Project Proposal and Project Plan
Successful research projects are usually well planned and based on previous work in academic publications (e.g. journal papers, books and book chapters, conference proceedings). This assignment provides the opportunity for you complete a Final year project proposal and also provide a project plan spanning 28 weeks - 2 semesters.
Your Task
You are required to submit two documents:
1) A ‘Project Proposal’ as a Word Document.
This carries a weighting of 50% for this assignment.
2) ‘Project Plan’ that spans 28 weeks (2 semesters). (You may also schedule tasks for weeks outside of the semester also). The Project Plan must be provided as a Gantt chart using Microsoft Office Project software (MSP). This carries a weighting of 50% for this assignment.
Project Proposal
The project proposal will describe the research project that you intend to do in your final year. It should comprise the following parts:
1) Title for your Research Project
2) Project Aims
3) Project Objectives
4) Project Description
5) Outcomes and Deliverables
6) Academic Challenge
7) Reference List
Table 1 provides an overview of the weightings and content required for each of these sections.
Table 1: Criteria for the Project Proposal
Criterion Weighting (%) Content
1 Title 5 Preferably phrased as a question, your title should tell the reader something of the nature of the activity and also the topic area that your proposed project will tackle.
2 Project Aims 15 You should clearly state what you plan to achieve in doing the proposed project. Typically there will only be a few aims (one or two).
3 Project Objectives 15 You should clearly state the key things that you will need to do in order to achieve the aims that you specify for the proposed project.Ensure that this section is logically structured with appropriate sub-titles as required. This section should be between 1,500- 2000 words in length.
4 Project Description 15 Provide a brief outline of the proposed project..
5 Outcomes and Deliverables 15 What will you expect to produce as result of doing the proposed project. You should consider both tangible outputs that might be written as well as products that you create during the project.
6 Resources 15 You should clearly state any resources you expect to need in order to complete the project. What would be helpful here is to identify resources that are currently available (either through you or the University) and hence also identify any resources that would need to be purchased for this project.
7 References 20 You need to consider things such as how difficult is the problem that you are proposing to tackle for you; will you need to develop new knowledge, technical skills and understanding in order to do the project; will there be any personal challenges that you need to address?
Use Harvard referencing style and English spelling for this document.
Project Plan
The project plan will be presented as a Gantt chart to demonstrate what you will need to do in your project and when. It should comprise the following parts:
1) Task Outline
2) Sub-task Outline
3) Dependent Tasks
4) Milestones
5) Achievability
Table 2 provides an overview of the weightings and content required for each of the above.
Table 2: Criteria for the Project Plan
Criterion %age Comment
Task Outline 20 You need to show a clear set of primary tasks that reflect the major areas of the proposed project.
Sub-task Outline 20 Each primary task should be broken into small sub tasks needed to complete that primary task.
Dependent Tasks 20 You should clearly identify situations where one task / sub task is dependent on one or more specific previous tasks.
Milestones 20 You should clearly show what you believe to be relevant and appropriate milestones for the project – a milestone is a point at which some part of the project deliverable will be ready or where there will be points of review between the developer and the client.
Achievability 20 Though this is likely to be the first time that you will have been asked to estimate how long the various tasks will take I will be checking to see that you have made a sensible balance of time allocated across the various parts of the proposed project.
Marks
This assignment carries a weighting of 50% of your overall grade for this module. The work for this assignment must be done both in your practical sessions and during independent study time.
Date and Submission
Both the Project Proposal and Project Plan must be submitted via Turnitin (on the Moodle site for this Module) no later than Monday 11th May , 18:00.
Marks will be deducted for late submissions. Please see section ‘5.12 Penalties for the late submission of assessed work’, in the Faculty of Arts and Media Technologies Handbook for full regulations:
http://www.bolton.ac.uk/Students/FacultyofArtsandMediaTechnologiesHandbook.pdf