ICT615 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH METHODS
Assignment 2
Submission instructions: You should submit your assignment to the submission link on the ICT615 LMS site. No email submission will be accepted. Late submissions will be penalized at the rate of 5 marks per day late or part thereof unless an extension has been obtained.
You should submit your assignment as one Word document. So your work doesn’t get mixed up with others, ensure that your name is on the assignment and use a filename that identifies it. Only one final report needs to be submitted per group. You must keep a copy of the final version of your assignment as submitted and be prepared to provide it on request.
The University treats plagiarism, collusion, theft of other students’ work and other forms of dishonesty in assessment seriously. Instances of academic misconduct include Submitting work that has been produced by someone else or either in part of whole using Artificial Intelligence tools. For guidelines on honesty in assessment including avoiding plagiarism see http://our.murdoch.edu.au/Educational-technologies/Academic-integrity/
Submission dates:
- Week 13 Oral presentation
Week 14 Final report
- This is a GROUP assignment.
- This assignment is worth 30% of your final grade
Research Project
This assignment is intended to provide you with the experience of undertaking and writing up a complete research project. As you know from Assignment 1, whilst much has been written about the topic you choose, there is still more research needed.
For this project, you are provided with a set of data relating to the topics you choose.
Your first task is to formulate a research question or several related research questions that relate to the topic and can be answered using the set of data. You will be helped to analyse the data in order to answer your research question(s). You will give a brief presentation to the class outlining your proposed research (in-class Week 13) this will allow you to get feedback on your research questions, hypotheses, and preliminary results. You will also write up your results in the format of a conference paper (to be submitted Week 14).
You will be formed with a group on the same research topic and need to work in the assigned group.
You will be given:
- Information about how the data was collected
- A list of all the variables included in the dataset
- A data set containing the raw data in SPSS (.sav)
You need to:
- Undertake background reading to review the relevant literature. You can use studies you find for assignment 1, but you cannot just copy and paste the literature review from assignment 1 to assignment 2. You need to rewrite and restructure the writing based on your work in assignment 1.
- Decide exactly what research questions you want to answer (and generate hypotheses if appropriate)
- Consider how the data should be analyzed in order to enable your research questions to be answered.
- Get the data analyzed.
- Present a brief outline of your research/paper in class
- Write up your research in the form of a paper suitable for publication at a conference.
Presentation:
The presentations should be approximately 5 minutes in length (with a maximum of 10 minutes) and given during the Week 13 class. The presentation will be worth (5%) of the total mark in the Unit.
The presentation should include:
- Background literature
- Justification for the research
- Research questions (and hypotheses if appropriate)
- Any preliminary results you have
- Discussions (e.g., implications for research and practice) (highly recommended if you have any results, though not listed in the rating sheet)
Research Paper: The research paper will be worth (25%) of the total mark in the Unit
The research paper you submit should include the following sections:
- Title
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Provide enough background
- Literature Review – a brief review of the literature relevant to the problem
- Research hypotheses – include your hypotheses in this section (and make sure that you provide a justification for each of them)
- Research design – you need to provide all necessary information.
- Results – create your own tables – don’t just cut and paste the SPSS output, clearly state what you found and whether each hypothesis is supported or not
- Discussion (Implications for theory, practice, limitations and opportunities for future studies)
- Conclusion
- References (referencing should be in APA style)
Make sure that you cite previous work properly!
Length: Approximately 2500 – 3000 words
| HD (99%-80%) | D (79%-70%) | C (69%-60%) | P (59%-50%) | N (49%-1%) | |
| Title and abstract (5%) | Have a clear title | Has a clear title | Has a clear title | Has a title | No title |
| The abstract clearly describes the background, the overall aim, and the results of the study. | The abstract includes some background, the overall aim, and the results of the study. | The abstract includes some background and a brief description of the study. | The abstract includes a brief description of the study. | The abstract is confusing or no abstract. | |
| Introduction, Literature Review (10%) (Please do not simply copy assignment 1 to here; otherwise, at best 50% will be received. ) | Include 15+ relevant articles (not any articles dealing with the issue but those closely related to the article) Excellent introduction: has external sources to strongly support the importance of the issue; clearly states the objective of the essay Identified appropriate material and synthesised the research findings well. Critically evaluate the study, and identify the gaps (the gap links to your study) | Include 15+ relevant articles (not any articles dealing with the issue but those closely related to the article) Good introduction: Discuss the importance of the issue; clearly state the objective of the essay Identified appropriate material and synthesised the research findings well. | Include 10+ relevant articles (not any articles dealing with the issue but those closely related to the article) Reasonable introduction: Discuss some background; clearly state the objective of the essay Starting to synthesise the research results, but some sections still read like reporting the results of one study after another | Include 10+ relevant articles (not any articles dealing with the issue but those closely related to the article) Has introduction: state the objective of the essay Simply reporting the results of one study after another | Include less than 10 relevant articles (not any articles dealing with the issue but those closely related to the article) No introduction Reporting some studies; hard to follow |
| Hypotheses | Provide strong | Provide some | Provide some | Provide very | Just listing |
| (25%) | justification | justification | justification | simple | hypotheses |
| (using literature) | (using literature) | (no literature) | justification (no | but no | |
| to support all | to support all | to support t | literature) to | justification | |
| hypotheses with a | hypotheses | hypotheses | support | ||
| certain theory (or | hypotheses | ||||
| certain theories). | |||||
| Methods (5%) | All necessary information needs to be included. | ||||
| Results (20%) | Include both | Include correct | Include | Include correct | Include |
| descriptive statistics about the sample and correct inferential statistics. Create own tables; report results in a correct format | inferential statistics. Create own tables; report results in a correct format | correct inferential statistics. Create own table; report results but miss some information | inferential statistics. Copy table from SPSS; report results but miss some information | incorrect statistics. Copy table from SPSS; no or little explanations. | |
| Discussion (25%) | Provide a clear discussion of the results | Provide a clear discussion of the results | Provide some discussion of the results | Provide some discussion of the results | No or little discussions. |
| Discuss the implication for theory, practice, limitations and recommendations for future studies. Use some references to support your arguments. | Discuss the implication for theory, practice, limitations and recommendations for future studies. | Discuss the implication of your study. | |||
| Presentation (10%) | Clear structure | Clear structure | Clear structure | Have structure but not quite clear | Structure is confusing |
| Has no grammar /spelling errors Perfectly follow APA format | Has few grammar/ spelling errors Mainly follow APA format, not fully consistent but acceptable | Has a few grammar/ spelling errors but does not impact reading Follow APA format, have a few errors but acceptable | Has quite a few grammar / spelling errors, hard to follow sometime. Follow APA format a bit but has many inconsistencies (or the format of reference is not consistent themselves) | Has many grammar / spelling errors, hard to follow Cannot identify the format |