Research units

Research units are quite different again. They are normally only offered in the latter stages of a degree or in graduate school. The student is spending most of his/her time alone, researching and writing.

The student meets individually with the supervisor for perhaps an hour each week. This tends to vary, with independent students needing less time and students who get stuck needing more. It also varies according to the stage of the project; students in the early and final stages need more supervisor help, while they might need no help at all when gathering data in the field.

The guideline of an hour a week is actually quite staff-intensive, because the supervisor meets alone with the student. This can affect the budgetary constraints under which the unit is offered if staff are paid on an hourly basis. By contrast, some colleges with little research emphasis simply treat research supervision as a staff privilege for which they are not paid.

As a result, the expectations are expressed quite differently: For a three-semester hour undergraduate research unit, the student must produce an original research paper of 5,000 words, based on weekly one-hour meetings with a supervisor.

Some colleges may require 6,000 for an undergraduate unit and 7,000 for a graduate unit.

Two important variations

• Some colleges run the research project concurrently with a research methodology unit that follows the schedule of a theory-driven unit. That way, students can meet as a group to discuss projects and get input into managing that stage of research.
• If students are not well equipped beforehand to take on a research project; they normally spend considerable time (e.g. a semester) looking at methodology issues before they start a project.