FYP Research: Defining a Project

1. FYP Research: Defining a Project Lawrence Cleary & Íde O’Sullivan Co-Directors, Regional Writing Centre, UL www.ul.ie/rwc

2. Organisation of the talk today • Processes (research and writing) • Assessing the situation • Strategies (for negotiating the process of research and text production and for better assessing of the occasion for writing)

3. Assessing the situation • Good writers do this at the beginning of their process to get a sense of what they’re in for, what’s involved. • Aristotle would organise the assessment of the writing situation around five topics: • The occasion for writing • The topic • The audience • The purpose • The writer

4. From the FAHSS The Final Year Project (FYP) is a distinctive feature of University of Limerick undergraduate experience. The FYP presents you with an opportunity for both personal and academic development. It is probably the longest and most focused piece of research that you will undertake in your degree, and it plays an important part in determining the final award classification. The FYP is a student-driven learning experience, and it gives you the opportunity to study a topic of your own choosing in depth and at a point when you are reaching academic maturity. A successful FYP combines the skills of acquiring, managing and critically analysing information with those of planning, collating and communicating.

5. The Occasion: The FYP • The FYP is an academic research project on which the student reports. • A good FYP demonstrates the author’s ability to : • identify relevant issues in the field, • research the work that has already been done on the issue identified and summarise that work in a coherent, logical way, • develop a method of inquiry that is appropriate for the questions asked, • execute the inquiry and analyse the findings, • discuss the findings in the context of what was learned from consulting both the literature and what has been learned in the past four years in the author’s discipline, • come to conclusions that are consistent with what has already been established in the literature, what the findings revealed and what has been learned over the course of the programme.

6. Research in an Academic Context (1) • Two typical activities of academic researchers: • Taking a position on a point of contention, or • Filling a gap in the field of knowledge

7. Research in an Academic Context (2) • The inquiry can take a number of typical forms: • Claim  Defence • Question  Answer • Problem  Solution • Hypothesis  Test  Affirmation/Negation

8. Research in an Academic Context (3) • It is not only about what you know, but also about whether you have demonstrated that you are a good scholar…a good scientist. • Good science gets to the bottom of things: they choose problems that are difficult to solve, questions that may even be unanswerable—still, they try to understand the nature of things. • The goal of the research is not about being right, it’s about coming to know the nature of things through sound, methodical inquiry leading to supportable, reasoned conclusions about the world and how it works —consequently, hypotheses tested and negated are as valuable as hypotheses tested and affirmed.

9. More about the context • How many words do you need to write? (space) • What is due? When? (time) • –both crucial to know for planning purposes • What do people in your field argue about? • What are their values? E.g. What constitutes knowledge? Who has access to it? • How do they support their claims or evidence their conclusions? • Who are the experts in your area? The major leaguers?

10. The Research Brief (Week 9) “The process of selection of a project title, submission of a project brief and of a progress report shall occur in the third year of the undergraduate programme….The research brief shall include a resume of the subject matter and scope of the project, a review of sources, an outline of the methodology to be employed, a forecast of any anticipated difficulties and a core bibliography. A Project Title which is unsupported by a Research Brief is incomplete and shall not be accepted for submission. Students should receive a receipt on submission of work.” (AHSS FYP Booklet) Regional Writing Centre

11. Research Brief (Week 9) • Important considerations? • Project title • Background: resumé of the subject matter (the problem) and the scope • Research question, aims & objectives • Methodology • Anticipated difficulties • Initial bibliography Regional Writing Centre

12. Submission of title and brief • YR3 SS WK 6 Student, with the signed consent of supervisor, submits project title and a 500 word research brief to departmental office of the relevant Course Director. • What is Project Title are you contemplating or have you selected?

13. The Research Proposal (Week 13) • Should be approximately 2,000 words and should include the following information: • Title • Name of supervisor • General area of research • Research Question • Hypothesis/Claim (where applicable) • Brief literature review • Methodology (where applicable) • Structure, i.e. chapter breakdown • Reference Page/Bibliography

14. The Topic • As demonstrated earlier, the topic in an academic context is a problem, either: • something about which people disagree or • something that is not well understood, some gap in the field of knowledge. • Who talks about this problem? • What did they do to address it? • How did they do it? • What did they discover? • What remains problematic?

