filed in Dissertation, Research on Jun.21, 2009
I’m currently working further on my dissertation and as a part of my research I have created a questionnaire which can be found here:
I would really appreciate if you can spend 5 minutes to fill it in as I really need respondents 
Thank you for your help!!!
filed in Useful Tips on May.04, 2009
Being quite pressed for time with one of my latest assignments I came to a couple of interesting points that may help you with your assignment writing. I managed to write my 3000 words assignment in 2 nights (I do not know the mark yet but I hope for the best ), and here are some tips I can share on how to write an assignment fast:
1. Study the brief beforehand. Usually you are given quite a detailed task brief where you can pick up the structure and key content ideas. Read it a couple of times and think how you can use the brief while writing the assignment
2. Do all practical work before you start writing. If your assignment presumes any practice or practical analysis – make it before you start actually writing. Having these results in front of you will save you considerable time. Same concerns literature review for an assignment.
3. Map your assignment. Structure your assignment by selecting key structural areas and adding some thesis notes on what you will include into it later.
4. Write your assignment in parts. I prefer working in blocks (one of the most effective time management techniques) so if I am stuck with any of the assignments parts I do not stop the work completely but switch to another part of it
5. Do all the formatting job alongside. Do not leave all formatting to the very end as this can be a very time consuming part of your assignment writing process. If you are tired or losing your concentration – do some formatting across the text. This will save you another 2 hours later.
6. Give extra care to intro and conclusions parts. These are most read bits of any assignments so they worth giving them extra attention and being the strongest part of your assignment.
7. Read it again. After you finish your assignment writing – read it again! This helped me to eliminate at least 3-5 grammar errors and add extra style to what I was doing.
Overall, it is all about keeping close to the brief that you got from your tutor and finding some extra knowledge you are supposed to gain for a course, so if you are inclined to reach both targets, you should be writing your assignments really fast.
filed in Books, Research on Mar.29, 2009
Measurement of marketing efforts metrics has always been important as it allowed critical evaluation of marketing activities effectiveness and bringing marketing strategy performance into numbers. Until .com era boom there have been constant debates on how to measure marketing activities and establish trends and correlations between certain strategies and outcomes in terms of sales and revenue growth. Bringing marketing activities on the web opened the next generation of marketing measurement techniques and opportunities, as all digital actions are far more measurable than offline, non-digital ones.
Over recent years, several great marketing metrics measurement books have been published; some of the books relate to integrated marketing strategies, others refer to specific marketing research & measurement methods. All these books are united with one concept of making marketing research measurable and providing correct marketing metrics theories, making marketing strategies outcomes transparent for business decision makers.
Recommended Marketing Metrics Books:
1.Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
This book gives step-by-step instructions alonside with valuable strategic insights which both marketers and webmasters can use to set up a comprehensive digital marketing activities measurement system for an organization or a personal business. The book is full of practical examples of marketing measurement setup and can be used as a real hands-on experience guide.
2. Key Marketing Metrics: The 50+ Metrics Every Manager Needs to Know (Financial Times Series)
This book gives a comprehensive overview of marketing metrics picture for all sorts of business activities, covering not only online and digital marketing activities measurement, but also such aspects as logistics, opeations, sales force, etc. Authors concentrated on giving the managers specific insights on specific figures and numbers which help evaluate overall business performance - in detailed and yet strategic way.
Other marketing metrics measurement books:
filed in Research, Useful Tips on Mar.26, 2009
Just a quick one - I found it hard to reference an online press-release in Harvard system correctly at some stage.
This tool is rather helpful as you can create a reference of online press-release in Harvard standards online and just in a few clicks.
Enjoy
filed in Dissertation, Research, Useful Tips on Mar.25, 2009
Literature review is an obligatory part of any dissertation or business research proposal. The main aim of dissertation literature review on research proposal stage is to provide an overview of statistic, analytical, theoretical and academic data in your research area.
