Ultraversity Notes

After a project proposal has been accepted accepted for the Review and Planning module, the next step is for the students to arrange a tutorial with the Major Project supervisor to discuss the project. Students are entitled to 4 hours of supervision by email, phone or other communication, including the time for interim feedback on up to 2000 words. It is up to individual students to make arrangements, but I recommend early discussion to clarify acceptability of the proposal, followed by requesting formative feedback on one draft of 600 words from the sections that should be completed in the first semester (Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Methods, Ethics). In addition to individual supervision, general guidance is available in the Work Based Major Project module resources and discussions. Peer feedback is also strongly encouraged, where mutual support as critical friends is a sound strategy for developing individual understanding of module requirements.

Qualitative data for course modules is often in the form of interviews and students are also encouraged to keep a reflective research diary. Analysis of this type of data can begin with some coding to identify the main themes. Identification is prone to researcher bias, where the key ideas do not arise directly from the data, but from the student's preconceptions.

One way to use an unbiased approach is to analyse the frequency of words. Without resorting to specialist software that avoids the drudgery of manual frequency analysis is to use an online tool such as Wordle. Here is an example of initial coding of a research interview:



More frequent (larger) words give an indication of the main themes that would be analysed and explored further.

Subject lines for recent discussions include: