Part II: Preparing for your dissertation proposal

Postgraduate online course part ii: research

(To be completed by all students after completing part i and between your first and fourth assignments)

This is to be completed after you have had your first unit assignment assessed and prior to beginning your fourth unit.
It is strongly recommended, however, that you start working on your dissertation proposal near the beginning of your MA, rather than postponing it until later.

Please note there is also an annual MA dissertation conference (usually held in November). In 2011 this conference will be held on November 8-9th. The provisional date for the 2012 conference is November 6-7th 2012.

Dissertation Proposal

You have now completed your first assignment(s). It is already time to begin thinking about your research question for your dissertation and begin putting a research proposal together. One great advantage of starting early is that as you work on the assignments for each of your MA units, you can do so with your dissertation in mind as well. In the long run this will assist you in your time management.

Part two of the online research course contains three sections:

Section A contains important research information you are required to read.

Section B is a dissertation forum on which you are required to participate. This is designed to assist you in refining your research question.

Section C contains important additional information.

Your requirements of Part II of the Online course will have been met once you have submitted your MA dissertation proposal to the MA Programme Leader and also engaged on the online forum (see below)

SECTION A: READING

1. You are required to read the following documents in order to guide you in preparing your research proposal:

Writing a Research Question: This will guide you in thinking about and constructing your research question. Remember without a quality research question you cannot have a quality dissertation!
Research proposal outline: This document guides you in preparing your research proposal. Your proposal must be submitted to the MA Programme Leader.
General approaches to dissertation research: This section will guide you in the broad ways you can seek to answer your research question. The approach to answering your research section will make up part of your research proposal.
Ethical Approval: This document must be signed and submitted along with the research proposal. For most people this simply involves signing the cover sheet. For those students who will be engaging in research with young people or other situations that will require guidance and approval, however, this information is essential.

SECTION B: FORUM

In addition to reading the documents listed in section A you are also required to engage in the Dissertation Discussion thread of the MA Study & Research Forum. (NB. The forum is located in the Postgraduate section of the website under 'discussions'. Once you have opened the page, please ensure that you click discussion (not download)).

It is hoped that you will be active on this forum, as this is a resource to help you and your fellow students at this critical stage of your studies.

As an absolute minimum you are required to post the proposed title of your dissertation together with a statement about your research objectives, along with one or more possible research questions on the forum. You are encouraged, however, to offer constructive comments to the research questions of others and to engage with their critique of your own proposal.

The forum will be monitored regularly (at least weekly) by a faculty member, who will add to the student comments, as well as record participation.

SECTION C: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & RESOURCES

The Postgraduate Study and Research Skills Material

A helpful bibliography is also found in Cliff College’s study skills and research materials document.

Recommended web resources

University of Manchester (research and dissertation help)

The Global Digital Library on Theology and Ecumenism (GlobeTheoLib) contains several hundred thousand of articles, documents and other academic resources that can accessed online free-of-charge by registered participants from anywhere in the world via Internet

On Line QDA – (learning qualitative data analysis on line)

Methospace (SAGE research community)

A list of Dissertations and Theses titles (from around the World) is available here

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Please note: Once you have successfully submitted your MA dissertation proposal to the MA Programme Leader and posted your research questions on the forum (and engaged with others there) you will have met the requirements of Part II of the Online Course.

You should now move onto Part III of the Postgraduate Online Course.