An investigation into the application of research strategies in the final-year undergraduate engineering and surveying projects

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence gathered from USQ’s capstone Research Project students and their supervisors suggests that many students have difficulty completing the literature review associated with the Project and fail to use the literature review to inform their Project’s technical components. This paper provides a preliminary report on a USQ Associate Fellowship project designed to better understand students’ experiences and propose further work designed to overcome difficulties discovered by the preliminary research. With reference to responses collated from a pre-test survey, an intervention (in the form of five workshops) was designed and then conducted with participants. On completion of the intervention, a post-test survey was administered. Data from these surveys and observations from the intervention will be analysed along with ‘pseudo’ assessment data being gathered half way through the Research Project via the Project Appreciation’s literature review and again via the actual Dissertation’s literature review.