Assignment - Proposed Project for the Dissertation

Assignment Task
You are tasked with developing a project proposal for an undergraduate project that is related to your field of study. The proposal should contain four headings, as described in each of the tasks below. There is a strict word limit that is applied to this assignment. It is an exercise in being able to explain and justify your project in a concise manner. Failure to do this may result in a lower than desired grade or outcome.

Task 1: Project Title
For this section of your proposal, you need to provide a project title, which will be a statement that is based upon your research question. The project title may not be final and will likely be refined as the project progresses. Therefore, do not get too held up on creating a title.

Task 2: Project Topic
For your proposal, you will need to describe a topic area in the field of study that you are interested in. It is recommended that you be specific and identify a topic that is not so broad that you may have difficulty in covering it in one semester. The topic must not be so specific that the answer is already known before research is undertaken. It should be of enough substances that it will contribute towards the greater academic community.

For this task, it is important that you describe the outputs you expect the project to produce. The project report is taken as a given. For example, you may want to list: proof of concept software, results from an experiment, survey results with recommendations for action, statistical analysis of data collected, etc.

Task 3: Audience and Motivation
As part of the project proposal, you need to justify to your supervisor why the project is important and to whom it is important. The project must address a research question that will generate an artefact. This will be the main motivation for your project.

In this section, you should also address who will benefit from your findings and how they will benefit. Greater knowledge about a particular problem can be defined as a benefit, even if your audience is mainly other academics; as new data (collected using an academically rigorous process) would add to the greater body of knowledge about the topic.

Problem-based projects, i.e. working on a solution for the ‘real world', could be important to a group of users. You will need to think about how you are going to evaluate the solution as being successful.

Task 4: Primary Research Plan

This section should detail how you will go about conducting the project. You must include a primary research method. A method may include experiments, applications or software demonstrators, process models, surveys, or an analysis of generated data.

It will be expected that you provide a proposed timeline (i.e. a Gantt Chart) covering the thirteen weeks of the project. The timeline should include the project proposal, research methodologies, report writing process and if appropriate, the implementation of the project.

You will make reasonable assumptions about the amount of work you will need to do, the time taken, and not to over promise on the outcomes of the project. Most scientific research is small scale and time limited; this will be more the case with your project where you will have to manage your time with other modules.