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Planning and Presenting Research Projects: Mastery Test

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Anthony’s research question is “What environmental policies have been adopted to protect southern blue whales near the coast of Antarctica?” He is having trouble finding sources that answer this exact question. How should he revise his research question?

He should make his research question more complex.

He should make his research question more concise.

He should broaden his research question.

He should narrow his research question to focus his topic.

Which research question would lead to the most information about methods public schools can use to strengthen literacy at all grade levels?

What can school districts do to support teachers in improving their own literacy skills?

What are the most effective tests to assess the literacy levels of graduating students?

How do literacy programs in other countries compare to those in the United States?

Which literacy improvement techniques have proven most effective with students?

Bella’s research question is “What habitats do blue whales thrive in, and which locations are not ideal for the various behaviors they tend to exhibit?” She is having trouble writing a short presentation about what she has found. How should she revise her research question?

She should make her research question more complex.

She should make her research question more concise.

She should broaden her research question.

She should narrow her research question to focus her topic.

Jack has set out to research the question “Why are blue whales important?” He is having trouble going through the dozens of different books he found on this subject at the library. How should he revise his research question?

Colette’s research question is “Do blue whales live in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence?” She is having trouble putting together a long enough presentation on her findings. How should she revise her research question?

Anna has just read a text about New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern and is conducting a research project based on the text. Which research question would be most effective for her topic?

How did Jacinda Ardern come to be the prime minister of New Zealand?

What are politics like in New Zealand?

At what age was Jacinda Ardern first elected to public office in New Zealand?

Is Jacinda Ardern originally from New Zealand?

Which of the topics listed would you most likely be able to research using the library or Internet? ( Select all that apply )

The American Revolution

Your best friend's favorite childhood memory

The number of shoes you own

The process of photosynthesis

Audrey is researching chameleon habitats. Her current research question is “Where do chameleons live?” but she is having trouble.

Audrey's research question is ____________

The most effective revision would be...

"What species of insects do panther chameleons typically eat in the rainforest?"

"What kinds of chameleons are there?"

"What height of trees are best for veiled chameleons to line in?"

"What conditions are typically needed for chameleons to thrive?"

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How to write a research plan: Step-by-step guide

Last updated

30 January 2024

Reviewed by

Today’s businesses and institutions rely on data and analytics to inform their product and service decisions. These metrics influence how organizations stay competitive and inspire innovation. However, gathering data and insights requires carefully constructed research, and every research project needs a roadmap. This is where a research plan comes into play.

Read this step-by-step guide for writing a detailed research plan that can apply to any project, whether it’s scientific, educational, or business-related.

• What is a research plan?

A research plan is a documented overview of a project in its entirety, from end to end. It details the research efforts, participants, and methods needed, along with any anticipated results. It also outlines the project’s goals and mission, creating layers of steps to achieve those goals within a specified timeline.

Without a research plan, you and your team are flying blind, potentially wasting time and resources to pursue research without structured guidance.

The principal investigator, or PI, is responsible for facilitating the research oversight. They will create the research plan and inform team members and stakeholders of every detail relating to the project. The PI will also use the research plan to inform decision-making throughout the project.

• Why do you need a research plan?

Create a research plan before starting any official research to maximize every effort in pursuing and collecting the research data. Crucially, the plan will model the activities needed at each phase of the research project .

Like any roadmap, a research plan serves as a valuable tool providing direction for those involved in the project—both internally and externally. It will keep you and your immediate team organized and task-focused while also providing necessary definitions and timelines so you can execute your project initiatives with full understanding and transparency.

External stakeholders appreciate a working research plan because it’s a great communication tool, documenting progress and changing dynamics as they arise. Any participants of your planned research sessions will be informed about the purpose of your study, while the exercises will be based on the key messaging outlined in the official plan.

Here are some of the benefits of creating a research plan document for every project:

Project organization and structure

Well-informed participants

All stakeholders and teams align in support of the project

Clearly defined project definitions and purposes

Distractions are eliminated, prioritizing task focus

Timely management of individual task schedules and roles

Costly reworks are avoided

• What should a research plan include?

