F21RP - Research Methods and Project Planning

Course leader(s):

Gavin Abercrombie (Edinburgh, September)
Patricia A. Vargas (Edinburgh, January)
Talal Abdul Ghani Shaikh (Dubai, January)

Aims

To enable students to develop skills in critical thinking, research planning, academic writing and experimental design appropriate for a post-graduate programme.

To enable students to gain skills in project planning

To give students an awareness of legal, social, ethical and professional issues relevant for IT practitioners.

To enhance students' employability by development of job seeking and career planning skills.

Syllabus

1. Literature review & Aims/Objectives (1.1 literature searching, 1.2 citing and plagiarism, 1.3 Technical writing)

2. Methodology & Evaluation (2.1 Experimental design, 2.2 Requirement analysis, 2.3 Evaluation strategies)

3. Professional and legal issues (3.1 Working with users and ethics, 3.2 Professional, Legal, Ethical and Social Issues)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to do the following:

Evaluate a range of resources to feed into a written technical literature review
Compose aims and objectives for the dissertation project identifying relevant tools and techniques to be deployed
revise identified solutions to select viable ones and to scope the project
apply general methodologies for project planning as well as specific methodologies related to projects in computer science
Appraise the impact of the proposed project according to the professional codes of conduct, safety, quality and security standards and legal and ethical aspects of computing.

Further details

Curriculum explorer: Click here

SCQF Level: 11

Credits: 15