3: Data Analysis and Reporting. 14

Task 4: Reflective commentary of research process. 15

Introduction to the assessment

The assessment is a portfolio which contains four tasks. They are:

1. Critical review of literature in the form of an academic review paper for conference/journal publication

1. Research proposal writing

1. Data analysis and reporting

1. Reflective commentary on research process

Learning Outcomes assessed are:

Learning Outcome 1: Students will be able to: Select and critically analyse appropriate sources of information and data

Learning Outcome 2: Students will be able to: Advance their personal and professional knowledge and understanding of research and professional skills

Learning Outcome 3: Students will be able to: Develop advanced analytical competence at PG level of study

Learning Outcome 4: Students will be able to: Evidence their own personal knowledge through the development and presentation of a coherent research and experimentation proposal that will address open ended questions associated with new and advancing theory/practice.

Note the following:

The portfolio consisting of all the four tasks must be presented in a professional format, with pages bound together with a plastic comb (for the hardcopy), and with a University ‘Assignment Receipt / Report Form attached to the front. There is no requirement for the papers reviewed to be bound in with portfolio.

Task 1: Critical review of literature in the form of an academic review paper for conference/journal publication

Weighting: 40% overall module weighting

Brief

Using as wide a variety of information sources as possible (i.e. refereed journals, books, conference proceedings, construction press, governmental reports, web search engines, CD ROM etc.) present a 3000 word maximum (excluding references and bibliography) research paper based on a critical literature review of a subject relevant to your award (e.g. MSc CLDR, CPM, etc.).

You must read and evaluate all papers or articles and produce a critical review comparing and contrasting the following:

• Strengths and limitations of the concepts involved
• The methods, theories and models used to investigated the subject
• Conclusions and recommendations made
• Due consideration should be given to the references used, data collected and any contextualisation.

Your paper must be presented in the format of an academic conference paper. The format/template that your paper must comply with is attached (simply copy and paste your work into the template).  Your list of references cited and a separate bibliography of sources consulted should be provided at the end of the paper. All references should be presented using the Harvard format of referencing.

Your paper must contain at least 15 different literature sources (e.g. books, reports, journals, websites etc.) including at least 10 journal papers.

Your paper should be appropriately entitled e.g.:

• “A critical review of partnering in the domestic house building sector”
• “A critical review of current and emerging materials and manufacturing technologies in the automotive sector”

In your review, you should look to demonstrate trends and similarities in arguments and findings, as well as conflicts/contradictions in the literature and identify possible knowledge gaps/unanswered questions/new hypotheses/new conceptual frameworks which must then inform recommendations for further research.

Marking scheme                                                                                               Marks

• Title, abstract and Keywords 10%
• Introduction 5%
• Logic / structure of literature critique                                                            40%
• Conclusions 10%
• Quality of references (aim to encompass at least ten journal papers; use of

up-to-date, relevant sources; number and scope of information sources used) 20%

• Use / citation / accuracy of references in the text 10%
• Overall style, presentation, grammar etc. 5%

Research Paper Format/Template

Guide to Preparing a Literature Review Paper for Submission

John Smith

School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY, UK

The writing of papers is only the first step to publishing.  Getting a paper included in conference proceedings involves authors in editing and laying out their own papers.  Precise specifications for laying out the paper help to reduce the work of the conference organizers in compiling the proceedings.  Font sizes, paragraph formats and other details are specified so that proceedings can be presented in a consistent and professional style.  This document is formatted according to the guidelines, in order to provide an example for authors.

Keywords: keywords in lower case and alphabetical sequence separated by commas, finishing with full-stop.

INTRODUCTION

Each element of the document is formatted according to particular styles, which are defined by Microsoft Word in the template of the document.  If you use this document as a basis for formatting your paper, all the styles you need will be available to you.  The text of the document is in Body Text, in Normal Text.  The application of these styles is actually more important than their appearance, because any future change to the style definition automatically changes all text to which that particular style has already been applied.  This makes the re-formatting of documents extremely easy and, more important, it aids consistency.