The different aspects of your research plan will depend on the nature of the project. However, most official research plan documents will include the core elements below. Each aims to define the problem statement , devising an official plan for seeking a solution.

Specific project goals and individual objectives

Ideal strategies or methods for reaching those goals

Required resources

Descriptions of the target audience, sample sizes , demographics, and scopes

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Project background

Research and testing support

Preliminary studies and progress reporting mechanisms

Cost estimates and change order processes

Depending on the research project’s size and scope, your research plan could be brief—perhaps only a few pages of documented plans. Alternatively, it could be a fully comprehensive report. Either way, it’s an essential first step in dictating your project’s facilitation in the most efficient and effective way.

• How to write a research plan for your project

When you start writing your research plan, aim to be detailed about each step, requirement, and idea. The more time you spend curating your research plan, the more precise your research execution efforts will be.

Account for every potential scenario, and be sure to address each and every aspect of the research.

Consider following this flow to develop a great research plan for your project:

Define your project’s purpose

Start by defining your project’s purpose. Identify what your project aims to accomplish and what you are researching. Remember to use clear language.

Thinking about the project’s purpose will help you set realistic goals and inform how you divide tasks and assign responsibilities. These individual tasks will be your stepping stones to reach your overarching goal.

Additionally, you’ll want to identify the specific problem, the usability metrics needed, and the intended solutions.

Know the following three things about your project’s purpose before you outline anything else:

What you’re doing

Why you’re doing it

What you expect from it

Identify individual objectives

With your overarching project objectives in place, you can identify any individual goals or steps needed to reach those objectives. Break them down into phases or steps. You can work backward from the project goal and identify every process required to facilitate it.

Be mindful to identify each unique task so that you can assign responsibilities to various team members. At this point in your research plan development, you’ll also want to assign priority to those smaller, more manageable steps and phases that require more immediate or dedicated attention.

Select research methods

Once you have outlined your goals, objectives, steps, and tasks, it’s time to drill down on selecting research methods . You’ll want to leverage specific research strategies and processes. When you know what methods will help you reach your goals, you and your teams will have direction to perform and execute your assigned tasks.

Research methods might include any of the following:

User interviews : this is a qualitative research method where researchers engage with participants in one-on-one or group conversations. The aim is to gather insights into their experiences, preferences, and opinions to uncover patterns, trends, and data.

Field studies : this approach allows for a contextual understanding of behaviors, interactions, and processes in real-world settings. It involves the researcher immersing themselves in the field, conducting observations, interviews, or experiments to gather in-depth insights.

Card sorting : participants categorize information by sorting content cards into groups based on their perceived similarities. You might use this process to gain insights into participants’ mental models and preferences when navigating or organizing information on websites, apps, or other systems.

Focus groups : use organized discussions among select groups of participants to provide relevant views and experiences about a particular topic.

Diary studies : ask participants to record their experiences, thoughts, and activities in a diary over a specified period. This method provides a deeper understanding of user experiences, uncovers patterns, and identifies areas for improvement.

Five-second testing: participants are shown a design, such as a web page or interface, for just five seconds. They then answer questions about their initial impressions and recall, allowing you to evaluate the design’s effectiveness.

Surveys : get feedback from participant groups with structured surveys. You can use online forms, telephone interviews, or paper questionnaires to reveal trends, patterns, and correlations.

Tree testing : tree testing involves researching web assets through the lens of findability and navigability. Participants are given a textual representation of the site’s hierarchy (the “tree”) and asked to locate specific information or complete tasks by selecting paths.

Usability testing : ask participants to interact with a product, website, or application to evaluate its ease of use. This method enables you to uncover areas for improvement in digital key feature functionality by observing participants using the product.

Live website testing: research and collect analytics that outlines the design, usability, and performance efficiencies of a website in real time.

There are no limits to the number of research methods you could use within your project. Just make sure your research methods help you determine the following:

What do you plan to do with the research findings?

What decisions will this research inform? How can your stakeholders leverage the research data and results?

