Project Brief & Collaborative Contract Breakdown

So there's quite a few assessments in this course. I'm gonna break them down here right now, mainly for myself and my own learning process to just understand them completely and know exactly what it is that I'm working towards.


PROJECT BRIEF 10%

This brief is not final, as they know our research question will grow, shift and may even completely change once we begin the research process...but we have to start somewhere.

We need to address the following criteria:

• Background (why we have chosen this project/context)
• Aims (be "ambitious yet realistic")
• Scope (who, what, where, how)
• Research questions (primary and secondary)
• Research design (methodology)
• Outcomes (dissemination and impact, audience, proposed publication format etc)
• Time line (who is doing what and when..this becomes the basis of your individual reports i.e. assignment #2)

This is quite a lot to do in a very little time...and it's due next Thursday. Basically we need to REALLY have an idea of the background and issues surrounding the industry we're trying to question so we know WHAT is out there, what frames it and what WE want to focus on. Hmmm. I think the best way for me to prepare for this is to do as much reading as possible, thinking about what we're trying to do here and wrap my head around what was actually my original idea. 'Cos I'm kinda fuzzy right now.

++ Collaborative Contract

The collaborative contracts must include:

• Group goals - at least 3 covering the group's aims (linked to projects outcomes), how we agree to conduct ourselves as a group, communication strategies. They must be desinable & do-able, not vague notions of touchy feely greatness
• Responsibilities - these need to include strategies relating to 'people management' (punctuality, reliability and decision making procedures), 'time management' (weekly meetings, agendas with actions etc), and a statement detailing each individuals responsibilities (relates to the likes/dislikes question)
• Dispute resolution procedure. We don't anticipate you will need to use these - but a discussion and agreement on how to handle tricky situations can help avoid them.
  

Submitted and presented in Class

• Responsibilities
  

This is quite a bit more extensive than the usual Collaborative Contracts I've had to do before, and so we'll need to spend a bit of time on this on Monday just phrasing the points we want to include.