Final Applied Project

As a culminating assessment in this laboratory course, you will complete a final applied project. Your final applied project will emphasize experimental design and the scientific method. The project will be a research plan that you construct for a specific issue related to the physical sciences. This research plan should be about 1-2 pages in length.

During or at the end of the last week of the term, you will submit the research plan to the Assignments Folder for grading. At two earlier times during the term, your instructor will interact with you on specific parts of the project. At the end of week 3, you should submit Part 1 to your instructor for approval. At the end of week 5, you should submit Part 2 to your instructor for approval. No grades are assigned for these earlier submissions; only the final research plan, Part 3, will be graded and counted towards your course grade.

There are three main steps necessary for completion of the final applied project:

Part 2: Review current research knowledge.

1. Describe how you could perform a review of current research on the subject/issue. Identify which UMUC Library/database sources could be useful in your research review. What criteria will you use in the selection of review sources from the web?
2. Do the results of your research review lead you to suspect that your initial hypothesis is correct, or does it suggest that you should modify your initial hypothesis in some way? If so, restate or revise. Are there gaps in the current research that further research/experimentation/observation might fill and shed light on your hypothesis?