Spring 2012
ICS
Research Practicum
CSCI
7412/7422 | EDUC 6506/6516 | LING 7415/7425 | PHIL 7415/7425 | PSYC
7415/7425
Milestone 1
Our first milestone involves reviewing and clarifying your personal
research goal, and communicating it to me. I would like you to
create a document, on which I'll comment and you'll revise, that states
your research goals. We can meet in person to discuss if you
would find that helpful, or simply do rounds of feedback via editing.
My preferred route for editing is a shared google doc.
I would like you to state the following in this document:
- Describe your overall area of research to a lay person (one
paragraph). Note your advisor and department.
- Explain what you want to accomplish in this area (one paragraph)
- Articulate a plan of attack toward this accomplishment. If you
don't feel you can provide a complete plan, at least describe a
concrete first step, and try to break your plan into a first- and
second-half of the semester.
- Describe any other fanciful goals that go above and beyond what
you consider the essential goal. What would you like to do if you
didn't have to sleep.
If you are contemplating several possible options, provide 1-4 for each
option (or at least 2 and 3, assuming that the overall area of research
is the same across options).
This document should be about a page. I would like you to mail me
your page by Monday August 29 at 5 p.m.
Things to think about:
- What is the core research issue and fundamental research
question(s)?
- What literature and theories inform this work?
- What methodologies might be appropriate to answer the questions?
- What data would you like to collect and what techniques would you
use to collect it?
- If you had the technical competence to do computational modeling,
what key assumptions would you build into your model, what data would
you like to explain, what type of predictions might come from the model?