Assessment 1: Project context and proposal (25%)
You will complete an individual professional project that contains a number of cumulative components, and Assessment 2 will build on the components assembled in Assessment 1. You will be given significant feedback and feedforward during and after Assessment 1, which you must use to develop Assessment 2.
In this unit, you will demonstrate a synthesis of the knowledge, learning, business research methodologies, and professional skills that you have acquired and practiced throughout your Masters course. In particular, this unit builds upon your previous work in the unit Research in Business, however, this time you will actually do a research project. The Professional Project will be based SOLELY on secondary sources of information. You will work independently (although within a structure) to plan, carry out and report on an investigation that addresses an issue or problem in business relevant to your future profession (this will be one of the following: marketing, accounting or management/human resource management). Throughout the term, your independent study will be supported by Moodle resources (particularly for external students) and interactions with a campus tutor/lecturer, who will provide guidance.
Assessment 1: Project context and proposal (40%)
This assessment will be completed in two steps.
Step 1, worth 15% of total unit marks.
This assignment requires you to submit, in week 4, a single page project plan. This project plan will contain three components:
A] A ‘field of research’ which pertains to your understanding of your profession. This short statement will include how this field relates to the work of your profession and an industry.
B] A source of secondary data linked to their chosen field of research. Students will be required to either include a website with a link to a publicly available secondary data set, or a short description of how they will use publicly available sources as secondary data.
C] A research question or questions that can be answered with the secondary data set they identified, including a clear expression of the variables you will be using, and the relationships you plan to explore.
D] The search terms you propose to use in Google Scholar to identify literature in the field of the research question.
E] You will be asked to pick five articles that arise from the result of your search that you will think be suitable sources to write a literature review in the area of your field of research. You will be asked to write two sentences that combine at least three of these sources (referenced correctly) and provide the (at least three) sources in a reference list.
Step 2, worth 25% of total unit marks. Maximum 1750 words.
For this assignment you will be asked to prepare a short literature review (up to 1500 words plus references) that places their project within the context of their profession and industry, and ends with a focused field of study or research aim, and at least one research question. PLUS, you will be asked to clearly describe their research plan, including their proposed method of analysis.
Your assignment will be marked on the following eight criteria, with the weighting given on the rubric (see above):
o Professional presentation and accuracy of work
o Quality and appropriateness of references, and accuracy of referencing
o Feasibility of project within time-frame
o Aim and objectives/research questions
o Preliminary critical literature review
o Organisation of the project
o Written communication
o Evidence of tutor/lecturer engagement