Part I Concepts
5.1 Choosing a Subject Area
5
Developing your Project Proposal
A project proposal is a brief description of what you intend to do. Typically, a project proposal is only a few pages long. On these few pages you need to introduce the reader to the:
● Subject area. What is the topic and scope of your project?
● Aim. What is the goal of your project?
● Arguments. Why is it important to investigate the chosen topic?
● Objectives. Preliminary ideas for how you intend to achieve the aim.
Figure 5.1 presents an overview of activities to be carried out when developing a project proposal. In subsequent sections, we shall take a closer look at each one of these activities.
In some situations, a subject area consists of a combination of other subject areas, for example, databases and human-computer interaction. These could be combined, perhaps, to become user interfaces for database systems. In addition, there are subject areas that combine computer science or information science with another academic field. For example, bioinformatics can be viewed as a combina- tion of computer science and biology. Although these types of subject areas are worthwhile to explore, it can be problematic to find a supervisor for such a project.
The supervisor should know the related subject area well. Alternatively, you may need two supervisors.
5.1.1 Start Early
Finding and choosing a subject area for the project is a task that benefits from being initiated well before the actual project begins. Start thinking about possible subject areas early, and let the decision regarding the chosen area of study be refined incre- mentally. In this way, you can avoid hastily made decisions that are not well motivated.
Another benefit of starting early is that before the project begins, you may have time to identify and check important sources of information. The time it takes to, for example, identify and order literature or discuss a proposal with a company, should not be underestimated. It is much better to do this before the project starts, than when the project is already underway. This does not mean that you should launch a complete literature analysis before the actual project commences. But you should try to familiarise yourself with the most important sources of information, and investigate whether they will be available when the project begins.
Keep in mind that there are many different sources of information, not only books.
Libraries usually have several ways of supplying information. The first and obvious Developing your project proposal
Write and submit a project proposal Choose a subject
area
Focus on and choose a problem within the subject
Assure quality of initial ideas
Fig. 5.1 Developing a project proposal
5.1 Choosing a Subject Area 29
are the library’s own literature resources (books, journals etc.), but most libraries will also organise inter-library loans if they do not have the literature you want.
Most libraries provide access to bibliographies and bibliographic databases.
These contain large numbers of documents that can be of interest, and which can be searched by author, title, subject and keywords. This is a good way of finding interesting articles from journals and conferences. They often contain information on new subjects and recent research, not yet published in books. Many libraries also have access to full-text databases, where the complete texts of articles (often including figures and tables) are made available. These databases have the advantage of pro- viding access to the articles immediately; a fast and effective way to obtain informa- tion. Examples of useful bibliographies are provided in the appendix.
In addition to your library, you may want to search for information on the Internet. Searching for information on a given topic may be difficult – at least if you do not have any good places on the Internet from which to begin. You might try some of the common search engines, although there are likely to be many hits at first. In most situations there will be an overflow of search results, and you might have trouble selecting the relevant information.
You should also find out if your university subscribes to Internet access for jour- nals in your field of study. If so, this could allow you to search those journals’
archives of past articles, and to print out any articles that are useful to you.
If you cannot find any literature at the library associated with your subject area, it may be an indication of one of the following:
● Your chosen subject area is too novel for a B.Sc. or M.Sc. project. Your chosen area is more suitable for a Ph.D. project.
● You are looking in the wrong place. Try other sources, such as journals or con- ference proceedings. Sometimes it may help to use a different set of keywords when searching bibliographic databases.
● You are in the wrong library!
Searching for information is discussed in detail in Chap. 13.
5.1.2 How to Choose a Subject Area
Which subject area to choose is a decision that only you can make; nobody else will make this decision for you.
One of the most crucial factors for succeding with a project is the motivation for undertaking the work in the chosen subject area. You should strive to choose the subject area that you are most interested in. This will have a positive effect on the entire project.
Choose a subject area where you have the necessary skills. Do not choose a subject area in which, for example, you have failed courses.
A combination of areas is usually a good source of interesting problems and topics for project proposals. At the same time, it is not recommended that you
choose a project which combines more than two areas, since they can become too complex to handle.
In addition to the above guidelines, ask yourself whether you:
● Have previously in your studies encountered subject areas or courses that you felt were especially interesting
● Would like to work within a particular subject area in the future