The purpose of this course is to help students organize ideas, material and objectives for their dissertation and to begin development of communication skills and to prepare the students to present their topic of research and explain its importance to their fellow classmates and teachers.
Project Proposal Preparation
Selection of research lab and research topic: Students should first select a lab wherein they would like to pursue their dissertation. The supervisor or senior researchers should be able to help the students to read papers in the areas of interest of the lab and help them select a topic for their project. The topic of the research should be hypothesis driven. Review of literature: Students should engage in systematic and critical review of appropriate and relevant information sources and appropriately apply qualitative and/or quantitative evaluation processes to original data; keeping in mind ethical standards of conduct in the collection and evaluation of data and other resources. Writing Research Proposal: With the help of the senior researchers, students should be able to discuss the research questions, goals, approach, methodology, data collection, etc. Students should be able to construct a logical outline for the project including analysis steps and expected outcomes and prepare a complete proposal in scientific proposal format for dissertation
Poster Presentation
Students will have to present the topic of their project proposal after a few months of their selection of the topic. They should be able to explain the novelty and importance of their research topic.
Oral Presentation
At the end of their project, a presentation will have to be given by the students to explain work done by them in detail. Along with summarizing their findings they should also be able to discuss the future expected outcome of their work