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Project Work Walkthrough

Working Together

Introduction
The introduction of Project Work into Junior College caused considerable frustration amongst students, teachers and even parents but it has carried on perhaps because it is a unique sort of assessment that forces students to pick up the very skills they will be using for work in university as well as at work.

Of course, parents have faulted schools for inadequately preparing their students to take on an assessment like Project Work at A Levels and students from Singapore, being used to sitting for exams, dread working on open-topic assessments, wondering if they might sabotage their grades when they choose a wrong topic to work on for their projects. Teachers themselves are unsure of how to guide students to produce good projects if they didn't have experience with them prior to Junior College days.

The onus of training students for Project Work at A Levels actually falls mainly on the Secondary Schools and that explains the influx of project-based assessments in today's Secondary Schools. It might seem a distraction at first sight for parents but in due time they'll find out how important that is for their kids. Meanwhile, for students who are not adequately informed about Project Work and clueless about how to get about doing it, this is a guide that serves much like a walkthrough of resources for you.

Preliminary Ideas
Your first piece of work for PW and the first thing that goes into your Group Project File is your Preliminary Ideas (PI). So what exactly is that? It is basically a selected idea in respond to the PW question/theme for the year from the individual and developed sufficiently to serve as a proposal for the full project.

Stuff to Include
Description of your idea, how it fits with the question/theme selected

Some current trends or patterns pertaining to your idea (supported with news articles)

Research done on this topic or some materials that is already available about it

Potential directions of research you can work towards

Activity, event that you can organize for showcasing your idea or how you can implement your ideas in reality (usually one of the requirements of the question)

Your idea may not be the one you'll be embarking on so you might not want to think too far about what further materials you would want to dig up to support your ideas. This is actually a rather dangerous psyche because if everyone in your eventual team does their PI this way, then ultimately all of you will need to produce your Group Project Proposal from a really fresh idea. It'll be a huge struggle so try your best to work on your PI as if you're really going to use the idea for the full Project Work assessment. Think through how it will turn out at every stage and what sort of primary or secondary data you will most likely have to engage and consider if you and your classmates would likely to have access to them.

For the writing format, there's no defined format for your PI, but it would be good to break your document with a couple of subheadings like "Introduction", "Current Literature", "Research Direction" and "Potential Activities".

Evaluation of Materials
After you formed your group, decided on the theme and the topic of your project (and therefore finished your Group Project Proposal); your first piece of work to be submitted and assessed would be the Evaluations of Material (EoM). It happens rather long after your PI so usually students are pretty caught off guard for the submission of EoM. Working on the EoM requires that your group have already sourced for a substantial amount of data and materials related to the topic you all have chosen. Each of the members would choose a relevant print or non-print source/material to analyse and evaluate. ERPZ has a helpful piece on aspects of the material to consider before evaluation.

Stuff to Include
Details about the source/material, the type of source it is (a study, research, pamphlet, book, etc)

Justification of the use of it based on reliability, relevance and applicability

Explain how is the source reliable and how does it compare when cross-referenced with other sources

Discuss its relevance of the source to the topic you are working on (does it point out a particular trend you are hoping to exploit; does it give you valuable insights to an aspect of your topic)

Surface some ideas that you are using for your project that is inspired or derived from the source

Ultimately, the material you're evaluating should be used in the eventual Written Report. While the assessors won't be checking if you would use the material, it makes little sense to evaluate a material that will not contribute to your work in the Written Report. Besides, your EoM's analysis can be used again in your Written Report. Eventually, while working on the Written Report, everyone would pool their EoM together and see how they can be incorporated in the eventual report.

Written Report
No doubt the most important document in the entire PW and the only piece of physical work document that will be assessed on a group basis. One thing to remember, however, is that the Written Report (WR) is not the project in itself. One should view the WR as giving insights to the project you're doing for PW for your examiner. If you were to deliver every single detail and idea about the project in your WR, you will definitely exceed the word limit.

Make sure you have your list of references and cited properly using one of the research paper writing standards like APA. You can check out Purdue OWL for these writing resources.

