A proposal is a formal document to apply for funds for a project, or to propose a business agreement. It can be a letter or short essay, and can be used to apply for a number of different things. In this assignment, you can choose a more business oriented topic or a more academic topic. See examples created for this course at this page: Proposals (writing).
2.4.1 Proposal
For this assignment, you will pick a potential subject for your final project - a company, entity, or program - for which you would write a case study or a qualitative study. The focus of this project is independent information / data gathering and analysis. You will provide some background information on your subject, why you are interested in the subject, and a potential research question about the subject that you would like to explore.
For this assignment, you will propose the topic of your final paper. For the final paper, you will write an original research paper, consisting of a case study of a particular company, entity, program, or group, e.g., a company or business (of any country), or one of its activities (e.g., a merger, acquisition, expansion into a new market, marketing strategy). (If you want to do a traditional research paper, that may be possible, too.) Possible subjects might include:
- an organization, institute, or institution
- a non-governmental organization (NGO), charity, non-profit organization, or community service organization
- a governmental / intergovernmental organization (such as UNESCO, the UN, World Bank)
- a government agency
- a government program
- a school, university, or educational institution
- a department or major of a particular university
- an educational program (at a particular school or educational institution, or from a particular organization or agency)
- a community service program or organization
- a qualitative study of a small group of individuals
- a famous person, e.g., a famous literary figure and one aspect of his/her work
A potential subject could be something like the following.
- A particular business or company (in any country); or one company's particular product, service, strategy, or such
- A particular government agency or program
- A particular NGO, governmental / intergovernmental organization, or one of its programs
- A particular community service organization, or community service program
- A particular educational institution (primary, secondary, or tertiary, private); e.g., a particular university or university program
- A particular educational program or policy, or a university major program / department; e.g., an EMI program, a study-abroad program, or a particular major, at one university
- A particular teaching method or approach in a particular context (e.g., a particular EFL/ESL teaching method; how a particular type of literature is taught)
- The learning experiences of a particular group of students / learners (in a progam, major, department, or such a context)
- The experiences of a particular teacher / group of teachers at a particular educational institution
- The opinions or experiences of a particular group of consumers / users of a product, service, or company
Requirements:
- At least one full page for the proposal. This can serve as the basis for your final paper, which will be longer.
- A literature review containing at least two English-language sources of professional or academic quality (or official websites), properly cited and referenced
- A well defined research question, or well defined business objectives
- Notes
- This can overlap with or relate to previous assignments, or a paper that you are currently doing in another course.
- If this overlaps with a paper from another course, the LMS plagiarism detection may flag one of your submissions as plagiarism or self-plagiarism. In that case, you can email the assignment to me, and in the LMS, simply indicate that you emailed it.
- See the grading criteria in the book, and the format for major papers.
2.4.2 Project types
Here are some project options for the propsoal and final. If you are analyzing an actual company or entity, be sure to formulate a specific research question. See the page on Proposals_(writing) for some examples.
- 1a. Academic research project
This would be an idea for an original, final research paper, or for a special research project that you might want to undertake someday. For a case study, you can focus on a literature topic (e.g., a famous writer, and an aspect of his/her life or work), or a case study of a specific academic department, program, university, school, etc. Another option would be an education and pedagogy topic (e.g., a case study of students in a very specific learning situation); note: for this, you need training or experience in collecting and analyzing qualitative data.
- 1b. Business / organization research project
This would be an idea for a business related case study, such as a study of a research question regarding a particular company, market segment, organization, or other entity. This could also be an evaluation of an existing or past government agency, policy, program; an intergovernmental agency, policy, or program; a particular NGP; or a particular community service program.
- 2. Community Service Project
This would be original proposal for a project that you might like to undertake. For an original project, you will propose a project that will benefit a community in some manner. This can be an area of Busan, a rural community or area of Korea, or a community or small area in another country (a country and local area that you are familiar with). This can be any kind of community project. You will need to explain a specific need, a specific plan for a project to address the need, and your ability to direct a project to help with that need. You can imagine that you are applying for funds from a foundation or governmental agency to make your project possible.
- 3. Business project proposal
You can imagine that you want to undertake an original business project. This can be starting a new business, and/or researching, developing, and marketing a new invention, product or service. For this, you will need to identify and explain a specific need or market for your company or idea, a specific plan for developing it, and your ability to direct the project and successfully complete it. You can imagine that you are applying for a grant from a foundation or governmental agency to make your project possible.
