User: | Open Learning Faculty Member:
I had a limited amount of time to carry out my field research project as I travelled a long way to the beach for only a day. There were of course various other reasons, one of them being that I’m starting a full time job thus I would like to finish my studies as soon as possible with concentration before starting work and I’m recently married. Marriage comes with a lot of responsibilities. I had done my fair bit of research before I even went to the beach to do any measurements and I had been thinking about a research topic for a very long time. I recently went to Morocco for my honeymoon and collected some sea shells as a souvenir. I was looking at the various sea shell sizes at home and was questioning the reason behind the varying sizes, so I thought I’d do a sea shell size related topic. I then went online and did some research as to what is involved in measurements at the beach.
In my opinion the most challenging part of this research project was figuring out a topic to base my research on. Once I had a topic in mind the rest was straightforward. Although I found similar research studies to mine online, I have gained a lot of appreciation for how ecological theory is developed. It is only after completing my own research project that I understood the amount of effort that goes into developing the theory and experimental design. It is also very necessary to have the right equipment for the research project. Sometimes what seems like a very simple study comes with a lot of complications.
thanks for your comments.
I appreciate how it is hard to get started – narrowing the topic down is often a stumbling block for students.
‘asking an answerable question’ is something I often pass on