Your assignment for research methodologies is to write a project plan for your thesis work. Timing wise it is best to combine this with your literature study (AE4020).

The plan you have to submit for this course is just that, a plan. It is a plan that should help you structure your thesis work before you discuss your final plan with your thesis supervisor and possible external client, just like you will be doing in your future professional life. That means that it does happen that the plan will deviate from the actual thesis work once you have carried out your thesis work, as plans are a living document and may change. That is the whole point of having one, so you can have discussions of what you initially agreed upon and why you are going to deviate.

The plan you hand in for this course does not have to be the same version of the plan you eventually discuss with your supervisor. It may be a draft of that or a first set up. What we are primarily concerned about in this course is that you learn to write a plan and we will give you feedback on the plan once we have graded it. (This is why it takes so long to correct compared to exams). We do not discuss your plan with your supervisor, that is up to you, or have an opinion about the actual topic. Our concern is the quality of the plan and the way you formulate it and think it through.

Therefore, start on this plan early in the start of your thesis research (including the literature study) so you may be benefit from the skills we are trying to teach you in this course.

When writing the plan, use the textbook and the information in this course to help you write the plan. It will help you do well in this course. Also make sure you make clear why you have made the choices you have. These may be obvious to you but realise that your understanding of the topic is likely a lot higher that that of other readers of your report. When writing focus on what you are adding to the body of knowledge, the science of it, and not just on solving a problem.

So what should this plan look like? We have defined a number of key deliverables we feel must be present in each project plan. They are listed below with a short explanation. More details can be found in the template for the project plan which is listed further down this page. It is MANDATORY to use the template, which also explains what other elements should be present in your plan to make it a readable piece of work. More explanation on each can be found in the weekly course content of lectures and reading. How we will grade your work can be found in the Rubrics on this page.

1. Objective: Each plan must have an objective. This objective is not just a goal but also states how you are going to achieve it: e.g. “I am going to dig a hole by using a shovel”. See also the book of the course for more details on research objective and its formulation.
2. Literature Review: This is a detailed part of the proposal that rigorously reviews what work has been already carried out by other academics in this area while also benchmarking industry best practice. You frame and position your research with this state-of-the-art review.
3. Research questions: This is where you get down to the details of what you are looking to find out. when you find the answer to these questions your research is finished.There are either multiple main questions or one main question with several subquestions. See also the book of the course for more details on research questions and their formulation.
4. Theory/Methodology:This is where you outline the theory or theoretical model you will follow or the method you will use to get the answers to your research questions.
5. Experimental Set-Up:This is where you outline how you will get your results: this can be via measurements or interviews but also via programming and computerbased modelling. In all cases also state the challenges and limitations you expect to face and how you may mitigate their effects
6. Results/relevance/Outcome:You need a target to work to: what are you expecting as results in terms of parameters, what outcomes are you interested in and what is the relevance of your project. Also include your validation & verification here.
7. Planning: This part is where you show when you intend to complete each part of the project. Realise that iterations are present in a thesis project as it is highly unlikely things go right in one go. Motivate your planning and clearly identify which project parts depend on the outcome of other project phases by interlinking in your Gantt chart
8. Conclusions:These should be conclusions about your plan and its feasibility, NOT about the outcome of your thesis. The conclusions should highlight what choices you have made and defending them as well as listing points-of-concern and attention.
9. References: Use good academic quality references with as a minimum conference proceedings. Webpages, company websites, technical reports are considered weak references as they are not peer-reviewed and therefore the work has not always been critically, scientifically examined. Also make sure that when you use other people’s work you either quote them using quotation marks or paraphrase their finding in your own words. Always add a reference to these, even when it comes to using graphics and equations. After all they are not your own work. Errors should be avoided at all cost. Realise that in many other countries innocent mistakes may be perceived as plagiarism and lead to immediate expulsion. Use TurnItIn to help you check you have not made any mistakes. Also check that you include sufficient information for people to trace your references should they want to look them up.
10. General readability: Read your work before you submit, correct errors, check for grammar and completeness. If in doubt have a friend or relative read your work before submitting. Points are awarded for spelling, grammar and flow. Ensure you link  sections one another, there should be no stand alone.

Finally: the plan has to be concise. So stay within the page limit of 10 pages, which excludes the references and the Gantt Chart and adhere to the font size (no smaller than 10pt). No appendices unless you put your Gantt chart in it. Exceeding the page limit means we will return the work to you for resubmission and delays in grading of 3 months will occur. Also, if you miss one of the deliverables above you loose marks straight away.

Please find attached the templates of the project plan. There is a word template and a LaTeX template. These templates must be used!

Read the templates carefully as they contain useful information on the expected deliverables.