Writing a literature review can become the most time-consuming task in your proposal preparation – simply because you will need to actually find and read a certain (usually quite large) amount of texts.
1. Start with defining top keywords. Keywords here mean top phrases that are 100% related to your research topic, question and objectives.
Example:
Research topic: Social networking in education industry
Potential keywords: social networks, social networking, blogging, social networks for students, social networking stats, college social networks, social networks analysis, social networks research
Tip: adding such “tails” as stats, analysis, research, etc. can help you find academic findings for your topic
2. Search in various places. The most common way of finding proper sources for your literature review is the Internet, and there you can search on various locations – and connect your online findings with visiting a library for certain books afterwards.
Tip: Examples of online literature search starting points:
a) Amazon Books Search – can provide you with a comprehensive list of books on your topic, including quite recent items that some libraries might not have ordered yet. Look Inside feature can be quite useful as well – it lets you preview table of contents and decide whether you need this book or not.
b) Google Books – ideal source for finding both content and references. Some reading volumes accessibility limitations do take place but most commonly you are able to get what you need. Minus – you are not able to print or copy anything.
c) Online journals, e.g. this ,or specific search engines, e.g. this one. Easy to reference, lots of recent research data plus ideal source for further investigations.
3. Track your sources right from the start. Do keep record of all references you find starting from the first one! This will prevent reference and sources loss and will help you keep your listings organized.
Tips:
- you can use free reference management software or social bookmarking services or simply your browser bookmarks menu to store your valuable links.
- tag, label and group sources you find by your keywords!
4. Export citations and references straight away. If you find something you consider relevant – add it to your literature review and reference it properly – NOW. You can delete unnecessary items later, but you will not have to get back to your lists to find the author, date and source for the quotation or cite you have already used or dig your memory trying to remember where you saw that.
Tip: you can use reference management software functionality to keep your quotations and references to standard right from the start.
5. Plan your literature review. Keep the quotations you choose close to your research topic, questions and objectives and do not let yourself drift too far away.
Tip: Make a small table of contents specifically for your literature review before or shortly after you start, highlight key areas you are planning to research there – and stick to it.
BTW I have already done my literature review for my dissertation If you feel that my experience can help you in any way - you are welcome to post any questions in comments to this post!
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filed in Blogging, Useful Tips on Mar.15, 2009
Doing masters research often involves community thinking and today the web gives researches tremendous opportunities to find and participate with professional networks of people: academics, students, business researches of the same topic. Getting connected with professional communities and networks brings your research at least the following:
Stay connected – this is probably the key message all social networking services communicate to us. Blogging as a research tool and objective can be fascinating, but it definitely presumes feedback, and if you are not connected with your current and potential readers, your blog value is close to zero.
Today the technology gives multiple opportunities for staying in touch with the world, and if you are running a blog at WordPress platform, you can access the WP developers community for various social networking plugins to enhance your blog presentation and promotion
Here’s the list of plugins that I consider to be really useful for a research (or any other social promotion oriented) blog.
Social Networking Plugins for WP
These plugins help you connect your blog with various social networking services and communities:
SEO Plugins
These plugins can help you get your blog search engines friendly and easily found by people doing research in the same area;
Other Useful Plugins
filed in Books, Dissertation, Research on Mar.15, 2009
Even at the research proposal writing stage you are supposed to be clear about what methods and, to be more precise, methodology you will use for your main research.
Your masters research methodology usually reflects either positivism or interpretivism philosophical approach, and these paradigms usually define all course of your research flow and specific set of methods you will use.
How can you identify your methods? How can you decide you need this one rather than that one? And how can you be sure you tie them all up with academical requirements of your institution?
I had to refer to books to find this out, and here are some of them for your review:
1.Business Research: A Practical Guide for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students
This book is my favorite. Very brief yet comprehensive advice on all business research flow starting from research topic selection and to actual research works writing. Many practical examples (including sample research proposals, very useful!), strong connection between theory and practice, easy to read and light enough to take it with you to read on the underground. A very good start for marketing dissertation research proposal writing.
