The aim of the course is to be a research-driven preparation for the aerospace engineering MSc thesis in the final year of the MSc. It will help you prepare for the challenges of your thesis work.

The course will consist of 7 lectures and will be taught online using video lectures in periods 1, 2 and 3 and face-to-face using traditional lectures in period 4.

The lecture set up is as follows:
1. Research Design in MSc – Introduction to research, research framework
2. Research Methods – Stages of a project, Research objective, research questions, research strategy, research methods
3. Data Analysis – Quantitative & Qualitative methods
4. Validation & Verification – How to validate & verify your work?
5. Project Management & Peer review of draft Project plan – How to manage your project and your thesis progress. Project plan peer review
6. Planning – How to plan, expectations, Gannt Charts
7. Literature Review – How to carry out a scientific literature review? Differences between review and research

Please be advised that all lectures are also available via Blackboard for those following the online version. It is possible to do this course by distant learning, attendance in the 4th period, though highly appreciated, is not mandatory!

There are two deliverables for this course on which you will be assessed:

– Draft Research Plan (60%)
– Literature Review (40%)

based on the topics of your Master Orientation Project, Literature Study or ideally your MSc thesis.

All work MUST be submitted digitally in PDF-format via SafeAssign on the Blackboard page of the course. All assignments will be checked for plagiarism.

  • be aware of the expectations of an MSc student
  • be able to formulate a research question and research aim
  • be able to set up a research plan for their MOP/Literature Study/MSc thesis
  • be able to write a literature review based on the research plan with a view to select appropriate methodologies for their MOP/MSc thesis
Creative Commons License
Research Methodologies by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/research-methodologies/.
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