Research question and project
Now it is your turn to decide for a self-chosen research question to work on in your final team project.
Research question
Design a research question that incorporates one of the two methods introduced in the course.
Below you can find some examples for research question or topics, which you might work on in your final team project. However, you are encouraged to work on self-developed research questions in your projects!
Some ideas for your team project might be related to the classification, quantification, or change detection of
- orchard meadows, hedges, or any biotope type
- cars, bicycles roads, parking lots
- solar panels, pools, trampolines,
- rooftop greening
- city parks
- bridges
- wind parks
- airfields
- military structures
- …
Working in groups
Please organize yourselves in groups of up to four people. This has the advantage that you can split up different work packages, but has the disadvantage that you are also responsible for harmonizing the different parts into one seamless piece of work without redundancies. Each group submits ONE team project at the end. Please note that we expect submissions of groups with greater size to be larger in the total amount of work compared to smaller groups project.
Project management and implementation
Creativity in research and project management are not incompatible. In fact, professional research requires the definition of some kind of aim or the organization of tasks in time schedules.
Common project management steps are:
- define the research question project and its objectives,
- break down the project into tasks and define a schedule,
- get and prepare the data you need for reaching your objectives
- design workflows for each task and implement them, and last but not least
- adjust your tasks, solve problems and be flexible.
Obviously, it makes sense to start your research project with a short project outline, which should include the project management steps outlined above. Based on your project outline and the feedback we will give you on it, you will realize and submit your final team project. More information about the final team project and there requirements can be found here.
For more details on project management for scientists, see e.g. the paper of Portny & Austin 2002.