Assignment - Short literature review

Aim of the assignment:

This assignment has been designed to help students practice performing a literature review and synthesising concisely their reading of multiple academic research articles on one specific topic. The short description of a few connected research articles that the students have to write will help develop an improved research writing (which is drastically different than a standard engineering report writing).

Description of the assignment:

In this exercise, you are asked to review at least 3 research articles from a research topic of your choice - preferably one linked to the 3 areas taught in the module: Particle engineering, On-line/In-situ measurements and Colloid engineering.

Your discussion (typically one or two paragraph(s) only) should give a structured discussion of the chosen research area. Feedback on the way you have written your short review will be given to help you improve on your research writing, in particular:
o How concise your writing is;
o How clear and structured your writing is;
o How effectively your writing highlights the important features of the chosen research area.
o Use the ≥ 3 articles altogether to illustrate and justify your response.

ALL ARTICLES USED AS A BASIS FOR THIS SHORT LITERATURE REVIEW SHOULD BE REFERENCED AT THE END OF YOUR DOCUMENT (AND IN THE TEXT WHEN THEY ARE REFERRED TO) USING NUMERICAL REFERENCING.

The 300 word limit includes the document title and tables/figuresbut does NOT include the references, the figures, or the caption to the figures you may wish to include in your document.

• What is expected from you in this assignment:

o To first think of suitable research area for you to review and to use a specific title highlighting the chosen research area for this submission;

o To search for a range of articles that specifically address challenges or results belonging to this research area and that you want to highlight/write about;

o To think about a clear structure for your 300 words summarising the points you want to highlight from the chosen research area - for example this can simply be a way to highlight benefits and drawbacks of certain materials or a measurement technique but can also be much more specific and highlight differences in performance between different experimental/process conditions;

o To concisely and clearly describe the main points to be taken away from the range of academic journal articles you have chosen to read and reference in your submission - an academic journal database such as is best suited to search for academic research articles;

o Include at least one figure representative of what your write-up wants to highlight (which can simply be taken/pasted from the articles being reviewed as long as they are accurately referenced in the figure caption);

o Re-write the legend of the figures ‘borrowed' from the articles being reviewed so that their content can be understood in the context of your own review (i.e. which is no longer the context of the original research article).

o Provide as much detail as possible in the legend of each figure so that the figure contents can be understood well without having to refer to the text.