The course name is Understanding Research. I have attached two files outlining the marking criteria and how the assignment should be done. The topic for the assignment will be "Impact of e-commerce on retail business industry". The deadline is 24th August 2018 12:00 Australian Standard Time.
IFN600-Assignment1-Instructions_v4 IFN600 UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH | ASSIGNMENT 1: LITERATURE ANALYSIS | 2018 1 IFN600 Understanding Research Assignment 1: Literature Analysis ASSIGNMENT TYPE: Analysis of published research TO BE COMPLETED: Individually DUE DATE: Friday 24 August, 23:59 AEST (11:59pm) WEIGHTING: 30% DELIVERABLE: Written document (PDF preferred) SUBMISSION METHOD: Blackboard upload Background A critical part of developing a research project proposal is to review existing knowledge relevant to the problem to be solved. To help you identify a worthwhile research problem, in this assignment you will review previously-published research that describes what is already known about your chosen topic. By doing so you will provide a context for your research problem and provide evidence that the topic is worthy of investigation. To do this you must evaluate several previous research publications in the specific area of your chosen research problem. From within these prior publications you will identify particular contributions that are directly relevant to your topic, thus showing how this prior work supports your argument for the novelty, value and feasibility of your own research idea. How to recognise relevant literature To complete this assignment you must find high-quality literature directly relevant to your chosen research problem. See the Week 2 teaching materials on Blackboard for ways of finding relevant literature and for the characteristics of trustworthy publications. Previously-published research may be useful to your argument for the value of your own research idea in any of the following ways: • It may address a research problem very similar to yours, thus providing evidence for the significance of your own problem. (It may even directly state the need to conduct future research on your chosen topic.) • It may have used a research methodology, tools or a technique that you could re-use in your own research, thereby providing supporting evidence for the ability to solve your research problem. • It may have produced results or data that you can directly use in your own research. • It may define benchmarks, precedents or standards relevant to your research problem, thus helping you express the necessary criteria for successfully solving it. IFN600 UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH | ASSIGNMENT 1: LITERATURE ANALYSIS | 2018 2 How much to write You should write enough to make your argument clear, no more, no less. You will be assessed on the quality of your writing, not its quantity. In particular, the technical aspects of your idea must be easily comprehensible by a layperson. It should not be necessary for the reader to be an expert in the particular technical field or domain to understand and appreciate your arguments. Specialised terminology and abbreviations should be explained clearly or, better yet, avoided altogether. Similarly, you should cite only as many publications as needed to make your argument convincing. Each publication you cite must clearly provide support for conducting research on your chosen topic, either in terms of the novelty, value and/or feasibility of the research. There is no fixed word limit for the document or a required number of references. Nonetheless, as a rough guide, we expect you will need about 1,500 to 2,000 words to explain your argument clearly and around 5 to 7 references to demonstrate that you have searched the literature thoroughly. (The markers will not count how many words you have written!) Specific requirements Analysing the literature is an important step in determining whether or not there is a need to conduct research on a particular topic. It is also the process for positioning your proposed research within existing knowledge and theory. Your task is to identify a problem you would like to use as the basis for the research proposal you will develop this semester and to write an analysis of the published literature related to that problem. The primary requirement for this assignment is to argue the case for undertaking research on your chosen problem. To do so you must convince the reader that the research problem you have identified is: • Novel — To qualify as research the problem must be one that has not been solved previously. • Important — The problem must be one whose solution will be of significant value. • Solvable — The problem must be one which has a reasonable prospect of being solved with contemporary tools and techniques. In order to convince the reader of these points your argumentation must be: • Clear — Your writing must be easily understandable by a lay reader, avoiding uncommon terminology and abbreviations. • Concise — You must express your ideas efficiently, so that key points are not obscured by irrelevant material. • Coherent — Your arguments and the conclusions you draw must be structured logically. • Convincing — The overall “story” you tell must be compelling and believable. Your submission document needs to include the following major sections and include the elements