2. Business Research Methods
This book is more detailed than the 1st one, and yet more complicated. However, authors provide a very deep insight into the research stages and five a lot more detailed examples for these or those methods (e.g. questionnaire desing takes 40 pages but in the end you get it perfect!). So I can recommend this book as a reference guide to look up specific method details rather than the base for the masters research proposal.
Books details:
filed in Dissertation, Research on Mar.10, 2009
Even at the early research stages such as masters research proposal writing a researcher (you) is supposed to provide a literature review. This means that right from the start you will have to collect references for your research and, what is more important, keep them organized.
When I was thinking about the literature review stage of my research I asked myself the following questions:
1. How can I keep all the references that I find in one place?
2. How can I share it on the web to access them from libraries, campus, home?
3. How can I organize all books, articles etc systematically and in the way I want it?
4. How can I be sure I am following the right referencing system standards for my research bibliography (Harvard in my case)?
Being quite a technical person (in a way) I thought about a software solution that can help me with all these questions. I did a bit of research on the web trying to find what solutions currently exist for the reference management and found a quite comprehensive comparison of reference management software here.
By my resource nature the literature review will be mostly connected with online sources search, so I added another important criteria to the solution I was looking for: browser compatibility + online accessibility and zero costs.
I tested several of the free web-based reference management software and came to the conclusion that Zotero reference management software is exactly what I was looking for, and here are the reasons why:
Instant items capture – it is a browser plugin which lets adding items in just one click
Online storage of all my references – I indeed can access my references collection anywhere, anytime (provided that I have the Internet connection)
Collections, Tagging and Saved Searches features – I can organize my collection the way I want it by labeling the sources with tags, grouping them into collections and even by saving my frequent searches
Strong export features – Zotero supports multiple references systems when exporting a reference, so that I can add my references in 2 clicks, both short citation and full bibliography components (which means I do not have to care about extra commas and dots in my reference list!!).
Moreover, Zotero can be integrated with MS Word and OpenOffice via a plugin – a very useful feature for transferring your library to the actual research. By the way I can also print my reference collection out and go to the library to search for actual books!
Take a look at how it looks like (all key areas are in circles):
Thus, I can highly recommend Zotero reference management software for:
Useful links:
Zotero official website
Wiki references system comparison page
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filed in Blogging, Research on Mar.06, 2009
Modern technology brings more and more IT opportunities to every area of life, and study process in not an exception. Recent trends show that web presence tends to be a must for a person engaged with any kind of social or research activity. Running a blog for your masters degree dissertation can bring you considerable benefits, and here are top 7 reasons why start a blog for your masters or any other business research.
Never lose a note. Using a blog as an ideas scrapbook or as a research journal ensures you keep all your notes and thoughts organized and stored in a secure place
Access from anywhere. Whether you are sitting at home, in class or travelling, your notes and research ideas are always accessible, everything you need is your laptop and an Internet connection.
Share your ideas. A blog is a perfect medium of brining your ideas to live discussion with your friends, colleagues and supervisors.
Get the feedback. Using comments, polls and other blog features can help you with gathering user feedback regarding your research questions and bring you new ideas.
Join the community. Blogging is a life on its own; people usually do not pass by a resource that is interesting and valuable for them. Just give you visitors an opportunity to subscribe to your news and subscribe to the blogs you like – and soon you will surely get your personal network sharing your interests.
Track your progress. Sometimes it is not that easy to remember how and where your research got the new direction, when a new question or a research opportunity appeared. Keeping the blog record gives you good chances to track the research flow and milestones.
Learn something new – every day. Running a blog gives you perfect opportunities to add extra skills to your personal portfolio, such as website management and maintenance, basic HTML knowledge and web pages editing.
Convinced? Ready to discuss? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!
