Digital Transversal Skills: Designing, Developing, and Delivering a Research Project Report

Minimum Intended Learning Outcomes

This CA will assess student attainment of the following minimum intended learning outcomes:
1. Understand various digital tools and technologies, the purposes they serve, and how they can be used efficiently and effectively to achieve specific goals. 

2. Evaluate information across a range of media; recognise when information is needed; locate, synthesise and use information effectively both as an individual and within a multicultural team, for a variety of purposes.
3. Discuss the legal and ethical issues associated with technology use, combined with one’s ability to apply this knowledge to achieve balance and integrity both within a team and in the workplace.
4. Plan multiple goals, collaborative tasks and inputs, while understanding and adhering to constraints of time, resources and systems.
5. Identify the essential elements in a problem as well as the interaction between those elements, and use digital tools to facilitate analysis.

This assignment requires students to design, develop and deliver a piece of academic research appropriate to an NFQ Level 7 standard. The research project will require students to identify a topic area of interest, create a research question/title, leading to a literature review in which the research area is explored and concluded. The initial findings of the literature review will inform the creation of a digital research questionnaire in which students will have the opportunity to capture empirical research data from their peers within class. This in turn will enable students to complete their academic research project based on a literature review together with the findings analysed from their questionnaires.
The assignment is divided into TWO parts, which are as follows:
Part 1: Research Project Report
Part 1 requires the student to create a Research Project Report incorporating a literature review. This project report should be between 1500 and 2500 words (appendix items and reference list are not included in the word count). You are required to identify a topic area of interest that should be framed as a research interest in search of new understanding. The research project should address at least one research question, although you may have subquestions. You can use any sources you wish to help frame your work, ultimately you are performing the investigation so you must decide on which source material is the most appropriate in addressing your research question(s). A suggested table of contents for the Research Project Report is as follows:
1. Introduction (briefly describe the general area you are investigating, and why)
2. Research Question (what is the specific thing you are trying to find/prove? You may have more than one question)
3. Literature Review (main body of work – you need to cite your sources of information in here and connect elements together etc.)
4. Questionnaire Analysis (this is where you can present the findings from your questionnaire including discussion as necessary).
5. Findings and Conclusions (did you find an answer to your research question(s)? Consider what you found in the literature, and what you found in your questionnaire results).
6. Further Research (this is the section to add some reflection on the research you conducted, and what you suggest needs further investigation etc.)

Part 2: Research Questionnaire
During the completion of your Literature Review, you should now have the basis for performing an empirical investigation to capture data for examination that may support or challenge the initial findings from your literature review. Your peers within your Digital Transversal Skills module will be asked complete this questionnaire. The specific requirements/considerations for this element are as follows:
1. You are required to develop a research questionnaire which should be structured and must contain no more than 15 questions.
2. We recommend that you use Microsoft Forms or Google Forms to create the questionnaire.
3. The questionnaire should include a variety of completion criteria, i.e. tick boxes and rating scales.
4. The questionnaire should be easily to follow and complete, i.e. wording and layout. You should engage in a pilot with a peer to test your questionnaire before general release.
5. Ethical considerations should be made regarding leading questions, or questions that may cause harm to others.