Structure of the document

The title of the paper should be specific, making clear what the paper is about without demanding that the paper be read in order to ascertain its contents.  Although it should appear in upper-case, the style (Heading 2) will force all text to appear upper case.  if you can type it lower case (except for the initial letter and proper nouns), this will help us with the indexing of the proceedings.

The format of the title should be Heading 2, as Heading 1 is reserved for section headings in the proceedings.  Therefore, the main headings of your paper will begin at the level of Heading 3, and sub-headings will be Heading 4, and sub-sub-headings will be Heading 5.  Please do not go lower than sub-sub-headings.  If necessary, use bullet points increasing levels of detail below sub-sub-headings.

Authors

The authors should be listed, separated by commas, except for the last one, which will be separated with the word “and”.  Only use superscripts to identify different addresses.  If all the authors are from the same institution, then superscripts are not necessary.  The e-mail address of authors may be given as footnotes, in which case, please select “Options” when you are applying the footnote and set footnote numbering to re-start at the beginning of each section.  Please do not put a full-stop at the end of the authors.

Addresses

The address or addresses should follow the sequence of authors.  Please include the country, using UK rather than GB, England, United Kingdom, and please use USA for The United States of America.  All other countries should be spelled out in full.  Please do not put a full-stop at the end of the address.

Writing informative abstracts

Abstracts are often the least considered but most important part of any paper. Most readers of a journal or conference proceedings will read most of the abstracts, but very few will read the full papers. Perhaps 95% of readers will read only the abstract. The need for abstracts to be terse often causes difficulty and can taint what is otherwise a perfectly acceptable style of writing.  Certain problems are common.  Some of the recommendations here are based upon accepted good practice in abstract writing; others are simply a question of style or consistency. The following suggestions should help to reduce the need for authors to re-write their abstracts.

The abstract should not be a table of contents in prose, neither should it be an introduction. It should be informative. Tell the reader what the research was about, how it was undertaken and what was discovered, but not how the paper is organized. The main findings must be summarized. If there are too many of them, then just exemplify them in the abstract. The essential elements of the abstract are:

• Background: A simple opening sentence or two placing the work in context.
• Aims: One or two sentences giving the purpose of the work.
• Method(s): One or two sentences explaining what was done.
• Results: One or two sentences indicating the main findings.
• Conclusions: One sentence giving the most important consequence of the work.

The following guidelines have been extracted from recent criticisms of real abstracts.  This may help to overcome some of the most frequent problems:

• Do not commence with “this paper…”, “this report…” or similar. It is better to write about the research than about the paper. Similarly, do not explain the sections or parts of the paper.
• Avoid sentences that end in “…is described”, “…is reported”, “…is analysed” or similar. These are simply too vague to be informative.
• Do not begin sentences with “it is suggested that…”, “it is believed that…”, “it is felt that…” or similar. In every case, the four words can be omitted without damaging the essential message.
• Do not write in the first person in any form. Thus, not only should you avoid “I”, but also “we”, “the author”, “the writer” and so on. Again, this is because the abstract should be about the research, not about the act of writing.

Finally, here is a spoof abstract which contains some of the worst practices in abstract writing:

This paper discusses research that was undertaken in the author’s country. A theoretical framework is developed from a literature search and this is used by the authors as the basis of an analytical model. The researchers collected data within this framework and analysed it according to the precepts laid down by earlier researchers in the field. The data is used to demonstrate that our understanding can be significantly increased and this is discussed in the light of previous work. Conclusions are drawn and it is shown that these may be useful for practitioners.

Keywords

The keywords should help with indexing, so that other researchers might discover your paper by consulting an index of keywords.  In a conference on construction management, it would seem somewhat pointless to include “construction management” as a keyword.  Similarly, there is not much point in using “building industry” as a keyword.  Therefore, avoid keywords that are so vague that they would suit every paper in the conference.  On the other hand, some keywords are too specific and only one paper (yours) would appear next to an entry for such a keyword.  We need to strike a balance.  Keywords should generally be words, not phrases.  It may be helpful to choose from a list of recommended keywords for this topic.  Although this is not mandatory, Table 1 provides a list of suggested keywords that have been found to be useful and pitched at the right level between vague and unique.

The list of keywords should be preceded by the “Keywords:” and then listed alphabetically, separated by commas, with a full-stop at the end.  Please do not select more than five keywords.

