"and let not the enmity and hatred of others to you make
you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just."
From the Noble Qura'n translation, Chapter Al Ma’idah, phrase8
Course Code: CSC 595
Course Name: Research Methods
About the Course…
This course aims at preparing students to comfortably indulge in research for their graduation projects and theses. It sets the groundwork of the logic of inquiry. It adopts a systematic research methodology starting by a selection of a topic in the computer science disciplines and collecting a comprehensive list of references for it through the search of available information resources. Students are then asked to analyze the collected references in accordance with a set of criteria that appraise the publication information as well as the aspects of the contents, including objectivity, coverage, and writing style to obtain a desired list of references. This allows students to have practical skills in finding and using sources of research information, research management, and basic data analysis techniques. Following, students are asked to annotate each reference of such a desired list. The annotation includes:
• The focus of the reference,
• The usefulness of the reference,
• limitations,.
• intended audience,
• research methods,
• conclusions that may have been put forward,
• student reaction to the reference,
• the relationships among references.
The students are then guided into writing a comprehensive literature review of the assigned/selected subtopic. In the process, students have the opportunity to compare one stream of literature with another, analyze each of the major theoretical positions, discuss and compare the thinking of the key writers in the field, analyze and compare different methodological approaches to their topics.
Throughout the work, students are guided to learn the process of formulating appropriate research questions and hypotheses. The students are asked to write a report of their literature review and their finding including research questions and hypotheses. Students may be able to arrive at a problem definition in the topic of concern or be able to scrutinize a new topic to formulate a problem for their theses and graduation projects.
In the literature review, students investigate:
• The author formulation and clarity, and significance as well strengths and limitation of the problem being investigated in his/her work,
• different approaches to the problem,
• theoretical framework being put forth.
• the relationship between the theoretical and research perspectives,
• related work discussed by the author,
• the accuracy and relevance of the data and its analysis,
• the validity of the arguments and conclusions,
• the objectivity of the work,
• the value and originality of the contribution,
• future work.
You may find the following links useful:
The RESPECT Code of Practice
Web Extension to APA Style Guide
-
How to Read a Scientific Research Paper
Guide to questionnaires and surveys
- Questionnaires for Course Evaluation (Economics LTSN)
- Research ethics
- Research Design
- Sci Research