15. Thesis Statement • A writing exercise: • In one sentence, state the problem that your FYP will defend, answer, solve or affirm/negate. • This is your thesis statement. • The defence of the claim, the answer, the solution or the affirmation or negation is what organises the argument, hence organises the paper.

16. The Audience • Those who assess the FYP • What do they want to know about what you know? • Evidence that you can perform the programme goals • Evidence of your ability to perform many of the learning outcomes of the modules you have taken over the course of your programme • Evidence high-order cognitive processing appropriate to your level (undergraduate degree) (See Bloom’s Taxonomy) • Evidence that you have engaged with the discourse of those in your field who talk about problems that interest you • Those in the field who talk about the problem you tackled • Are you engaged in the conversations out there? • Do you talk like them? • Do you demonstrate your understanding of the values of those in your field, etc.

17. Your Purpose • To get an A • …and maybe more…

18. The Writer • What do you already know about the topic? • What are your strengths and weaknesses as a • Researcher? • Reader? • Writer? • What do you know about your process? Your strategies? • Given what you know about yourself, what part of this task causes you concern? • What should you prepare for? • And how can you do to cut the bandits off at the pass?

19. A Writer’s Process (1) • The initial stages of the process, good writers • Assess their situation, • plan, • work to identify a problem to investigate, and • Begin to gather information (from the literature—secondary sources—and from research that you design and conduct—primary sources) • You make notes • You start scratching out an outline, dividing the paper into spaces • You begin filling in those spaces • …all in an attempt to figure out whatit is that you’re trying to say. • This is Writer-based Writing

20. A Writer’s Process (2) • It is important to get your ideas down in the Writer-based Writing stage of your process. • It is important not to waste time worrying about how prosaic your expression is or how grammatical your text is or whether you spelled that word right or even it is the right word—just get the ideas down on paper. • Generate text. Fill space. • It is easier to edit than to start with a blank sheet of white A4 paper

21. A Writer’s Process (3) • Eventually, thoughts come together. The plan for the defence is clear. You have an argument and an argumentative framework. • Now, you move into Reader-based writing! Here, you know what you want to say, but you begin to be concerned about whether your meanings are clear to your audience. You begin to be concerned about how to say what you mean. • Here we’re looking at style, format, logical flow from section to section and paragraph to paragraph and sentence to sentence. • Concision, precision with language. Explicitness. Etc.

22. A Writer’s Process (4) • Reader-based writing focuses on • Global revision • Local revision • Editing, proofing • Nobody’s process is linear; writing involves iteration and reiteration, advances and retreats, moving back and forth between planning and revision, revision and drafting, editing and gathering information. It is a back and forth process. • Everyone’s process is unique because their strategies for negotiating the process is what works for them.

23. Strategies • Borrowing from Rebecca Oxford (1990), we talk about writing strategies using her categories to talk about language-learning strategies. • Metacognitive • Procedural • Cognitive • Affective • Social Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies. London: Longman.

24. Writing to prompts (Murray 2005) • “A topic in my discipline that I would like to research is …” (Why?) or (if I know my research question) • “What am I arguing? And am I taking a position similar to some in the literature or verifying something that we already know? Or am I proposing new knowledge? Taking a position unique when compared to positions taken in the literature?” • Keep writing non-stop for 5 minutes. • Write in sentences. • Do not edit or censor your writing. • Discuss what you have written in pairs. Murray, R. (2005). Writing for Academic Journals. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Regional Writing Centre

25. Writing a ‘page 98 paper’ • My research question is … • Researchers who have looked at this subject are … • They argue that … • Debate centres on the issue of … • There is work to be done on … • My research is closest to that of X in that … • My contribution will be … Murray (2006, p. 104) Murray, R. (2006). How to Write a Thesis, 2nd Edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press Regional Writing Centre