Research skills 3: Research proposal and presentation skills

Course goals

 Learning objectives

• Write a research proposal;
• Review and present a discussions of peers’ research.

Content

Students who are not enrolled in the research master Multidisciplinary Economics should contact the course coordinator for enrollment in this course.

This course pays attention to three important research skills: developing a research project, writing and presenting research, and reviewing others’ research. A skillset that is not only important as an academic, but also invaluable to analysts, consultants, and researchers working in the private and public sector. During the course, students are trained to write and to present a research proposal in which they choose an innovative research question that has potential to contribute to a gap in knowledge, and develop a research design and planning that allows them to answer this question. In addition to developing the proposal, they will learn to present research work to a critical audience. The proposal should aim to be competitive when submitted to a research funder such as the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

In addition to writing and presenting their own research proposal, students are expected to review the research proposals of their peers, and present these reviews to the course coordinator and other students. Assessment of this part is based on the two written referee reports and the quality of the presentation of these reports. Referee reports and presentations thereof discuss the contributions to the field, the novelty of the question, the related literature, the quality of theory and/or methods, and the quality of the presentation. It should also discuss more explicitly the form and style of the presentation: what aspects of the presentation went well and could you use in your own presentations? What can be improved?

Intended Learning Outcomes
The graduate:

• has thorough knowledge of their own research specialization.
• can present and communicate in English (communication to experts and non-experts).
• can identify innovative and well-delineated research questions.
• can identify in a research proposal the correct methodology to answer research questions.
• can assess the feasibility of a research proposal.
• can critically reflect on their own work, and critically reflect on work of others in an appropriate way.
• can defend their own research, while being open to criticism.

In case online access is required for this course and you are not in the position to buy the access code, you are advised to contact the course coordinator for an alternative solution. Please note that access codes are not re-usable meaning that codes from second hand books do not work, as well as access codes from books with a different ISBN. Separate or spare codes are usually not available.