The Applied Project involves a literature review on a particular topic and appropriate contextualisation. It should be c. 15000 words in length.
The Project challenges the student to apply concepts, theories and analytical techniques gained throughout the programme.
The aim of the project is to enable the student to undertake a learning ‘journey’ which is largely self-directed and self-motivated, and which is substantially different to the pedagogy encountered to date. It allows the student the opportunity to integrate the various dimensions and domains of knowledge acquired thus far and to achieve a knowledge and familiarity of breadth and depth with an area of ideas not usually possible in normal course work. It also offers the student the chance to concentrate on and specialise in a subject discipline and/or sectoral field of their choice, which may subsequently become a focus of career aspiration. It also provides an opportunity for the student to analyse in a reflective way a practical problem.
The content of the project should indicate the student has: -
(i) Read a relevant literature and
(ii) Evaluated and synthesised the concepts and ideas therein and
(iii) Thought about and sought to apply this theory and knowledge in a practical, real world situation, possibly in the context of the work placement.
The project is essentially about testing an example of practice against theory. Through completing the literature review, the student familiarises himself / herself with best practices and illustrates understanding of said practices. In the contextualisation section, actual practices are critiqued relative to the best practices as advocated in the literature for the purposes of making recommendations for improvement in the “context”. Normally this takes the form of a single case study approach. It is envisaged the student will show convincingly that s/he has engaged in depth with the range of ideas in an area drawing on key texts and a range of journal articles and tested a particular example of practice against theory. In drawing conclusions on the ‘practice’ being examined it is best to do this in the course of the discussion on contextualisation, rather than by way of a separate ‘Conclusions chapter or section.
The literature review typically accounts for c.40%% of the overall word count. The contextualisation accounts for c.40% of the word count. And Chapter 3 - "Conclusion and Recommendations" - c.20%. It is essential that the literature review clearly impact on the contextualisation and vice versa.
The project is weighted at 15 ECTS (credits) in Year 4. This should guide the student as to the time, effort and resources to be directed at the project.
Module overview, selecting your topic and managing your supervisor relationship
Refining your topic,
Sourcing relevant literature,
Writing an evaluative and critical literature review,
Sourcing contextual information and
Reflecting theory onto practice.
Referencing conventions and requirements
The contact hours are composed of 6 c. two hour sessions delivered normally over 3 sessions in Semester 1 and 3 sessions in Semester 2.
These c. two hours sessions are normally broken up as outlined above i.e. selecting your topic, refining your topic, sourcing relevant literature and writing a literature review, referencing conventions and requirements, sourcing contextual information and reflecting theory onto practice.
All lectures will be interactive.
Pre class readings will be distributed
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Other Assessment(s) | 100 |