Recruit participants and allocate tasks

Next, identify the participants needed to complete the research and the resources required to complete the tasks. Different people will be proficient at different tasks, and having a task allocation plan will allow everything to run smoothly.

Prepare a thorough project summary

Every well-designed research plan will feature a project summary. This official summary will guide your research alongside its communications or messaging. You’ll use the summary while recruiting participants and during stakeholder meetings. It can also be useful when conducting field studies.

Ensure this summary includes all the elements of your research project . Separate the steps into an easily explainable piece of text that includes the following:

An introduction: the message you’ll deliver to participants about the interview, pre-planned questioning, and testing tasks.

Interview questions: prepare questions you intend to ask participants as part of your research study, guiding the sessions from start to finish.

An exit message: draft messaging your teams will use to conclude testing or survey sessions. These should include the next steps and express gratitude for the participant’s time.

Create a realistic timeline

While your project might already have a deadline or a results timeline in place, you’ll need to consider the time needed to execute it effectively.

Realistically outline the time needed to properly execute each supporting phase of research and implementation. And, as you evaluate the necessary schedules, be sure to include additional time for achieving each milestone in case any changes or unexpected delays arise.

For this part of your research plan, you might find it helpful to create visuals to ensure your research team and stakeholders fully understand the information.

Determine how to present your results

A research plan must also describe how you intend to present your results. Depending on the nature of your project and its goals, you might dedicate one team member (the PI) or assume responsibility for communicating the findings yourself.

In this part of the research plan, you’ll articulate how you’ll share the results. Detail any materials you’ll use, such as:

Presentations and slides

A project report booklet

A project findings pamphlet

Documents with key takeaways and statistics

Graphic visuals to support your findings

• Format your research plan

As you create your research plan, you can enjoy a little creative freedom. A plan can assume many forms, so format it how you see fit. Determine the best layout based on your specific project, intended communications, and the preferences of your teams and stakeholders.

Find format inspiration among the following layouts:

Written outlines

Narrative storytelling

Visual mapping

Graphic timelines

Remember, the research plan format you choose will be subject to change and adaptation as your research and findings unfold. However, your final format should ideally outline questions, problems, opportunities, and expectations.

• Research plan example

Imagine you’ve been tasked with finding out how to get more customers to order takeout from an online food delivery platform. The goal is to improve satisfaction and retain existing customers. You set out to discover why more people aren’t ordering and what it is they do want to order or experience. 

You identify the need for a research project that helps you understand what drives customer loyalty . But before you jump in and start calling past customers, you need to develop a research plan—the roadmap that provides focus, clarity, and realistic details to the project.

Here’s an example outline of a research plan you might put together:

Project title

Project members involved in the research plan

Purpose of the project (provide a summary of the research plan’s intent)

Objective 1 (provide a short description for each objective)

Objective 2

Objective 3

Proposed timeline

Audience (detail the group you want to research, such as customers or non-customers)

Budget (how much you think it might cost to do the research)

Risk factors/contingencies (any potential risk factors that may impact the project’s success)

Remember, your research plan doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel—it just needs to fit your project’s unique needs and aims.

Customizing a research plan template

Some companies offer research plan templates to help get you started. However, it may make more sense to develop your own customized plan template. Be sure to include the core elements of a great research plan with your template layout, including the following:

Introductions to participants and stakeholders

Background problems and needs statement

Significance, ethics, and purpose

Research methods, questions, and designs

Preliminary beliefs and expectations

Implications and intended outcomes

Realistic timelines for each phase

Conclusion and presentations

How many pages should a research plan be?

Generally, a research plan can vary in length between 500 to 1,500 words. This is roughly three pages of content. More substantial projects will be 2,000 to 3,500 words, taking up four to seven pages of planning documents.

What is the difference between a research plan and a research proposal?

A research plan is a roadmap to success for research teams. A research proposal, on the other hand, is a dissertation aimed at convincing or earning the support of others. Both are relevant in creating a guide to follow to complete a project goal.

What are the seven steps to developing a research plan?

