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Informatics Research Proposal (IRP)

IRP Lecture

There will be a lecture on the IRP course and how to write a good research proposal given by Alex Lascarides on Wednesday 13th January 2010, in Appleton Tower, Lecture Theatre 4, from 13:05 to 13:55.

This is the pdf copy of the slides used for the lecture.

IRP Exemplars

Here are two example IRP reports from past years: one, two.

Transferrable Skills Courses

This year we have liaised with the transferrable skills department in the university to offer you some support on IRP. This support consists of the following three courses:

• Project Planning
  IF Room 4.31, 14:00--15:30, Wednesday 3rd February 2010
  The slides (pdf).
• Effective Presentations
  IF Room G.07, 14:00--15:30, Wednesday 17th February 2010
• Proposal Writing
  IF Room G.07, 14:00--16:30, Wednesday 3rd March 2010
  The slides (pdf).

More detailed course information will soon appear at: http://www.transkills.ed.ac.uk/services/masterstaught.cfm#informatics. These courses are optional, but you are strongly encouraged to register for them. Transkills have asked that students register via pgskills@ed.ac.uk providing the following information:

• your full name
• your matric number
• the course title and date

Short Description

The aim of this module is to develop generic research skills that can be deployed in academic or commercial environments. Students will demonstrate their ability to develop interesting concepts into research/development proposals.

Activities and Outcomes

Each MSc student will collaborate with their project supervisor to carve out a project proposal for their summer project. If a student is already assigned to a nominated project, then the student will flesh out more detail on the proposal, again guided by the supervisor. To this end, the student should meet the supervisor at least twice, but normally three times. This may be a one on one meeting, or a meeting with all the supervisor's MSc students.

By the end of this course, the MSc student will be able to:

• critically evaluate research literature appropriate for their project subject.
• Use existing research literature to create hypotheses, and justify experimental design choices for testing those hypotheses.
• Develop a structured research proposal.
• Outline project/research management issues.

Skills to be Developed

This course is designed to help you develop the following skills:

• Project Design. Consider carefully what research goal is being addressed by the proposed project, formulate a hypothesis for achieving that goal, and identify what evidence will be needed to confirm or reject that hypothesis and how this evidence will be provided. Break the project down into tasks, estimate how much effort each task will require and partially order them. Construct a workplan and identify milestones and deliverables. Identify the major risks of failure and outline contingency plans for dealing with them.
• Motivating Research. Explain why this project is important and timely. Place it into the context of related previous and current research and explain why it is original. Who would benefit from its successful completion and what applications might arise?
• Self-Assessment. Identify what knowledge and skills are required to complete this project. Assess which of these you already possess and which you would need to acquire yourself or obtain by involving others. Make a realistic estimate as to whether this project could be completed in the time available.
• Succinct Presentation. It will be a challenge to say everything you need to say within the page limit for the proposal. You will need to learn to express yourself succinctly and clearly.
• Managing your Time. The time available on this course is not a lot of time and can easily be dissipated. You must structure your activities to make efficient use of your time. Leave plenty of time for writing the proposal. Do not leave everything until the week before the deadline!

Assignment Deadlines

There is one assignment for this course, consisting of a full project proposal of about 6 pages; see IRP Guidelines. This assignment is due at 23:59pm, 25th March 2010. Please submit this, in pdf format, by running the following command under unix on a DICE machine:

submit msc irp 1 filename-of-your-submission

This assignment will be marked simply as ``pass'' or ``fail''. You will recieve written feedback from your supervisor for this assignment, but you won't know whether you passed or failed it until after the Board of Examiner's meeting in June (due to University regulations).

What is a Good Research Proposal?

IRP Guidelines give details as to what will constitute a good research proposal. There are also IRP Marking Guidelines for how the research proposal will be graded.