Discovering Your PhD Potential: Writing a Research Proposal Course - University of Leicester
FutureLearn
Key Information
Campus location
Online United Kingdom
Languages
English
Study format
Distance Learning
Duration
5 weeks
Pace
Part time
Tuition fees
USD 49 *
Application deadline
Request info
Earliest start date
Request info
* you can learn it for free or upgrade the course and have extra benefits for $49
Scholarships
Explore scholarship opportunities to help fund your studies
Introduction
Learn how to research and write a high-quality research proposal for postgraduate applications.
Learn how to write an excellent research proposal for a postgraduate application
A carefully prepared and thorough research proposal is usually crucial for applications for advanced or doctoral study and can provide the launchpad for the first stages of that postgraduate study.
This online course will give you the awareness, skills and tools to write a well-thought-out and achievable research proposal, helping you improve the quality of your postgraduate applications. It will also give you a taste of the self-study required in postgraduate doctoral research.
The course focuses on Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, but much of the content is relevant to all disciplines.
When would you like to start?
Start straight away and learn at your own pace. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.
- Available now
Who will you learn with?
Neil Christie
Professor Neil Christie works at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester and has long been that department’s PGR Tutor, overseeing all the research students there.
Who developed the course?
University of Leicester
The University of Leicester is a leading research-led university with a strong tradition of excellence in teaching. It is consistently ranked amongst the top 20 universities in the United Kingdom.
Admissions
Curriculum
What topics will you cover?
- Introduction to doctoral research
- Funding your study
- Defining the problem and writing a research question
- Writing a literature review
- Research design and methodology
- How to construct your proposal
Program Outcome
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to:
- Identify why you want to do a PhD and whether your expectations are realistic.
- Explore the main requirements, structures and problems with aiming to undertake a PhD.
- Demonstrate how to set a realistic, manageable and impactful research question.
- Compare deductive and inductive research questions.
- Describe and be able to implement the steps required to writing a literature review, including doing a literature search, planning, organising and writing the literature review.
- Discuss what kind of theoretical approach would be useful for your research proposal.
- Compare the differences between ontology, epistemology, different research designs and methodology.
- Summarise what you have learned from this course into the first draft of a research proposal.
Accreditations
Ideal Students
Who is the course for?
This course has been created primarily for postgraduate research applicants, but it might also be useful for those who want to learn more about developing well-founded and challenging research bids for purposes other than postgraduate research degrees.