Transcript Workshop 2
Final Year Projects 2: Choosing and elaborating your chosen topic Final Year Projects Very useful on-line source: http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199259380/0 1student/research_project_guide/ Final Year Projects Most important single lesson to start… You must locate a project in a literature base (i.e. there must have been several books, articles, reports that you can use to contextualise and use as a background for your study. Final Year Projects Second most important lesson: Your FYP should always be cast in the form of a question (and not just an area). Your FYP is, in effect, one long extended answer to the question that you have proposed eg. ‘Does good CRM confer competitive advantage in the retail sector ‘ NOT just ‘CRM in the Retail sector’ Final Year Projects Third most important lesson: The project needs to be the right scale ie. Not too ambitious in scope (too large! Or general) or too limited (a case study of one company) If you have detailed information about a company (you may have worked in it) use this in case-study chapters to illustrate the more general processes you are working through in the rest of the FYP Final Year Projects The first stages of researching a project can be frustratIng! Be prepared to: - Research ideas to see what is available - Refine your approaches - And keep ‘iterating’ i.e. repeating this process! Final Year Projects Final Year Projects Something to think about: The average ocean depth is 12,200’ (3720 metres) How much does ‘Google’ access when it ‘trawls’ across the surface.. 37 metres (10%) 930 metres (25%) 1860 metres (50%) Final Year Projects Answer: None of the above. The real answer is: 7.5 metres out of an average depth of 3720 metres (i.e.the surface web is 1/500th of the depth of the deep web) See the following URL: http://www.brightplanet.com/technology/deepweb.as p#35 Final Year Projects Proportion of ‘total web’ trawled is (expressed as a percentage: xx.x% But GOOGLE only ‘captures’ about 16% of the surface web (say 1/6th) So the proportion of the total web NOT captured by GOOGLE (to two places of decimals is) xx.xx%: and your reaction to this is: (write in!) Final Year Projects Saunders et. al: Research Methods for Business Students Rational thinking: Examining your own strengths and interests Looking at past project titles Discussion Searching the literature Final Year Projects Saunders et. al: Research Methods for Business Students Creative Thinking: Keeping a notebook of ideas Exploring personal preferences using past projects Relevance trees Brainstorming And finally…. Any questions?