This assessment task has two parts: Part 1) Answers to a series of questions about a research article that will be provided to you (up to 1000 words). Part 2) A research proposal (up to 1250 words). You will base your research proposal on the published journal article reviewed in Part 1. That is, your proposal will outline the next question to be answered to follow on from the conclusions of that journal article. The study that you propose must be an experiment with at least one dependent variable and at least one independent variable. You do not have to find the paper for Part 1 yourself – it will be provided to you on vUWS. PART 1: At the end of Week 5 you will submit answers to a series of questions about your journal article (the questions will be available for download on vUWS). The maximum number of words that you can use is 1000, but if you can answer the questions completely in fewer words then please do so. You will be marked on your responses to the questions, not on the number of words that you use. Markers will be instructed to stop marking proposals at the word limit. There is no leeway. The questions do not contribute to the word count. The purpose of Part 1 of the assessment is to help you learn how to locate information in a journal article about why the study was done, how it was done (and why), what was found, what it all means, and what needs to be done next. Make sure that you complete the questions for Part 1 on your own. You will submit your answers to Turnitin, which will check all submissions against each other after the due date has passed. To support you in Part 1 of the assessment, you will be given the opportunity to practise answering the questions in a number of different activities. In the Week 2 tutorial you will complete the questions in class for a separate research article. You will also find exemplar articles in the Assessments folder on vUWS that you should practise with (relative to the marking criteria for Part 1 in vUWS). Before Part 1 is due we will place the answers for these exemplars in the Assessments folder on vUWS so that you can check how you are doing. There will also be a Part 1 instruction video in the Assessments folder on vUWS. Remember that the idea is for you to practise the skill of identifying how research studies are motivated so that you can produce your own research proposal (Part 2). PART 2: Your full research proposal (Part 2) will be due at the end of Week 10. In Part 2 you will need to propose a study based on the journal article you reviewed in Part 1 (., a study that follows on from the study you reviewed in Part 1 – you are encouraged to use ideas that might be suggested as future directions within the Part 1 article). In your proposal you will need to say what interesting area of cognitive processes is being investigated, why your study needs to be done (based on the previous literature) and how it should be done (and why). You will also need to review in 6 detail the study on which your proposal is based and your responses to the questions in Part 1 will help you do that more effectively. The structure of your proposal should be guided by the marking criteria (available on vUWS). We will make examples of proposals available for you, and there will be activities in tutorials to help you understand what to do. There will also be a Part 2 instruction video in the Assessments folder. You are encouraged to use the marking criteria as subheading labels. There are no budget constraints for the proposal. However, no marks will be gained for proposing an expensive study. In fact, given the word count limitations it would seem sensible that the proposed study be relatively modest, and a small step forward from the paper that you selected from the pool of articles.Show more
