Author: | Stephen J. Turnbull |
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Organization: | Faculty of Engineering, Information, and Systems at the University of Tsukuba |
Contact: | Stephen J. Turnbull <turnbull@sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> |
Date: | December 26, 2017 |
Copyright: | 2017, Stephen J. Turnbull |
keywords: | presentation, schedule |
This document provides some information about the schedule of presentations in the Master's Program in Policy and Planning Sciences of the Department of Policy and Planning Sciences at the University of Tsukuba.
The basic schedule is
The literal translation of the Japanese is Research Plan Presentation (研究計画発表), but I prefer the more tentative translation. I think it is better to focus on the novel, uncertain aspects of the project than on the plan, and that does correspond to the actual content of most proposal presentations.
The content of the presentation is similar to most presentations:
Introduction, background, and general motivation
"General" motivation is a statement about the scientific or policy interest.
Literature survey
Basic model and technical motivation
"Technical" motivation, on the other hand, explains why previous research fails to address the general motivation, and how your research provides improved models or improved methods, or both.
Research procedure
At this stage this includes proposed data sources, data collection methods, and analysis.
Expected results
Technical specification of hypotheses.
Schedule
Most student presentations spend only one slide on "schedule," which is hardly a plan. Instead, motivation and literature review get the most attention, followed by hypotheses. This pattern is improved with more emphasis on hypotheses and methodology, so that these three components are given about equal time.
The mmidterm presentation is a sort of "qualifying examination." The examiners are looking for demonstration of enough work that they can be confident that a satisfactory thesis, based on a completed research project, can be produced.
The midterm presentation is expected to be a fairly complete implementation of something similar to the proposal. Research being inherently uncertain, implementing a research proposal as exactly as you might build a home is usually impossible. On the other hand, MPPS does not require that the proposal be updated, so the final report becomes the description of the project as implemented.
Data collection should be well underway, and preliminary analysis should make it clear that hypothesis tests have reasonable power.
The first draft submission is intended to allow the examiners to make a comprehensive assessment of the research product, allowing time to make fairly major corrections both in content and presentation. The following points are assessed:
The "karitoji" is supposed to be a completed research report. In theory, changes incorporated to the final submission should be limited to
As usual, practice rarely matches theory.