- 4. Business Agreement Proposal
Imagine you are an executive or manager of a company (or an entrepreneur or independent business person), and would like to make a full-length proposal to another company. This could be a proposal for both companies to enter into some type of business arrangement, or for one company to offer its services or products to another company. One company might need a particular service (e.g., managing a company website) or product (e.g., computer hardware) in order to function. You can imagine you are a manager or executive with the authority to make such a proposal to another company, where your company would like to offer its products or services to another. Clarify pricing options, your terms and conditions. Be sure to provide an executive summary at the beginning (see the book for information on executive summaries).
2.4.3 Components
Your proposal can be written as a case study or as a full-length proposal, which should include most or all of the following elements in some form.
- General requirements for all papers
- At one full papge
- At least two English-language academic or professional sources should be reviewed, cited and used meaningfully (such as academic or business / professional quality sources). Additional sources such as foreign-language sources may also be cited.
- Submitted in the LMS
- Academic / business research project
- Research question or problem
- Research plan and methods, details, and rationale for your choices
- Specific goals, objectives, and measurable outcomes
- Potential obstacles (and how you will handle them)
- Your ability and qualifications to direct the project, manage the funds, and successfully complete the project
- General timeline and budget
- Why your project deserves funding (including unique or distinctive aspects)
- Likely outcomes or potential results of the research
- Benefits or implications of your results
- Community service & business projects
- Situation or problem
- Your plan, including the proposed solution or approach, specific details, and rationale for your choices
- Specific goals, objectives, and measurable outcomes
- Potential obstacles (and how you will handle them)
- Your ability and qualifications to direct the project, manage the funds, and successfully complete the project
- General timeline and budget
- Why your project deserves funding (including unique or distinctive aspects)
- Likely benefits, outcomes, or implications of the project
- Business Project Proposal
- Explain with an introduction or executive summary. [1-2 ¶s]
- Explain the situation, problem or need.
- Propose a solution; explain feasibility
- Timeline & budget
- Explain your qualifications for this project
- Explain rationale, objectives, outcomes, importance, implications
2.4.4 General template
Here is a general template to help you get started. Each of these items might constitute a paragraph or a section of two or more paragraphs in your essay.
- Brief self-introduction; general purpose of the project
- Statement of the problem or question
- Specific description of your proposal / solution
- Specific goals, objectives, or outcomes
- Uniqueness or distinctiveness of your project or idea
- Your qualifications
- Timeline, budget, and how you will allocate the funds
2.4.5 Guidelines
- For this, you can project yourself into the future, and imagine that you have some kind of experience or qualifications that are relevant to your project (as long as it is reasonable - for example, you cannot claim to have a Nobel Prize or Olympic gold medal).
- For some more academic sources, you can try entering terms in a search engine (e.g., "community service programs Korea"), and focus on search results that look like official, professional, business, or governmental sources. You can also try academic search engines for academic sources:
- The grading criteria are listed in the book.
2.4.6 Examples
- See examples created for this course at this page: Proposals (writing), and more examples of the research propsoal format at Research project proposal (college).
- See pages like this one at https://www.instructionalsolutions.com/blog/proposal-examples for commercial and business examples. Note: These tend to be in slide / PPT or informal formats, so look at the contents for ideas, but not the design or layout of these documents. This site explains the good points and bad points of each example, and each example is in a separate link.
2.4.7 Citations
You can use the Chicago Manual long footnote style (as discussed in the lecture videos), Chicago endnote style, Chicago short footnotes + works cited, Chicago parenthetical in-text citations, APA, MLA, or any other standard citation & referencing format. See here for Chicago style:
2.5 Final paper: Case study
For this assignment, you will write a case study of a particular company, entity, or program. You may want to look at the guide on doing case studies and case study examples.
