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School of Natural and Built Environments
Mawson Lakes
City East
The approach taken varies according to students (ie their
preparedness and English language proficiency) and the supervision style
of the research supervisors:
- Welcome and induction of student when they first arrive by the RDC
and supervisors. The student is allocated a computer, office space,
photocopying, library and computer access. Students are normally given
2-3 weeks to settle in to their new environment. If students appear to
be struggling with their English language skills, they may be advised
to seek assistance from Learning Connection which can add time to the
schedule.
- Initial meeting with the supervisors occurs about week 3 to
determine the research approach the student will pursue. A student is
usually asked to provide an initial discussion paper on their proposed
PhD topic with some reference to relevant literature. The student then
has about 2-3 weeks to prepare the paper.
- By about week 5 or 6, another student-supervisor meeting takes
place to examine the discussion paper and suggest how the student
should best approach their literature review.
- On completion of the literature review (by about week 12-15), a
meeting takes place to discuss how to conceptualise the research
task/questions which seems to emerge from the literature review and
what the research hopes to discover. The research methodology likely
to be relevant to the research task/questions is also discussed at
this stage.
- The completion of the research questions and research methodology
would take place by about week 16-19). A student supervisor meeting
would occur by week 18 to discuss this aspect of the research
proposal.
- In the remaining few weeks (weeks 18-22), the student would
produce a consolidated and refined research proposal.
- In weeks 23-24, the student's Principal Supervisor would approve
(or require further revision) of the student's research proposal.
- Once the Research Proposal is approved by the Principal
Supervisor, it would then be forwarded on to the School's Research
Degree Coordinator for review. If the RDC approves it, then the
proposal would be forwarded on to the Research Degree Chair, If it is
not approved, it would be sent back to the student for revision, under
the Supervisor's guidance.
In terms of assessing Research Proposals, each proposal is assessed
on merit according to the relevant discipline area. Because the School
is multi-disciplinary in nature, considerable reliance is placed on the
expert knowledge of the Principal Supervisor in determining when a
Research Proposal is ready to be lodged. The role of the RDC then has
been more of an administrative mechanism to ensure that there are timely
submissions. The RDC does personally review the proposal, but it may be
more from the perspective of presentation, acceptable written
expression, consistency, coherence and logic of the research proposed
and whether the research task seems to be a sufficiently significant
contribution to knowledge in the field.
Students work on their Research Proposals with their supervisors,
then once approved by the supervisor, the proposal is submitted to the
School Research Committee. At least one other Research Committee member,
preferably from a closely related discipline (and not necessarily the
Research Degree Coordinator in all cases) reads the proposal and makes
recommendations back to the full committee. Once approved by Research
Committee the proposal is forwarded to the Division Dean Research
Education.
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