Professional Communication for Engineers EMDP

Engineering Multi-Disciplinary Project (EMDP) 20

1 Topic Choice & Approval

2 Proposal Submission 3
3 Oral Progress report 5
4 Poster presentation 12 [6 + 6*]

Proposal

In the proposal you need to state your topic, outline the situation/context of your
topic and identify the problem(s) that your project aims to address or overcome.

The possible solutions that you will examine in your project should be briefly
explained and some statement of how you expect to evaluate the solutions in the
project should conclude the proposal.

It helps to have a research question, or questions, to guide your investigation and

also to have a clear understanding of what method(s) you expect to use to investigate
your topic. In other words a statement of what research methodology you expect
to employ is important.

At all times you will be assessed for language accuracy & appropriateness. I will
show you what is appropriate and what is expected BUT I will not proofread your
work. There are many ways you can attend to this issue and I will be very unforgiving
on careless, inaccurate work.

Research Question(s)

A well-focused question can be used to guide your project investigation. The question
needs to be unambiguous, specific and complex. Research questions should not be
answerable with a simple yes or no or by easily-found facts (e.g. public domain,
online information). They should, instead, require both research and analysis on the
part of the researchers. As a general rule, if a quick Google search can answer a
research question it is not a suitable question.

Visit this page at George Mason University Writing Centre for examples of unclear,
poorly focused, simplistic questions and how they could be improved.

http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/resources-template.php?id=59

EMDP Proposal
Research Methodology

Your methodology is the means by which you will collect the information relevant to
your project topic. Primary research involves collecting data that does not already
exist. Typical methods to achieve this are through use of experiments, surveys,
questionnaires & interviews. Secondary research involves the summary, collation
and/or synthesis of existing research and may be achieved by document search,
review of various solutions to a problem or suggesting new solutions based on
analysis of existing evidence/new untested developments.

SPSE

In combination with the investigative method a clearly defined procedure is very

useful. For instance stating the existing Situation, defining the Problem(s),
identifying and discussing the Solutions and Evaluating their relative
value/effectiveness will allow you to structure the information you collect in a
cohesive and manageable fashion.

One further consideration you need to treat seriously is that your research question
should imply contributions from the different engineering disciplines in your team.
The project should allow for clearly evident input from all members.

Who is your contact in the Writing Centre?

EMDP Proposal