- a company or business (of any country), or one of its activities (e.g., a merger, acquisition, expansion into a new market, marketing strategy)
- an organization, institute, or institution
- a non-governmental organization (NGO), charity, non-profit organization, or community service organization
- a governmental / intergovernmental organization (such as UNESCO, the UN, World Bank)
- a government agency
- a government program
- a school, university, or educational institution
- a department or major of a particular university
- an educational program (at a particular school or educational institution, or from a particular organization or agency)
- a community service program
- an individual subject, e.g., a teacher or learner (educational study), an employee or manager (business study) or a patient (health study) - Note: This requires sufficient academic training and expertise, such as advanced research-oriented students who are familiar with qualitative research
- A particular teaching method or approach in a particular context (e.g., a particular EFL/ESL teaching method; how a particular type of literature is taught)
- The learning experiences of a particular group of students / learners (in a progam, major, department, or such a context)
- The experiences of a particular teacher / group of teachers at a particular educational institution
- The opinions or experiences of a particular group of consumers / users of a product, service, or company
Your analysis might focus on one or more of the following types.
- an evaluation (e.g., the effectiveness of a company, program, or activity)
- a problem / solution or analysis of a problem or challenge that the entity has faced, is facing, or will likely face
- a challenge (past, present, or likely future challenge) for this entity / program
- an analysis, evaluation, or problem-solution paper based on a model (like the STAR model), theory, or framework in your field
- reasons for an entity's success or failure (past or present)
- the likely prospects of an entity or program, e.g., its potential for failure or success
- suggestions for what a company or entity should do (e.g., for a specific challenge, or for its future)
- an interview, survey or questionnaire study of a particular group of persons (e.g., students, teachers, stakeholders)
Some suggestions:
- Evaluating a company's performance and/or future prospects; evaluating one of its product lines, its marketing strategies, its management practices, or any particualr aspect of the company. You will probably need to use trade journals, business magazines, official company websites, official reports, government data, etc. as sources.
- Evaluating an NGO, community service program, government service, government agency, intergovernmental program (e.g., WHO, UNESCO...), educational program, etc. * Evaluating a specific university, college, public school, educational program, degree program, department, or such; or how a particular subject is taught, say, at universities in a particular country.
- A specific government policy, educational policy, or such.
- For such topics, as sources you will need to use some of the following: official websites (company or instituional sites), official publications (from relevant entities), official reports, white papers, official documents, government data, business news articles, official data / statistics, data from government agencies / websites, articles from professional publications, and maybe relevant academic studies, among others.
- Qualitative research, such as interview, survey or questionnaire studies, require some knowledge of a relevant model, theory, or research methods, and/or enough knowledge of a particular field that you know what you are doing.
Some ideas:
- Company X's rise and grown in a particualr market; Company X's current strategy or peformance in a particular market; the success (and future) of product line X from Company Y
- Business, management or leadership practices at Company / Entity X; the leadership and management style of Company X / Organization X
- A particular degree program at a particular university
- Problems with a community project in City X
- Needs or problems of a particular agency (governmental / intergovernmental) or NGO
- English-medium instruction program(s) at a particular university, or at universities in a particular country
- How literature is taught in language departments at Korean universities
- The life of a famous author (poet, novelist, etc.) and how his/her life shaped his/her writings
- How Busan can better promote itself, e.g., by attracting more tourism or businesses
- How a particular university can improve its image, or attract more international students, or promote itself, or attract more research funds
- How a particular university (or universities in one area or country) can better prepare students for the job market
- A specific governmental policy or program
- Focused interviews (e.g., consumers of a product, students in a school or program)
- A group project of two or more people (in that case, the length requirement for the paper is per person)
Please see the pages on case studies, case study examples, and doing case studies.
- Requirements
- There is a suggested minimum of at least 600 words, not counting the cover page, references, tables, charts, quotations, appendices, etc.; maximum length: 5 pages
- At least four sources of professional or academic quality, that are cited and used meaningfully, including at least two sources in English.
- Sources should be properly cited and referenced. I recommend the Chicago footnote style, which is easier, or the Chicago bibliographic style (parenthetical in-text citations with (Author, Year) and works cited / references at the end. The Chicago endnote system is fine, too. If you are used to another style like APA or MLA, you can use that, too.
- Extra materials that you use, like interview or survey questions that you used, should be included as an appendix.
- This can overlap with a paper that you are doing in another course (if you are doing this project alone) - in that case, you may want to be careful about submitting both version of a paper in the LMS, as it might be incorrectly flagged as plagiarism / self-plagiarism (in that case, you can email it to me).
- This can overlap or be based on previous assignments.
- See the grading criteria in the book, and the format for major papers.
- Format & citations
Please see the following pages for examples and guideliness for sources and citing sources.
- https://www.enwiki.org/w/Professional_sources
- https://www.enwiki.org/w/Chicago_Manual_(parenthetical)