While each research project is different, it’s best to follow these seven general steps to create your research plan:

Defining the problem

Identifying goals

Choosing research methods

Recruiting participants

Preparing the brief or summary

Establishing task timelines

Defining how you will present the findings

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous research faster?

Do you share your research findings with others?

Do you analyze research data?

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Planning Your Research

• First Online: 22 October 2021

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• Jan Recker   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2072-5792 2  

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This chapter discusses how to plan a research project. It introduces ways in which a good research question can be identified and specified, and it introduces the different decisions during research design. After explaining the purposes of exploration, rationalization, and validation, the chapter discusses differences in different research methodologies.

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Recker, J. (2021). Planning Your Research. In: Scientific Research in Information Systems. Progress in IS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85436-2_3

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Researching and Presenting

This pathways project isn’t a drab homework assignment. have fun with it..

By Kate McClare, DTM

Giving an entertaining or inspirational speech that reaches the audience on an emotional level is one of the pleasures of Toastmasters. So where does that leave the research presentation?

A necessary but mundane assignment? Something to endure so you can get to one of those fun storytelling electives? Think again.

“Research” doesn’t have to mean dry science experiments or political analysis. Your research could focus on all sorts of topics: health issues, model trains, the funniest jokes ever told. As with any other speech, your aim is to engage your audience.

“Researching and Presenting” is currently a Level 1 project in each of the 11 paths in the Toastmasters Pathways learning experience . The project is being updated and repurposed as a Level 3 elective. That elective will launch sometime within the next few months, available only in paths selected after the launch. As you advance in your career, you may be called on to give work presentations on complex subjects. When that happens, you won’t want to turn your presentation time into nap time for your boss and coworkers.

Giving such a speech in your Toastmasters club will help—it’s like a practice run, says Pierre Andriani, a member of the Heart of England Club in Solihull, England. The Pathways project stretches your skills and awareness, he notes. “You are specifically asked to research a topic you are not familiar with. Therefore, you are placed outside of your comfort zone on purpose. By design, you will learn something new, and this is where personal growth thrives.”

What Makes a Good One?

As long as you’re gathering facts and the opinions of expert sources, it’s a legitimate research presentation. You may have to work a little harder and get a little more creative to make factual content sound intriguing, but it can be done.

Toastmaster Cate Arnold shares her experience with the Presentation Mastery path, and how she learned to incorporate storytelling at work and turning complicated topics into memorable ones.

For Eddie Landron, a member of Out-of-the-Box Toastmasters in Miami, Florida, it’s a matter of “breaking down the subject matter so it can be easy to understand. Making it relatable to everyday life lets your audience absorb the information.”

Like any other presentation, a research project’s main goal should be: to inform and engage the audience.

Andriani agrees. “It must be clear, relevant, and accessible. Even if it was a topic people might not have been interested in at first, you want them to leave thinking, I did not know that. Glad I heard that speech .”

In other words, just like any other presentation. Here are some ways to keep things lively and still informative.

Get Personal

For a presentation on income tax, Landron says, “I opened up with a true story about my first job, and I answered questions that I asked myself.” Then, he reviewed the history of the U.S. income tax system, starting with its creation by President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.

The personal touch also worked well for Andriani when he presented a research paper to his peers. “I referenced examples from the people attending,” he recalls. “I also mentioned the previous speeches given that day. Finally, I acknowledged the people in the audience who helped me. It worked out well.”

Keep It Focused

The Pathways project calls for a 5- to 7-minute speech. You can’t cover everything about your subject in such a short time, and even if you could, you’d probably lose your audience. If you’re giving a presentation on tourist sites in a particular city, try narrowing it down to the top three places to visit, or getting even more specific, with the top three historic sites or family activities.

Make It Engaging

For some, “research presentation” suggests the need to use presentation software like PowerPoint . But tread carefully.

“I stay away from slides when possible,” Landron says. “I enjoy doing speeches live and with humor.” When he explained how a battery worked, he didn’t use a PowerPoint slide but gave a live demonstration in which he made a battery with two nails and a lemon.

