Module Assessment and Options - Dissertation and Placement Project

Number of attempts

1. To identify, determine and justify a disciplinary-relevant project, including its aims, scopes and objectives.
2. To self-manage research, including managing the supervisory process.
3. To understand how to identify and synthesise the relevant conceptual and methodological techniques from the degree programme, using a range of sources and data, applying them to them to a particular topic, case or organisation.
4. To show and review the results or the project, including drawing appropriate conclusions and recommendations, and assessing their impacts.
5. To understand the ethical request process and apply it appropriately to the research project.

Number of attempts

Under the Standard University Assessment Regulations (UAR20) students have two opportunities to be assessed and to pass this module. If a student has not achieved a pass in this module after the resit, no further opportunities are available and the student will be withdrawn from the course.

To pass this module, you must achieve a final overall mark of at least 40%. Failure to achieve a pass after the second attempt will result in the student being withdrawn from the course.

Option 1: Dissertation

A dissertation is an academic document created as a consequence of a student carrying out a research project based on a 2,000 word proposal. It is an extended piece of academic writing of approximately 8,000 words on a topic of your own choice, which has to be related to the subject area of your degree programme. The fact that youchoose the topic and focus of your research makes  this piece of work very different from any of your other modules where your ability to choose what you write about is restricted in some way. It also differs significantly from other modules in the expectation that you take full responsibility for the whole of the work: its organisation, subject area and content, the production of the literature review, the design of the methodology, the research activities, the analysis of results, the discussion of consequences, etc.

Beyond the learning outcomes of this module, the integrated business research project allows you to develop and explore your own area of interest within your degree programme and it can become  a useful calling card for employment, graduate training schemes or further study. As you are in control of the process, (from problem definition through to the design of data collection and analysis in order to shed light on that problem), the integrated research project allows you to refine and  consolidate your research and communications skills. In fact, you should see that the whole process is highly relevant to many key employability skills.

Option 2: Placement Project

A placement project is also an academic document created as a consequence of a student carrying out an integrated business research project. It is an extended piece of academic writing of approximately 8,000 words on a topic of your own choice, which has to be related to the context of your placement experience and fit the subject area of your degree programme. This option is therefore only available to students who carried out a placement in an organisation in their sandwich year. The only real difference between a dissertation and a placement project is that placement students who choose this option are required to contextualise their research study within the setting of their placement. This decision on what you do and how you do this will be influenced by how directly you intend to build from your work placement organisation and the experience you gained there.

Simply put, former placement students have two choices within Option 2:

1. You can choose an issue directly related to your work experience organisation and enjoy the benefit of your own access to information of the organisation to resource your work. This may involve the job role(s) you actually carried out there and the data and information you had access to at the time.
2. You may consider that the industry/sector setting of your placement experience may provide you with your focus for your placement project rather than a very specifically defined issue affecting your placement organisation. This choice may be suitable for you if you have less access to primary data related to the placement organisation because it may have been regarded as too sensitive for publication.

Required task(s)

To carry out an original piece of research under the guidance of your supervisor which is accounted for on in a final report document. You are entitled to attend up to 8 group supervisory meetings along with written feedback on your proposal (for Option 1) / introduction (for Option 2), literature review, methodology and analysis/discussion.

Initial topic idea or research area

All students are required to submit an initial topic idea or research area on Moodle by 9am on Monday 5 th October 2020. This will enable the module leader to allocate you a suitable supervisor.

Proposal (Option 1 only)

Dissertation students should upload their proposal on Moodle by midday on Monday 23nd November 2020. This counts as 20% of your total mark for this module. The maximum wordcount is 2,000 subject to the usual ±10% limit. See the module guide for further information. After receiving feedback on your proposal you should be in a good position to complete your introduction, literature review and methodology chapters