Stuff to Include
An Introduction to the project and why the topic is important/significant; identify the research direction and what the report will cover

Review of research and other literature available on the topic, citing the main parts supporting your ideas or refuting them

Justification of your ideas based on the resources you've found and how you counter the problems associated with your ideas in your eventual proposal/event/activity/idea; preferably it's supported by analysis of primary data your team collected as part of the research

Elaboration of details of your proposal/activity/idea showing you've considered the venues, the logistics involved and the potential response to it

Conclusion that summarize the trends and results of your entire project

You should generally write in detail about your entire project for your first draft then eject the less relevant or less impressive content as you refine it and cut down on the word count to keep within the limit. It's better to start off with a WR that is full of content to be slashed down than a skimpy one that needs to be built up.

Oral Presentation
The Oral Presentation is probably the most frustrating part of the entire PW, forcing the less eloquent students to present and grading them both as a group and individual at the same time means that groups with weaker students would have suffer more. It would therefore pay to work doubly hard.

You can go through the net to find tips on doing presentations; they would invariably involve watching your tone, gestures, maintaining eye contact with audience. Yet you can't master all these without practising; so I would recommend that after the team has decided what to present and allocated the parts to the members, practise often in front of the mirror and try to memorise your script by repeating it over and over again.

Team dynamics is judged during the presentation so no matter how busy you are (shouldn't be since by then the exams would be over already), the team should meet up to rehearse together. Going through the presentation in its entirety would help you track your time spent, familiarize with what you have to say at different slides and also to get team mates to watch each other and point out any awkwardness in gestures or pronunciations.

I recommend rehearsing the entire thing at least 10 times before the actual presentation; each rehearsal should involve the entire team. The maximum rehearsals in a day should be about 4; leaving time in-between the evaluate your own performance and work in improvements. Try to do a video recording of your entire presentation and then watch it together as a team; more often than not, you are the one who can correct yourself best. And since you can't see yourself on the spot doing the presentation, a video recording would help greatly.

To make the presentation interesting, you could either use video clips, animations, or do a skit. Most students opt for the skit because of the lack of other resources. When dealing with skits, ensure the script is well crafted and of relevance to what you're doing in the project.

Insights & Reflections
Most people ignore the importance of this last piece of work that you have to submit. After the Oral Presentation you'd often be already in holiday mood and won't bother about your Insights & Reflections (I&R); it's going into your Group Project File and will be assessed so it is as important as your PI or EoM.

Stuff to Include
Things you learnt through the project, reflecting on the research processes and methods adopted to conduct the research

Discuss inadequacy in the project that you would try to overcome or improve if you had the chance to do that

Talk about something unique about your project or your team that makes your project good

In many sense, the I&R reflects your attitude towards the assessment so be positive and try to create the impression that you have been satisfied with your work while acknowledging the improvements you could make.

More Advice
If you do check out the way you're going to be assessed for each of the components in PW, you'll understand that they are mainly your 'Generation of Ideas', 'Analysis & Evaluation of Ideas' and 'Organization of Ideas'. In other words they want to see how creative you are with research, with your research methods, and the ability to synthesizing concepts or information that is provided by the materials you've found them. It's also about research, and you might want to check out my writing on conducting research.

In the course of working on your PW, you've lots of time to come up with ideas if you take the assessment seriously. You could try using some Lateral Thinking methods invented by Edward De Bono to help you with brainstorming. When thinking as a group, try to make good use of rules with regards to brainstorming: don't be too quick to judge the ideas of others, list out all possibilities before working on developing each of them further, and isolate the thinking session from the session to evaluate the ideas gathered.

As a team-based assessment, it is natural that team dynamics plays an important part in getting work done and delivering quality work. Remember that you need the cooperation of the entire team for the eventual assessment so one-man-show is not going to have very happy endings. It is important that team mates support each other not only for the group assessed components (like the WR and OP) but also for the individual components. Share your EoM and I&R with your team mates so they can learn from you or point out any mistakes you made.

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