Keep It Real

Using appropriate sources is an essential element of research presentations. You can present your own opinions, but you must show the facts they are based on. Furthermore, they must come from reputable, generally accepted sources. As the Pathways assignment points out, a scientific study in a recognized journal is acceptable, but a comment from a personal blog is not.

The Bottom Line

Like any other presentation, a research project’s main goal should be: to inform and engage the audience. Every point you make should serve that purpose.

“Remember,” Andriani says, “people are in the audience because they really are interested in what you have to say. Make sure you give them your best.”

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Highlights From the Pathways Project

• Purpose: To learn or review basic research methods and present a well-organized, well-researched speech (5-7 minutes) on any topic.
• Choosing a topic: Be sure it’s narrow enough to fit the speech time. If you are knowledgeable about the subject, present an aspect that interests you most.
• Start with what you know: List these areas; determine what to research by generating questions you want to be answered.
• Find reliable sources: They should be authorities on the subject and recognized by others in their field. Give proper credit for both statements and images.
• Use structure appropriate to the subject: A scientific paper might need a chronological structure. A speech about a geographic area could use a spatial approach, taking each region one by one. You might use the problem/solution format when discussing a local social issue.

Presentation Pointers

Top Tips for Research Presentations

Eddie Landron, Out-of-the-Box Toastmasters in Miami, Florida

• Think about what question you might ask if you were in the audience.
• Be animated with your gestures. People will remember your body language even more than your words.

Pierre Andriani, Heart of England Club in Solihull, England

• Use self-deprecation to get the audience on your side and help them relate to you. For example, “I had this problem, and my solution was terrible. Don’t you hate it when you have this problem?” Then you tell them, “Here’s how I found a solution.” Now they are rooting for you on a subliminal level.
• Be willing to share your research. The goal is to get more people interested in that field, not to hog the data.

The Right Way to Use PowerPoint

Pierre Andriani

• Never, ever read entire paragraphs from the slides. Instead, think of slides as cue cards. They just guide you through your presentation.
• Make your points appear only when you are ready to discuss each of them. Start with a blank slide. Click and Point 1 appears; click and Point 2 appears; and so on. That way, you are in control. The audience cannot see or read ahead of where you want them to be.
• Bring in your points with a slow fade instead of an abrupt reveal. The gradual movement adds visual interest.
• Use a fade transition between slides to advance your story seamlessly.

Making Presentations Work at Work

Eddie Landron

• Never assume the audience knows what you know. Explain simply and clearly.
• Provide context. Everyone in your audience has their own reference points in their head. Give them a common ground for understanding.

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Designing and Managing a Research Project

A business student's guide, student resources, planning the research project.

• Student Video Example
• Videos on Research Questions and Hypotheses
• Videos discussing the Research Process.
• Video links to materials discussing the Research Proposal
• Video links to materials on Ghatt charts
• Additional Video, Audio and Interactive Resources

Teach the Earth the portal for Earth Education

From NAGT's On the Cutting Edge Collection

• Course Topics
• Atmospheric Science
• Biogeoscience
• Environmental Geology
• Environmental Science
• Geochemistry
• Geomorphology
• GIS/Remote Sensing
• Hydrology/Hydrogeology
• Oceanography
• Paleontology
• Planetary Science
• Sedimentary Geology
• Structural Geology
• Incorporating Societal Issues
• Climate Change
• Complex Systems
• Ethics and Environmental Justice
• Geology and Health
• Public Policy
• Sustainability
• Strengthening Your Department
• Career Development
• Strengthening Departments
• Student Recruitment
• Teacher Preparation
• Teaching Topics
• Biocomplexity
• Early Earth
• Earthquakes
• Hydraulic Fracturing
• Plate Tectonics
• Teaching Environments
• Intro Geoscience
• Online Teaching
• Teaching in the Field
• Two-Year Colleges
• Urban Students
• Enhancing your Teaching
• Affective Domain
• Course Design
• Data, Simulations, Models
• Geophotography
• Google Earth
• Metacognition
• Online Games
• Problem Solving
• Quantitative Skills
• Rates and Time
• Service Learning
• Spatial Thinking
• Teaching Methods
• Teaching with Video
• Undergrad Research
• Visualization
• Teaching Materials
• Two Year Colleges
• Departments
• Workshops and Webinars