INTRODUCTION of the paper

Begin the paper with statements introducing the general area and the reason that this work is important.  Explain what was important about the particular approach and how this work relates to previous work in the field.

Sub-heading

It is helpful to break the argument into steps by the use of sub-headings.  In a paper of this length, there is little to be gained from going to further levels of sub-sub-heading.  With only two levels, heading numbering is not needed.

Tables

Tables should be kept as simple as possible.  Make sure that they are referred to from the text (see Table 2).  Omit vertical lines from tables and omit grey shading and 3D effects from all tables, charts and figures.  They do not photocopy well and frequently obscure the real message.  Do not use excessive accuracy in reporting measurements and statistics.  Percentages are best as whole numbers.  Generally, two or three significant figures are adequate.

Table 2: An example of setting out a table with column headings

The style for Table and Figure captions should be Normal, reduced to 11 pt, and the style for column headings and table text should be Normal, reduced to 10 pt.  Column headings should be in bold typeface.

figures

Figures should be kept as simple as possible.  Figures should be used where relevant, but do not use them unnecessarily.  Make sure that they are referred to from the text and that they are not too complicated or large.  If your work relies on the presentation of complex graphics, then the paper can make a point with an extract from a larger graphic.  3D effects are an unnecessary distraction.  Colour will be lost in the reproduction of the proceedings and causes images to occupy a lot more disk space than monochrome.  Please so not include screen shots of computer displays.  It is better to render the relevant information into a more simple graphic or chart.

Pie charts

Pie charts are generally unnecessary as the information can be presented in one sentence of text.  If a pie chart has more than can be presented in a sentence of text, it would be better as a histogram.

Histograms (bar charts)

Histograms should be laid out without an external border, the font for text should be set to Times New Roman 12 point.  The bars should not be too far apart (this may need adjusting to reduce the white space between them, although there should be some white space).  Grid lines should be used only sparingly.  The bars should be white.  If more than one data set is represented, the second one should be black.  If several data sets are represented, each should have different cross-hatching.  Grey shading should be avoided as it reproduces badly.

Citation of references

Different information will be needed to provide an adequate reference to the various sorts of publication. Listed below are the elements that should be included in a reference to each of the most common types of publication.  Within the text of the document, work and ideas can be cited usinb hydlfujtytrewfddjg the author’s surname and year of publication.  This enables it to be looked up in the list of references at the end of the paper, sorted alphabetically, by authors’ surnames, and presented without bullets or numbers.  If the author’s name is not part of the phrasing of the sentence, then it will be in brackets with the year (Hughes 2002) whereas if you are using the author’s name as part of the text of the sentence, then only the year is in brackets.  When citing author and year together, there is no need to separate them with a comma.  The precise location within the source material can be given as page number(s) after a colon (Hughes 2002: 34-36).

All references must be cited in accordance with the University of Wolverhampton’s guidelines on the Harvard system of referencing

If you use bibliographical software, all of this formatting will be done for you.  An appropriate style file for EndNote is available.

Conclusions

Every paper should finish with conclusions, explaining the discoveries of the research and its impact.   The conclusion should follow from the work that was done.  New material should not be introduced in the conclusions, although it is often useful to refer back to earlier section so of the paper to show how the questions posed at the beginning have been answered.

PAGE NUMBERING

Your paper should have page numbers: bottom and centre on each page.

References

The list of references (i.e. sources cited in your paper) should be laid out as detailed in University of Wolverhampton ‘Harvard’ referencing guidance notes.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The list of references (i.e sources consulted during your research but not cited in your paper) should be laid out as detailed in University of Wolverhampton ‘Harvard’ referencing guidance notes.

__________________________________________________________________

Task 2: Research Proposal

Weighting: 30% overall module weighting

Based upon the literature review conducted for Part 1 of the Portfolio, compile a detailed research proposal (maximum 2500 words, excluding references and research programme) as the basis for your proposed postgraduate dissertation study.

Your research proposal must be submitted using the specified ‘template’, using the prompts in each section, to ensure that you provide all relevant information.

