Coursework Research Infrastructure and Process

Group formation

Research involves more than just choosing and applying a method. The research agenda has to be planned and executed, the data need to be captured and archived, ethics approval may need to be obtained if human subjects are involved, and finally the results need to be written-up into a report for dissemination and publication. The coursework, therefore, will address all of these aspects to some extent.

Caution: in case of ambiguity in either the problem statement or assessmentcriteria, the interpretation of the assignment tutor will apply. As such, if any statement is unclear, seek clarification rather than make assumptions, as your assumptions are likely to differ from the tutor’s interpretation.

Deliverables

Part A–Research Infrastructure and Process

1. Research project infrastructure:

(a) Group formation (due Friday 5th March 2021)

1. Form a group of 3-5 people.
2. Register your group on the “group” or “new_group” tab of the “people” section on Canvas by 23:59 on Friday 5th March 2021.

(b) (5%) Project Plan and Trello board (due Friday 12th March 2021)

1. Create a work breakdown structure that identifies all of the artifacts you need to create in order to complete the coursework.
2. Create a Trello (www.trello.com) account. Use your herts.ac.uk email account to sign up, and your herts username as the username, so we know who is doing what (this is important for the process component below).
3. Create a Trello (www.trello.com) board for your group.
4. Name the board ’7COM1085-groupNN’ (or ’7COM1085-new_groupNN’) but replace “NN” with the group number from canvas.
5. Invite each group member and [email protected] to join. Caution: be sure you invite the right John Noll to join your board.

I have several Trello accounts that I use for different purposes; you need to invite j.noll@ herts.ac.uk, which is the one our marking scripts use to download your board.

Backlog - this is your “to do” column, which should initially contain all the tasks you need to do to complete the coursework.

Doing - this is for tasks that you are actively working on. Each task in this column should have one person assigned to be the person responsible for ensuring it is completed on time.

Review - this is for tasks that the responsible person thinks are done, but need to be reviewed by another member of the group.

Done - this is for tasks that have been fully completed: finished, committed, reviewed, and pushed to Bitbucket. Caution: be sure you use these exact names for the columns in your board, so our marking scripts can track your progress. You may add additional columns to suit your project, but you must have the columns listed above, exactly as specified.

1. Add each of the tasks from your work breakdown structure as cards in your Trello Backlog column, one card per task.

Submit the URL for your trello board via Canvas using the “Trello URL” assignment by 23:59 on Friday 12th March 2021.Caution: test this URL by having one of your group members who is not the board owner use it to access the board. If we can’t access the board, you get zero (0) credit.

(c) Git repository (due Friday 12th March 2021). Note: this group component does not count directly toward your final grade; however, if you don’t do it correctly, you will not be able to complete the subsequent components.

1. Create a Bitbucket account, using your herts.ac.uk email address.
2. Create a Git repository for your coursework artifacts on Bitbucket.
3. Invite [email protected] to join your repository. This is extremely important, as you will submit all subsequent assignments via Git. As such, if we can’t access your Git repository, we won’t be able to pull your assignment submissions, and you won’t get credit for them.
4. If you have not already done so, configure your Git username and email address. From the command prompt,
5. Configure your Git username: type git config --global user.name "YOUR_FIRST_NAME YOUR_LAST_NAME"Please use the the first and last name that appear on your Canvas profile.
6. Configure your Git email address: type git config --global user.email "[email protected]"It is essential that you use your herts email address for this step, so we can mark your activity properly.

Submit the URL for your Git repository via Canvas using the “Git URL” assignment by 23:59 on Friday 12th March 2021. Caution: test this URL by having one of your group members who is not the repository owner clone the repository. If we can’t access the repository, you get zero (0) credit.

Project Plan and Trello board

(a) update the Trello board frequently (at least every week) with progress;

(b) update the artifacts in your Git repository regularly (weekly at least).

The Trello board and Git repository will be checked randomly throughout the term. Marks will depend on regular, meaningful activity that can be easily associated with you; as such, you must use your herts email address andname as it appears on Canvas to register for Trello, and when setting your Gitusername and email address for commits.

Part B–Literature Review

IMPORTANT! You must use the exact names for files specified below. Assignments will be marked automatically by simple Unix scripts, so if you don’t name your files in the way the script expects, you will get zero (0) credit for that assignment. In particular, DO NOT put spaces in filenames: use ‘_’ instead. Also, be aware that Unix filenames are case sensitive, so be sure your filenames are all lower case.

1. (10%) Research question(s) (due Friday 26th March 2021).

(a) Formulate a research question using the structure described in class. Be sure you identify the context, population, intervention, comparison, and outcome associated with the question.

(b) Write your research question(s), using correctly-spelled, correctly-punctuated, grammatically correct English, in a plain text file (NO Microsoft Word!) called research_question.txt.

(c) Commit and push your file by 23:59 on Friday 26th March 2021.

2. (10%) Search string and review protocol (due Friday 23rd April 2021).

(a) Create a search string that will find the literature related to your research questions.

(b) Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the papers that will be identified in your search. If you don’t remember what inclusion or exclusion criteria are, read Section 6.2 of Kitchenham and Charters[1].

(c) Create a file called review_protocol documenting your search string, target digital libraries, and inclusion/exclusion criteria, using correctly-spelled, correctly-punctuated, grammatically correct English.

(d) Commit and push your review_protocol file to your repository by 23:59 onFriday 23rd April 2021. 3. (10%) Literature search (due Friday 30th April 2021).

(a) Perform a search of the IEEE Xplore (ieeexplore.ieee.org) digital library using your search string.

(b) Apply your inclusion/exclusion criteria to the result, to select the papers you will use in the data extraction phase.

(c) Create a file called accepted_papers containing the list of papers thatpass your inclusion/exclusion criteria. The file should formatted as a reference list in IEEE or Harvard format.

(d) Commit and push your accepted_papers file to your repository by 23:59 on Friday 30th April 2021.

4. (10%) Data extraction (due Friday 7th May 2021)

(a) Create a file called extracted_data.csv in your repository.

(b) For each paper in your set of accepted papers, create a row in your extracted_data.csv file, identifying the paper and any useful insights or answers it provides to your research question(s).

(c) Commit and push your extracted_data.csv file by 23:59 on Friday 7th May

5. (20%) Final report (due Friday 14th May 2021).

(a) Synthesize the papers that have passed your review protocol into an answer to your research question(s). This is most easily achieved by grouping your extracted data into themes. Write a report documenting your questions, protocol, and findings in correctly-spelled, correctly-punctuated, grammatically correct English.

(b) Commit and push a file called final_report to your repository, by 23:59 on

(c) Submit a PDF version of your report via the “Final Report” assignment on Canvas, by 23:59 on Friday 14th May 2021. Part C–Test of Readings

(20%) This is an individual component testing your comprehension of papers related to systematic literature reviews to read this term Copies of these papers will be linked to our module web site.

There will be a two (2) short (10 minutes) multiple-choice quizzes that will test your knowledge of the on the following aspects of these papers:

1. Research questions.
2. Review protocols.
3. Data extraction.
4. Synthesis.