The Help With Assignment Blog is intended to provide with tips and tricks to students so that they are able to do better at school and college. The Blog is associated with HelpWithAssignment.com (HwA), a leading provider of online tuitions in University subjects.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Guidelines for writing methodology for a dissertation proposal - HelpWiththesis.com

Writing a good methodology for your dissertation proposal is not a rocket science. However there are certain points to be remebered while doing your dissertation. Read the blog below to get a clear understanding of those points.

The Methodology section relates to SIX rows of the marking grid as shown below




Sampling population – this section identifies the group (or set of things) that you will be making your knowledge claims about, your population. You need to identify this group (who/what are they and why are they interesting), consider issues of access (a realistic outline of how you are going to get to them/it) and why you have excluded other groups (who/what you will not be studying and why).
Sampling procedure and size –You need to explain the procedure you will use or have used to select your sample, the size and makeup of the sample (including a discussion of saturation for qualitative study) and a justification of your choices – why have you chosen to use your sample selection procedure?

Methodology – Philosophy – here you will discuss your particular methodology, and give a justification of why it is appropriate to answer your research question (e.g. phenomenology, causal research)

Methodology – Design – here you explain how you will collect your data, your method (e.g. focus groups, techniques, questionnaire, experiment). Again you must justify your choices, why are they the most useful ones to answer your research question?

Methodology – proposed data analysis – here you explain how you will analyse your data, once collected. This should be appropriate to the methodology, methods chosen and your question.

Methodology – limitations – here you show that you understand the limitations of your proposed research. You need to discuss the limitations of your philosophy and design in order to gain full marks.

The marker will be looking to see that all of these sections make sense when looked at as a whole. For example, if you claim you are doing phenomenology in your philosophy section, then in your design section you outline that you will be using questionnaires for the main part of your data collection and analyzing them using SPSS, you will lose marks as this does not make sense. The marker will be looking at each section as it relates to what has gone before, make sure yours makes sense read as a whole and not just as separate sections!!

7) Project plan
Use a Gannt style of chart to sensibly map out what areas of research you will undertake across the timescale. You should be familiar with Gannt charts from your other study, but if not, you can find information about Gannt charts on the internet.

For more help on Dissertation writing or porposal writing please feel free to contact www.HelpWiththesis.com

GOOD LUCK!!

Guidelines for writing a good dissertation proposal - HelpWithThesis.com

The most important guideline for the proposal is the marking grid and feedback sheet available from the assessment folder. This shows EXACTLY what is required to achieve full marks in each section. I have reproduced it here to show how the assessment is organised

This is what would be expected for a proposal table of contents

1) Title page
2) Table of contents
3) Background
4) Literature review
5) Research questions
6) Methodology
7) Project plan

Lets go go through the main sections

1) Title page and 2) Table of contents - should be self explanatory!!


3) Background and 4) Literature review and 5) Research questions


The background and literature review and research questions are assessed using the first THREE sections of the marking grid.




In the background, you need to give the background to the proposed study. This might be (but is not limited to) a personal discussion of why you are interested in this area, data and/or information from trade journals,/magazines/newspapers/news media, secondary research reports on the area you are studying, internet sources (NOT Wikipedia!!) and so on. The purpose of the background section is to show why your area of study is valuable or interesting and to give some background on the context of your study

The literature review looks at the peer reviewed academic literature (books and journal articles) on your area of study. This is the place you begin to look at the academic conversations about your area of interest, identify the key writers and the main arguments and suggest a possible contribution that your research might make. There is no clear cut answer to the question “how many sources do I need?” the answer is enough to show an appreciation of the area you are studying and the main academic discussions taking place.

Markers are looking for research that is shown through these sections to be interesting, timely, valid and offers a real contribution to knowledge of this particular area. Please bear in mind that “no-one has done research on this” is not a well thought out research gap or potential contribution; do not use this as your main argument for pursuing your research. There might be a good reason it has not been done, it might not be very interesting or necessary!!

Your research questions must clearly tackle the engagement with the literature that you have claimed. A research question follows on from the background and literature review and is turning an interest stimulated through those sections into a question (or series of questions) questions should have a question mark at the end!! Try not to write too many questions, 3 should be the maximum, 1 is acceptable as long as it clearly tackles the engagement with the literature.

For more help on Dissertation writing or porposal writing please feel free to contact www.HelpWIththesis.com

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Various tools to be used for writing a good Business Proposal - De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats by HelpWithAssignment.com team

How to write a good Business Proposal? What are the thinking tools that one should focus on while writing a good proposal?
There are a number of thinking tool for group discussion and individual thinking that one should use while writing a business proposal. Few of them include:


Brainstorming (brainwriting)
 Fishbone
 De Bono’s 6 thinking hats
 Mind Mapping


Let’s discuss the De Bono’s 6 thinking hats in this article. The others would be discussed in our other articles to come-

De Bono’s 6 thinking hats is a method for incorporating lateral thinking into problem solving. It has six modes of thinking (represented by different coloured hats) and helps seeing different sides of a problem


Understanding the implication of the various hats –

Red – emotion, intuition and feelings
• Put forward ideas based on intuition, gut reaction, without need for justification
• Also to be used to prospect how other people will react emotionally to a problem or proposed solution

White – information - Focus is on facts, figures, information needs and gaps in knowledge

Black – caution
• Use logical judgment to point out weak points of a proposal
• Helps to make plans tougher and more resilient before embarking on a course of action

Green – creativity - Freewheeling way of thinking, without criticism

Blue – process - Bird’s eye on the process of thinking (meta-cognition)

Yellow – optimism -Use logical judgment to point out the benefits of a proposal and why it will work


Other important point
• Exhaust potential contributions of each hat before moving to the next
• No fixed order of hats
• Not all hats have to be used

De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats - When to Use and what is the main purpose

The main purpose of using this tool is to broaden thinking beyond tired old ideas and to promote new ideas. This tools also helps in achieving the following:

• Solution generation
 Encourages more effort in the evaluation of new ideas
 Green hat

• Solution evaluation
 Black hat

• Solution implementation
 Blue hat

www.HelpWithAssignment.com has expert tutors for all subjects who would be happy to help you in understanding these tools as well implementing it in your Assignment.

How to check for plagiarism in your assignments

Plagiarism means taking of someone else’s work and ideas without correctly giving the credit. We can also say it’s an unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.
Generally students tend to plagiarize assignments and projects. If they are caught they have to face many consequences such as facing penalty or even termination. Therefore, every student should check for plagiarism before submission of their assignments and homework.

HelpWithAssignment.com, which regularly uses such tools, has done a thorough analysis of the options available to students on 2 parameters – cost and quality of check. Here are the results and the HwA ranks for all options.


According to the above information there are many sites which help the students in checking for plagiarism. Some are free in but in terms of quality they are low for example, the likes of Article checker and Plagiarism Checker. Websites such as Copyscape and Turnitin are used by many leading Universities and Colleges. These are high quality services but have to be paid for usage.
Therefore, if you have written an article and know that only internet based resources have been used; students can go in for any of the free options listed above. However, when in doubt students should use better tools such as turnitin.com.

References http://www.suite101.com/content/a-definition-for-plagiarism-