This is a blog post written specifically to facilitate my OBU Degree Skills and Learning Statement (SLS). Hence, kindly ignore this post.=]
Prior to my first mentor meeting, I had done some information gathering on a few companies which I planned to use as the focus of my research during my two weeks semester break. Apart from that, I also spent some time browsing through the Information Pack published by Oxford Brookes University to have a better understanding on the requirements of the research project and the structure of the report. However, I don't really know where to start from despite reading the Information Pack.
Later on, I tried to seek for advice from my senior to assist me in analyzing each topic area and initiating my Research and Analysis project. As that was my first attempt on such research work, I practically stared in front of my laptop for several hours figuring out the contents that I should include in my report. After completing the reasons for choosing my topic area and organisation, I stopped doing my research project for few days as I had no idea what is my overall research approach. Regardless of the efforts I spent on the Internet, I couldn't find an appropriate guideline on drafting an overall research approach. At last, I decided to move on to the next section and left that part of the project blank.
The first meeting with my mentor, Miss Geetha, really helped me a lot. She explained to me the overall structure of my research project and some important points to take note of. Besides that, she also briefed on some presentation skills needed during my fifteen minutes presentation later on. Through the meeting, I get to learn some new things, especially the Harvard referencing system.
I learned that referencing bares an important role in doing a research project. In particular, proper referencing is vital to avoid the risk of plagiarism which might lead to failure of a research work. Referencing does not only limit to the words cited from original researchers' text, but it also intends to acknowledge a researcher's idea. I learned that I have to make reference to a person by merely using his or her idea in my project! In addition, there are many minute details that I have to pay attention to when making a reference such as the punctuation marks.
I also learned how to present my report in a professional manner through the meeting. For instance, I get to know the flow of information needed to be presented in a research report, the font size, alignment as well as the type of line spacing needed. Apart from that, I was being exposed to some business models which I never heard of until then. This allowed me to carry out some research on those business models so that I could apply those models correctly in my research project. I realized that in order to fair well in the research project, I have to apply the business models in the specific business context rather than merely stating the theory of such models.
Furthermore, I learned that any comments made by the company must be verified by relevant sources such as newspaper articles and analysts' reports. The reports of the company may be biased and lack objectivity if viewed in isolation. Hence, more than one source of information is essential so that the results I obtained are neutral and objective.
Last but not least, I finally had a grasp on what to write about for my overall research approach after the meeting. I learned that the overall approach should not be written in past tense and it involves literature review and empirical research. All the insights gained from the first mentor meeting enabled me to continue with my research project confidently with less hiccups occurred during my research work.