listed. You may choose to add subsections, but keep in mind the need to keep your writing concise and the overall document as short as possible. Marks will be awarded for quality, not quantity. IFN600 UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH | ASSIGNMENT 1: LITERATURE ANALYSIS | 2018 3 1. Problem Statement • State clearly the broad problem you wish to solve. Define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern. (NB: You may change the research problem you described in the weekly preparatory tasks. It is likely that your analysis of the literature will cause you to rethink your chosen research problem.) • Give the background of the problem area, addressing the following points as appropriate: o overall trends in what is known or has been published about the topic; o conflicts in previous theory, methodology, evidence and conclusions; o gaps in research and scholarship; and o a single problem to be solved or a new perspective of immediate interest. 2. Approach • Explain the strategy you used for finding, analysing and comparing literature. • Explain how your analysis of the literature is organised (e.g., by theme, chronologically, according to results achieved, according to the approach used, etc). • State what is in and out of scope for your literature analysis: o types of literature sources; o topics. 3. Literature Analysis • Engage with different types of literature as necessary to support your argument (e.g., research studies, reviews, theoretical articles, case studies, etc.). • Unpack themes, highlight major concerns, influential studies, etc., in relation to your topic. • Synthesise your findings into a coherent summary of research related to your chosen problem. In particular, you should not present unrelated, disjointed summaries of the publications found. • Focus on areas of agreements, disagreements, tensions and contentious issues related to your topic. • Evaluate the current “state of the art” for the body of knowledge reviewed, pointing out any gaps in research, inconsistencies in theory and findings, and areas or issues pertinent to future study. • Use citations to the literature throughout to support your claims. Where appropriate, include direct quotations from the literature and/or paraphrase previous author’s arguments. • Use strong “umbrella” or topic sentences at the beginning of each paragraph, and brief “so what” summary sentences at intermediate points in the review, so the reader can easily identify the theme or aspect of the theme being described and understand comparisons and analyses. IFN600 UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH | ASSIGNMENT 1: LITERATURE ANALYSIS | 2018 4 4. Conclusions • Summarise major contributions of significant studies and articles to the body of knowledge under review, maintaining the focus on the research problem established in your problem statement. • Conclude by summing up and identifying the significance of your chosen research problem in relation to the literature. • Develop a brief recommendation for future studies into the problem in the context of the outcomes of your literature analysis. 5. References • Provide a list of all references cited in the previous sections using the APA referencing format. • All the references you cite must be of high quality, typically as evidenced by peer review. 6. Reflective Statement • Drawing on the weekly reflections you have written up to this point, write a short (2-3 paragraphs) on your engagement with the research process thus far. • Ensure that your statement includes your thoughts on how you engaged with: (a) the weekly tasks, (b) reflecting on the process of research, and (c) discussing your work within your tutorial group. • Write from your personal point of view (in the first person) highlighting key processes which you found personally interesting and/or challenging. • Reflect on how you engaged with these processes, the decisions that you made at the time, and how you overcame any obstacles. Conclude your reflective statement with thoughts on how you might approach similar tasks in the future, identifying what you would keep the same, what you would change, and your reasoning behind these thoughts. Adapted from: 1. Review of literature (2006). UW-Madison Writing Centre http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html 2. Writing a literature review assignment (2014). RMIT-Study and Learning Centre https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/sites/default/files/Writing_a_Literature_revie w_assignment_2015_Accessible.pdf IFN600-Assignment1-MarkingCriteria_v5 IFN600, Understanding Research Assessment Criteria for Assignment 1 (30% weighting) Student Name: ________________________________ Student Number: ________________________________ 7 - High Distinction 6 - Distinction 5 - Credit 4 - Pass 3 - Marginal Fail 2 - Fail 1 - Low Fail Problem statement – The ability to: • Define or identify the general topic, issue or area of concern • Problem statement clearly expresses the purpose, objective and scope of the research. • Research problem is clearly defined and key issues/trends are identified. • Excellent identification of conflicts/gaps • Well focused with the appropriate reading audience in mind. • Problem statement outlines purpose, objective and scope of the research. • Discussion is well focused on the problem and majority of