Assessment 1: Short Report
- 1,000 words
- 20% of total Unit marks
Brief:
Your objective in the two Applied Research Reports Units is to complete a professional report presenting industry specific research that is practical and relevant to the needs of targeted stakeholders. Typically, you will negotiate with your Tutor a topic that will directly help you to advance your professional career.
This Unit and the following Unit require you to focus intensely on a professional or industry management problem/issue/opportunity. This may apply to a single organisation (private or government), an industry or sector, or society broadly.
Choose a topic in which you are interested as you will be working on the topic for six assessment tasks over the entire duration of both research project units.
Specifically, this assessment task 1 is designed to assist you to develop your research skills and firm up your Research Problem and your Research Question. Importantly, this is your opportunity to ensure that whatever topic you choose has sufficient literature published, so that you can complete your overall Research Report. The Problem and Question will flow through everything you do in this Unit, even to the Research Report which is the final assessment Item in your second Applied Research Project Unit.
The topic areas:
The research topic areas and specific research questions from which students may choose at the commencement of Applied Research Project I are drawn from the research activities of the SCU Engineering unit. The research questions and tasks are drawn from the following topic areas:
- Smart city management
- Sustainable energy
- Local government service delivery
- Risk management in EIAM
- Resilience engineering
- Engineering infrastructure asset management
- Social licence to operate
- Stewardship of critical infrastructure
- Engineering for sustainability
- Waste management
Administration:
- Start writing early and discuss often with your Tutor.
- Attach the cover-sheet that SCU requires all students to place on the front of all Assignments.
- Commence your paper with a title-page. The title-page is the front page that all authors put on the reports and papers that they write as professionals. The title-page contains a title, plus your name as author.
- Apply the report structure indicated in the ensuing pages.
- The Header must contain your name and your student number.
- The Footer must contain the Unit number i.e. PROJ6002 and the page number.
- Page numbering commences after the title-page.
- Please review the attached Marking Rubric so that you meet all the requirements.
Title
This must directly relate to your research question/s.
1.0 Introduction
As you have been taught in earlier Units this introduction explains briefly what the paper will cover. In this instance it will describe the problem, where it is situated (an industry, organisation or even a nation) and will briefly give a sense of why digging into this problem is worthwhile. As is the case with any academic paper you will be justifying your statements and explaining the problem in much greater detail later in the paper.
2.0 Research Problem
This can be a problem/issue/opportunity involving a single organisation (private or government), an industry or sector, or society broadly.
In this section you need to clearly identify and articulate what the real, pressing problem is. Our experience as Researchers is that by assembling the Literature you may change your mind as to what, precisely, the Research Problem is. That is quite legitimate, and you should be open to this happening as you go through this researching process several times.
In this paragraph you need to identify two main, closely related things:
- Why is it important to solve this problem?
- How can your research help industry or society?
3.0 Research Question (s)
So that you know what you are seeking to achieve before you design your research approach, and so that you can clearly communicate this to your employer (for a business report) or academic supervisor you must establish a precise research question/s.
You will continually align everything you do with this question/s.
Often, a thorough exploration of the literature (such as you will perform in Assessment 2) results in the researcher adjusting their Research Question. This is quite legitimate as it is a decision based on additional knowledge.
4.0 Uniqueness of this research
This section briefly reports on what other researchers have done in this area and establishes that your proposed topic is unique. The argument for uniqueness is established through a short review of the existing literature on the proposed topic and related topics. Your ability to establish such an argument supports the case that this is truly research and not simply a consulting exercise.
6.0 Conclusions
In a final paragraph, synthesize the meaning that you take from each article into the main point you seek to make about the problem. This paragraph will finish with a strong indication (at a high level) as to how you are going to address the Research Problem.
7.0 References
Please apply an appropriate referencing system in strict accordance with recognised guidelines.
