In 2023, my colleague Prof. Min-Hui Lo and I designed the course AtmSci 5108 Writing an Undergraduate Research Proposal to guide students towards submission of their research ideas to the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) College Student Research Project (國家科學及技術委員會度大專學生研究計畫申請書). In the end, some of the students may not submit their proposal to NSTC (it is not a requirement), but all students finish the course with a clear understanding of how to organize and address all parts of a research proposal.
We are currently in our third year of offering the course and continue to meet with great success: one of our students was awarded the NSTC funding in the first year, two students in the second year, and now this fall we have the most students enrolled in the course that we have ever had (n=10). While the course does provide guidance in every step of the research proposal, it is truly the students’ great efforts in designing, developing, and delivering their research ideas that is awarded.
During the course, we walk the students through each component of the proposal (Fig. 1) from the Abstract, Motivations, Background, and Research Questions to Research Methods and Expected Results. We discuss the organization of each of these sections with the goal of improving the logic of the presentation and we supplement all of the lectures with excerpts from NSTC-awarded proposals. In this way, the students can get a look at the quality of the work that is required to have a chance at funding success. In addition, as the course is entirely conducted in English, some of the lectures are designed to specifically provide English writing tips, largely centered on writing with coherence, clarity, concision, and accuracy.
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Throughout the semester, the course has writing and short presentation assignments centered around the students’ research ideas, which all culminate in them submitting a draft of their research proposal in the final week (mid-December). The writing assignments are components of the proposal draft, so these allow the students to continue progressing towards their goal of completing the proposal draft, without any side projects required. The presentations provide an opportunity for the students to communicate their ideas through a different medium than simply the written document, often times sparking a new perspective on the design of their proposal. The class environment is interactive and encourages classmates to give constructive feedback, along with the instructors, so that the presenter can optimize the logic and design of their research idea (Fig. 2). After the course finishes in December, the students still have approximately two months to polish the draft in order to prepare it for submission to NSTC.
What’s more, the course is not limited to College of Science (CoS) students; currently we have two college students (out of 10 enrolled students) hailing from disciplines outside CoS and are pleased to have them share their research ideas and their feedback to the other students in the course. With this course, we aim to cultivate a healthy environment for sharing research ideas and feedback, encourage students to transition their coherent and clear research ideas into a written proposal, and inspire them to submit award-winning work.
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