#SS-03-10 Discovering Your PhD Potential: Writing a Research Proposal
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- Course level: All Levels
About Course
University of LeicesterDescription
Learn how to write an excellent research proposal for a postgraduate application
A carefully prepared and thorough research proposal is usually crucial for applications for advanced or doctoral study, and can provide the launchpad for the first stages of that postgraduate study.
This online course will give you the awareness, skills and tools to write a well thought-out and achievable research proposal, helping you improve the quality of your postgraduate applications. It will also give you a taste of the self-study required in postgraduate doctoral research.
The course focuses on Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, but much of the content is relevant to all disciplines.
What topics will you cover?
- Introduction to doctoral research
- Funding your study
- Defining the problem and writing a research question
- Writing a literature review
- Research design and methodology
- How to construct your proposal
Who will you learn with?
Professor Neil Christie works at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester, and has long been that department’s PGR Tutor, overseeing all the research students there
Who developed the course?
The University of Leicester is a leading research led university with a strong tradition of excellence in teaching. It is consistently ranked amongst the top 20 universities in the United Kingdom.
What Will I Learn?
- Identify why you want to do a PhD and whether your expectations are realistic
- Explore the main requirements, structures and problems with aiming to undertake a PhD
- Demonstrate how to set a realistic, manageable and impactful research question
- Compare deductive and inductive research questions
- Describe and be able to implement the steps required to writing a literature review, including: doing a literature search, planning, organising and writing the literature review
- Discuss what kind of theoretical approach would be useful for your research proposal
- Compare the differences between ontology, epistemology, different research designs and methodology.
- Summarise what you have learned from this course into a first draft of a research proposal
Topics for this course
Welcome to the course
Why do a PhD?
Managing expectations about PhD goals
Other reasons for doing PhD research
Welcome from the Head of College00:03:52
Welcome to the course
What are your expectations of a PhD?
Funding
My favorite part of the course is writing literature review and research design and methods. It's a good course.
The lectures by Professor Neil Christie were wonderful and very helpful to me. I enjoyed them very much. thank you
This course gives us the awareness, skills and tools to write a well-thought-out and achievable research plan that helps me improve the quality of my graduate application. It will also allow me to experience the self-study required in my doctoral research. It's a great course.
The course was great, teaching us how to write an excellent research plan for graduate applications, just what I needed.
Material Includes
- Official Certificate
Tags
Target Audience
- This course has been created primarily for postgraduate research applicants, but it might also be useful for those who want to learn more about developing well-founded and challenging research bids for purposes other than postgraduate research degrees.