Aims: To develop skills in planning, undertaking, and evaluating a literature survey in environmental sciences at the level of advanced research.
Learning Outcomes:
After taking this course the students should be able to plan and undertake literature research at an advanced level, critically interpret the results, and coherently report the outcome.
Skills:
Learning & studying, written communication, numeracy & computation, data acquisition, handling & analysis, information technology, problem solving, information handling & retrieval, working independently.
Content:
All stages are undertaken under the guidance of an academic supervisor. The planning stage involves defining the problem, formulating hypotheses, devising an appropriate strategy to test them within constraints of time and resources, and locating sources of reliable information. The investigation stage involves the acquisition and evaluation of information. The analysis and interpretation stage involves the assessment of how the information gathered relates to the original problem, and may sometimes make use of appropriate statistical techniques. It will always evaluate results in relation to published work. The social and policy implications of the research should also be considered. The final phase is to communicate the outcome of the project in the form of a correctly formatted written report.
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