Individual Research Proposal
The only constant in the world of technology is change. New technologies and applications emerge on an ongoing basis and companies are faced with decisions of how and when these new developments should be adopted and incorporated into their businesses.
As information systems (IS) professionals, you are on the forefront of the effort to understand, evaluate, and adopt new technologies. This project will give you the opportunity to research and assess an emerging technology of your choice and to present your determination of how this technology will impact businesses.
Milestone 1 (15%):
Deliverables for this milestone include: a working title for your paper, a first draft of your paper’s abstract, and an annotated bibliography. An abstract is a short summary of your paper that is designed to convey its major points in a condensed format. Since your have not yet written your paper, the draft abstract submitted for this milestone will function as a way to convey your intentions for the direction your paper will take. Keep in mind that this is a plan and that you may want to deviate from that plan as your write the final paper. Never the less, articulating that plan at this stage of the research will help focus your efforts. Your abstract should not exceed 300 words.
Any good research paper must start with an understanding of relevant knowledge on the subject. Your primary task in this assignment is to produce an annotated bibliography that summarizes and documents resources used in your work. The bibliography should be based on approximately 10-12 articles including both scholarly and practitioner articles about the technology/trend. be sure to review the following expectations about the articles included in your work:
• You are welcome, but not required, to include articles that I have posted in GaView.
• At least one half of the articles should be from peer-reviewed journals (such as Communications of the ACM, MIS Quarterly Executive, and many more). Use this guidance to see how to tell whether a journal is peer reviewed.
• Other articles may come from reputable industry publications. Harvard Business Review, MIT’s Sloan Management Review and Technology Review are examples of high-quality sources. There are also several IT specific sources on this list.
• Your sources may not include blog posts or Wikipedia articles.
The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to help you learn about your topic and to start creating the structure that will form a large part of your final paper. For this milestone, your annotated bibliography will include citations of your articles (in APA format) and an annotation for each article. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has a clear guide for writing annotations (reproduced verbatim below); use this guidance to structure the content of your annotations. You will include all three components mentioned: Summarize, Assess and Reflect. Annotations should be written as paragraphs consisting of full sentences. Bullet points may be used where appropriate, but should not make up the entirety of your annotation. In order to concisely and adequately evaluate your sources, annotations should be between 100 and 300 words in length.
From Purdue OWL:
An annotation is a summary and/or evaluation. Therefore, an annotated bibliography includes a summary and/or evaluation of each of the sources. Depending on your project or the assignment, your annotations may do one or more of the following.
• Summarize: Some annotations merely summarize the source. What are the main arguments? What is the point of this book or article? What topics are covered? If someone asked what this article/book is about, what would you say? The length of your annotations will determine how detailed your summary is.
• Assess: After summarizing a source, it may be helpful to evaluate it. Is it a useful source? How does it compare with other sources in your bibliography? Is the information reliable? Is this source biased or objective? What is the goal of this source?
• Reflect: Once you’ve summarized and assessed a source, you need to ask how it fits into your research. Was this source helpful to you? How does it help you shape your argument? How can you use this source in your research project? Has it changed how you think about your topic?
Submission format:
• The tone and style of your writing should be suitable for a business report or academic paper. Write to convey understanding; in other words, write to communicate information and knowledge. Do not write for “the teacher.” Write for “the reader,” who might be your boss, your colleague, or yourself, say a year from now when you review this material.
• You are graduate students! That means that you should be proficient writers. Your submission should be completely free of grammatical errors, misspellings, and misused words. Writing should be clear, concise, and well organized with excellent sentence/paragraph construction. Your discussion should be expressed in a coherent and logical manner.
• Avoid using passive phrasing.
• Use 12 point font, 1 inch margins, and double spacing.
• Include page numbers.
• Use APA format for your bibliography.
• Submit your paper in Word (preferred) or pdf format.