In this task, you are required to plan for a research. This task is assessing your ability to be able to produce a master’s level research proposal and is designed to enable you to produce the relevant documentation required for your Masters Dissertation module.

You need to think of the processes and stages you need to go through to write a robust research proposal at Masters Level.

To write the research proposal you need to do the following:

Describe the issue you want to investigate

Identify the questions you want to address

Formulate the research aim and objectives

Discuss the ethical, professional and commercial considerations

Evaluate the methods you could use and the data collection techniques

You should present your proposal drawing on the following structure:

Working title

Context and research problem (including suggested literature and theoretical frameworks)

Research questions

Research aim and objectives

Research methods for data collection

Outputs and dissemination

Project timescales

A template is provided for your use. Use the prompts in each section to ensure that you provide all relevant information.

Marking scheme                                                                                                Marks

• Well defined background and introduction 10%
• Logical and achievable research aim, objectives and hypotheses;            20%
• Realistic and achievable research methodology; 40%
• Realistic consideration of resources, restraints and limitations; 10%
• Clear and logical research strategy for dissemination;   5%
• Logical, detailed and realistic research programme; 10%
• Quality and relevance of reference sources cited.   5%

Research proposal template

GENERAL DETAILS

Note:  Add in text to ALL sections, following the guidelines given in each section, and using a minimum 10 point font, 1.5 line spacing. (Times font preferred). Do not change the margins on this form. Delete notes when complete.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

(Brief introduction to what this project is all about and explain the background and rationale for the research [including references to published sources] – maximum 500 words)

(state the general research aim,  measurable objective[s] and hypotheses [if appropriate], and explain why they are important in the context of the research – maximum 300 words)

(explain, and justify, the proposed research method(s)  [linked to your research objectives]: nature of data required, collection method[s] form[s] of analysis and reporting of results – maximum 1500 words)

(explain the  likely resources required [i.e. hardware, software, equipment, travel, consumables] and the restraints and limitations [ e.g. resources, access to data, data analysis, ethical / safety considerations] – maximum 100 words)

(explain the dissemination strategy, including beneficiaries, for the proposed dissertation and its findings – maximum 100 words)

(insert here, or add in an appendix at the end of this submission, a bar chart which indicates: principal activities to be conducted and milestone dates [e.g. submission deadlines])

(provide a list of references of material, cited in this proposal,  using the ‘Harvard’ referencing system – no word limit)

(attach a copy of your research programme as an appendix, if not included in the section above)

Task 3: Data Analysis and Reporting

Weighting: 20% overall module weighting

Brief

For this element, choose a dataset from the two options provided on WOLF: (i) Set of interview transcripts (‘Interview transcripts.zip’); or (ii) Set of completed questionnaires (‘Survey questionnaires.zip’). Extract the files within this zipped folder and import or input the dataset into an appropriate data analysis software. Complete the following tasks providing evidence where appropriate.

1. Identify the key issue(s) or question(s) that the dataset addresses.

1. Using appropriate analytical techniques, carry out an analysis of the dataset you have selected.

1. Produce a report summarising the key issue(s) or question(s) that the dataset addresses and setting out the results from your analysis and conclusions drawn from those results. Your discussions must be critical and consider the views of other commentators/writers on the subject matter.

Marking scheme                                                                                                Marks

• Brief introduction and description of data 10%
• Use of appropriate analysis technique                                                20%
• Use of appropriate tables and charts to present findings 20%
• Critical evaluation of the results 30%
• Clear and logical conclusion;                                     20%

Task 4: Reflective commentary of research process

Weighting: 10% overall module weighting

Brief

Based upon the literature review conducted for task 1 and the research proposal for task 2, reflect on the processes and stages you went through, and document how your understanding and ability to plan and undertake research has developed through the tasks and activities undertaken over the semester.

The reflective commentary should provide evidence from tasks 1 and 2 of your ability to plan and undertake high level research, your awareness and understanding of the challenges of doing research, and how to overcome such challenges.

(maximum 500 words).

Marking scheme                                                                                                Marks

• Reflection on the experience of completing tasks 1 and 2 50%
• Evidences from task 1 and 2 and other module activities 40%
• Overall style, presentation, grammar etc. 10%

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