初年次ゼミナールⅡ(PEAK)

Week 1: Introduction Contents of the course. Assessments. Interest-driven research. Research Ethics. Purposes Statements. Week 2: Literature Reviews From Purpose Statements to Research Question(s). Group Work: critique draft purpose statements. Week 3: State of the Art, Frontiers of Knowledge. Literature Reviews, Annotated Bibliographies. Hypotheses and Intentions. Group Work: critique draft research questions. Week 4: Refining research questions and hypotheses: Capacity, Capability. Resources: time, expertise, access, consumables. Group Work: critique draft annotated bibliography Week 5: Planning Research Projects Resource identification, scheduling of resource uses, risk identification and amelioration/ mitigation. Group Work: critique draft annotated bibliography (again) Week 6: Executing Research Plans: No plan survives contact with the enemy. Group work: discuss draft research plans Week 7: Stop Working and Start Thinking: Real Research. Group Work: critique draft research plans

In-person lectures (all sessions) In-class group work

While students are allocated to groups for group-work within class, and in the hope that this will also provide mutual support outside class-time, all assessments in this course are individual. Research Purpose Statement (25%) A 300–500 word document, with up to five references, explaining the basic reason that this research should be done. This should focus on the expected outcomes of the research, including some reference to the benefit to society that would accrue if the research were to be undertaken. Research Question(s) Statement (25%) A 150-300 word document, with no references, describing the specific questions that the research would attempt to answer. Annotated Bibliography (25%) A 500–1200 word document explaining between three and five key references and their relationship to the proposed research. For sample annotated bibliographies see the Purdue University guide (https://owl.purdue.edu/*****). Note that this submission should use the Harvard referencing style although those samples cover other styles. Full Research Plan (25%) A document of up to 3000 words, with references, that includes revised versions of the earlier submissions together with specific hypotheses or intentions, a research plan describing the resources needed to carry out the proposed research as well as a schedule and a risk register with ameliorations.

Students will understand the differences between research purposes, research questions, research hypotheses (science/social science) and research intentions (social science/humanities). Students will be able to perform limited but focussed literature searches and reviews, and produce annotated bibliographies as a foundation on which to build literature reviews for dissertations/papers. Students will be able to produce a basic plan for a project to answer research questions and achieve research purposes. This is an exercise and while students are free to use all or part of the research plan produced in this course for their graduation thesis, there is no requirement for it to be connected in any way.

The lecturer is an experienced researcher with a doctorate in Computer Science, a Masters degree in Law and 25 years research experience post-doctorate. He has received research funding from UK, EU and Japanese agencies and published over fifty papers.