Learn how to research and write a high-quality research proposal for postgraduate applications. A carefully prepared and thorough research proposal is usually crucial for applications for advanced or doctoral study, and can provide the launchpad for the first stages of that postgraduate study. This online course will give you the awareness, skills and tools to write a well thought-out and achievable research proposal, helping you improve the quality of your postgraduate applications. It will also give you a taste of the self-study required in postgraduate doctoral research.
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The course focuses on Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, but much of the content is relevant to all disciplines.
What topics will you cover?
- Introduction to doctoral research
- Funding your study
- Defining the problem and writing a research question
- Writing a literature review
- Research design and methodology
- How to construct your proposal
Learning on this course
You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...
- Identify why you want to do a PhD and whether your expectations are realistic
- Explore the main requirements, structures and problems with aiming to undertake a PhD
- Demonstrate how to set a realistic, manageable and impactful research question
- Compare deductive and inductive research questions
- Describe and be able to implement the steps required to writing a literature review, including: doing a literature search, planning, organising and writing the literature review
- Discuss what kind of theoretical approach would be useful for your research proposal
- Compare the differences between ontology, epistemology, different research designs and methodology.
- Summarise what you have learned from this course into a first draft of a research proposal
Who is the course for?
This course has been created primarily for postgraduate research applicants, but it might also be useful for those who want to learn more about developing well-founded and challenging research bids for purposes other than postgraduate research degrees.
