• Next start date: 4 September 2017

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.

This course will enable you to:

• Understand why you want to do a PhD and whether your expectations are realistic
• Be familiar with the main requirements, structures and problems with aiming to undertake a PhD.
• Know how to set a realistic, manageable and impactful research question.
• Be able to differentiate between deductive and inductive research questions.
• Understand 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
• Know what kind of theoretical approach would be useful for your research proposal
• Be able to differentiate between ontology, epistemology, different research designs and methodology.
• Pull together what you have learned from this course into a first draft of a research proposal.

How a MOOC works

MOOCs are flexible courses which allow you to participate at your own pace. Once a course has started you can study the week’s material at a time that suits you. You do not need to be online at the same time as the other students. There is no requirement to visit the University of Leicester  campus.

If you want to leave your course at any point you may do so, whether or not it has already begun. You can sign up for the same course when it runs again if you want to have another go at it. There is no limit on the number of MOOCs you can take: if you think you have the time to do several simultaneously, that’s fine.

If you have any questions about this course, join the live online chat with academic tutors and admissions staff of the University of Leicester.