Rates, Dates and Geologic Time: Teaching about the Temporal Aspects of Geoscience

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Mastery Assessment

Introduction

A mastery assessment aims to determine what students have understood from the material covered during a term and, further, how well they can apply that knowledge to broader problems. A narrowly-focused mastery assessment might address whether students have met an individual learning objective for a course. This could be accomplished in many ways, one example being questions administered via quiz or assignment during a term, where each question targets a particular learning goal. A more comprehensive and challenging mastery assessment could be a capstone project that requires students to make observations, collect and organize data, and integrate those observations and data into a geological interpretation by applying what they have learned during the course.

Included below are examples of possible mastery assessment questions for an introductory course in geology or historical geology. They are not intended to be a definitive or comprehensive set of assessment questions to measure your students' mastery of concepts related to geologic rates and time. Rather, they are intended to serve as examples, which you might modify or use as models to design your own mastery assessment questions.

The examples given here progress from assessing relatively simple cognitive tasks (knowledge and understanding) to more cognitively demanding tasks (application, analysis, and synthesis). The more cognitively challenging assessments inherently incorporate a learning component in addition to measuring students' learning.

Example Assessment Questions

Dates in earth history.

Assessment targets: Students will demonstrate

• Knowledge of notable dates in Earth history
• Basic understanding of numbers and proportions

The following list includes some significant dates in the history of the Earth: 3,465,000,000 years ago, 66,000,000 years ago, 4,600,000,000 years ago, 11,700 years ago, 6,000 years ago, and 4,000,000,000 years ago.

• Put these dates in chronological order from oldest to youngest.
• Choose 3 dates from the list above. Use a piece of graph paper, and plot these dates to scale on a timeline. Show your calculations.
• Oldest rocks on Earth
• End of Mesozoic Era (mass extinction, including dinosaurs)
• Beginning of recorded history
• Origin of Earth
• End of Pleistocene Ice Age
• Oldest known fossils of organisms

Reconstructing Earth history

Assessement targets: Students will demonstrate

• Understanding of and ability to apply the principles of original horizontality, superposition and cross-cutting relationships in order to sequence a set of rock units.
• Understanding of how geoscientists use radioactive decay of certain isotopes to determine numerical dates.
• Understanding of how geoscientists combine radiometrically-derived dates with relative ages to date a geologic feature or event.

Consider the cross-section shown to the right.

• Interpret the relative ages of rock units A-E and fill in the corresponding blanks below. ____ = Youngest ____ ____ ____ ____ = Oldest
• Discuss the evidence and reasoning that you used to put these rock units in order by age.
• Consider where Rock Unit F fits into your chronological sequence above. What is the uncertainty involved with this? Explain.
• How could radiometric dating help you to eliminate the uncertainty in question 3? What additional information would you need? What other method(s) for dating rock units could help you to determine that information?
• Why can absolute (numerical) ages be determined for some but not all rocks? In your answer be sure to include an explanation of how the process of radioactive decay is integral to radiometric dating.

Capstone Projects

• the ability to conceptualize scaled examples of geologic time
• the ability to place events in sequence, using information about both relative and absolute time
• the ability to use evidence to support interpretations
• the understanding that geologic processes occur at different rates over different time spans

To address the above learning objectives, you could design a capstone-type project that students will work on over several weeks. This project could require students to

• Make observations of geologic materials
• Develop interpretations based on their observations
• Compile their observations & interpretations into a coherent story describing the geologic history for the area
• Explicitly provide evidence for their interpretations

See, for example, these activities:

• Reconstructing the depositional environment of a local rock formation
• A Traverse Through Time and Space: A Paleoenvironmental Analysis of Devonian Strata in New York State
• Capstone Research Project: Holocene History of Estuarine Environmental Change
• Sedimentation and Tectonics: Geologic History of the Appalachian Basin

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