MSc Final Project

Here are some additional resources to help the Research Project Management students to select a suitable topic for their major projects so that we can allocate them a supervisor.

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We shall start by considering what makes a good topic.

We shall then look at strategies for topic selection.

Topic selection involves creativity and divergent thinking so we shall explore this as well.

This is followed by some suggestions on how to approach selecting a good topic. One of these is concept maps. We shall look at an example and how this can be used in a literature search in Google Scholar.

The topic you choose must lie within the scope of your degree course. For example, Management and Finance students must choose a finance-related topic.

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Horn gives a list of 10 attributes of a good topic:

Firstly, a topic cannot just be practical – it must relate to theory in some way.

Secondly, it must be easy to define it.

Thirdly, as it is a Management MSc project it must relate to individuals, groups or organisations.

Fourthly, the amount of work involved in exploring the topic in depth must be achievable within the given timeframe.

Fifthly, the topic must have some unique element to it. This is also called identifying your research gap.

Sixthly, it must be feasible in terms of costs. For example, think about travel expenses (although international travel to carry out research is not authorised).

Seven - it should be of interest to you personally.

Eight – it should be easy to access the people who will be giving you data or other sources of data – this is often a good way to refine an initial project idea.

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Nine – it must meet the University requirements (for example, for the MSc, your project should be aligned to your pathway and there are rules about case studies).

Finally – it must be possible for someone to supervise your topic.

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Horn also provides 8 strategies for choosing a topic:

No. 1 – something that you have always longed to do

No. 2 – the opposite end of the spectrum – if you have no idea what to do, put a few search terms into Google Scholar to identify some published research studies, choose one and replicate its method, maybe changing the context to one where you can collect data yourself

No. 3 – this is a very powerful technique, especially for people who wish to work in creative industries – turn your major project into an opportunity to meet people who are doing the kind of job you would like to be doing in 5 to 10 years time; find out what they do, how they got to where they are and make good career contacts at the same time.

No. 4 – if you have already worked or you are currently working in an organisation, you might be able to identify a problem or process that can be improved

No. 5 – rather than narrowing down an existing topic idea by thinking about what data you can collect you can also work the other way round and start with the data you can access

No. 6 – look at potential supervisors’ areas of research interest and choose one of these – most of their profiles are available on the BCU website

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No. 7 – if you have undertaken a dissertation at a lower level you may be able to build on it for your masters. However, be careful not to plagiarise your own work – you must clearly state where you are citing it.

Finally, problems that are important to society have an intrinsic social interest, such as climate change.

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The cartoon on this slide vividly expresses what is wrong with the education system in most countries. Students live in a highly interactive world but they are told to “take their pills and concentrate” at “boring stuff”.

The nature of thinking developed in education is often convergent – there is one right answer to any question.

Topic selection is very different as it involves creativity. Part of this process is about coming up with lots of ideas. This is known as divergent thinking. Five year old children are much better at this than postgraduate students as the education system tends to kill divergent thinking. Trying to think divergently can therefore be a particularly scary experience for students who feel more comfortable with clear processes to find one right answer.

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Topic selection involves two types of thinking – divergent thinking to come up with lots of ideas followed by convergent thinking to narrow down on one or two viable options.

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In fact this process often needs to take place several times before you come up with a good topic idea. This is the same as the creative design process (for example designing a new chair).

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There are different techniques that can support this process:

Brainstorming involves coming up with lots of ideas and asking lots of common sense questions about an initial idea.

Concept maps represent the connection between concepts visually.

Background reading is another useful technique – at this stage we recommend putting keywords into Google Scholar as a fast way to explore what is already published that relates to your research idea

Talking about your idea to other students on your course is another approach – as you express your idea verbally, it often starts to take shape more in your own mind

Finally, do not expect to come up with a topic idea in one day – sleep on your first idea. Good ideas often take time to emerge from this process.

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Here is an example of a concept map for an actual international masters student.

They were looking at the effective implementation of new ICT systems in small retail outlets in Nigeria and wanted to compare with practice in the UK.

This was a form of case study analysis. It also involves different theories such as systems analysis and change theory.

All these inter-related ideas are expressed in this map in a very simple way.

This is a also a good example of a viable project.

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Here is an example of using Google Scholar to identify published research in the same area as the example on the previous slide.

The search terms ict, systems, retail, smes and Nigeria have been entered.

Google Scholar has returned over 5,000 hits.

This is too many and ideally should be narrowed down with more search terms so that there are between 10 and 500 hits. It may be difficult to scroll through enough pages of matching hits to identify relevant good quality literature with this search.

The Google Scholar algorithm works in two ways – it looks for the best match with the keywords and also the best quality research in terms of how much it has been cited by others (although you should take into account the age of the publication as new publications have had less time to attract citations).

The links on the right hand side show which of these sources are available either from BCU or externally.

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Please upload your topic idea on Moodle by midday on Friday 25th September so that we can allocate you a supervisor.

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These are the sources that I have cited in this presentation.

This concludes the additional material on topic selection.

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