Research Proposal Presentations
what is the Point of This?
The presentations were originally included as a way to allow students to explain
their methodological reasoning to an audience, and be exposed to what other
students are thinking about and how they are making their methodological choices.
Moving them online does not change this intention. At a foundational level,
academic work is all about communicating what choices are made in our research
and why these are made. This assignment asks you to, essentially, talk about your work in a way that’s accessible to an audience of non-specialists – people (specifically your
classmates here) who are generally well-educated, but not doing deep dives into your
specific topic area.
Presentations (35 marks)
Convey what someone would need to know to understand your project in something that
should take “about 10 minutes1” to consume (this might mean a 10-minute audio recording, a number of slides, turning your paper into a blog post, flow chart, graphic novel, whatever
works for you, so long as it can be accessible online). You’ll need to post this (either a file,
Dropbox or YouTube)
Part of what I’m evaluating here is your ability to determine “what someone would need to
know to understand your project”– but at a minimum you need to identify the fowlloing:
A) How was your process in developing your research proposal (eg How did you find it intereing, hard, ect)
B) What your interest in the area is, and how that is related to what’s in the literature (how
it builds on what’s there, how it’s a question that hasn’t been asked, how you’re testing
to see if some conclusion applies in another context, etc.)
C) What you are proposing as a research project – what information is necessary here will
depend on your chosen method, but aim to be relatively specific
D) WHY that research project is suited/connected to your interests and what’s in the
literature (e.g. don’t just say “I like interviews, so I’m doing them” – you’re looking for a
discussion of why interviews are useful in this particular population, or in this particular
subject area, or in response to this existing literature)
E) At least TWO of the challenges that come up in your work – these might be pragmatic
(e.g. challenges in actually doing the research you’re proposing the way you’ve proposed
it), epistemological (e.g. how can you be sure that you’ve got a “true” conclusion (in
scare quotes for a reason)), ethical (e.g. how this data might be collected and/or used),
etc.
This does not need to be done in “formal” language or structure – rather, the goal is to
present your project in a way that is engaging – you need to be accurate in your description (e.g. you need to be talking about interviews, not doing “qualitative stuff”), but you can use slang, or informal descriptions if that works for you (e.g. you can say you’re interested in this because you’ve experienced a particular thing). The “structure” your presentation takes has
some flexibility – you don’t necessarily need to do things in a particular order, or use section/segment titles etc., but you do need to be communicating clearly.
Please note that you must read the Resear Proposal paper so you know what my inerets are for this topic (How does the American Latinx identity impact success in educational settings, specifically in post secondary). base on the Researdh proposal paper you’ll be able to anwer the above question which are (A,B,C,D and E). the Reasearch proposal is down belown in a
PDF.
DO NOT COPY AND PASTE (or read) YOUR PAPER – a presentation is not “here’s the paper,
read it” – it is a translation of that content into a different form – it will require some consideration of how you want to organise/present this information. If you copy and paste/read youpaper, you will wind up with a very poor grade for this portion of your work.
