Environmental Project

This is an optional course for students who intend to follow the BSc (Hons) in Environmental Studies programme.

Compulsory prerequisite(s)
Students should have completed at least 120 credits (including free-choice credits) from the Environmental Studies programme before taking this course.

Aims
This course aims to:

• Improve students' ability to independently carry out research and investigation. After studying this course, students should be able to analyse, present, explain and justify ideas and conclusions, as well as solve problems in the broad area of environmental studies;
• Develop students’ ability to
  • define a set of objectives for a specified research project
  • develop an appropriate scientific methodology and work plans for the investigation
  • organize research work to achieve a specified goal within a limited time
  • gather, analyse and evaluate materials relevant to the project, devise a range of solutions or suggestions for the topic studied
  • present an oral briefing and produce a written report that clearly and concisely communicates the content of the project to others.

Contents
The course does not supply conventional course materials. During the course, however, some reading of selected scientific articles in journals and reference books will be recommended by the supervising tutor / internal examiner. The course will enable students to reveal problems that need to be tackled and understand the directions that most scholars are taking nowadays to suggest solutions. Students will be divided into groups of about five, and will work under the supervision of a tutor with a University staff member as advisor / internal examiner. Students may suggest their own research project, or select a topic recommended by the tutor / staff member. However, the research topics shall be vetted and approved by the Environmental Studies course team on the basis of available facilities, supervisory support and recent developments in environmental disciplines. Students may also apply to conduct their research project in their workplace with written consent from their employer.

Learning support
There will be a number of tutorials for student learning. The tutorials will normally be held in the environmental research laboratory of the HKMU at Ho Man Tin. Activities in these tutorials will include training on laboratory safety, demonstrations of the use of equipment, discussion about technical details of individual projects, evaluation of the research results, and advice-giving sessions on individual written reports and oral presentations.

Assessment
Three reports are required for submission. The first report (Assignment 1) will entail a report on the project background, a literature review, scoping the project and drawing up a detailed work plan (about 2,000 words). The interim report (Assignment 2) shall outline the progress made, methodology, elaboration on the project plan, preliminary findings of the project and a brief outline of the final report (not more than 3,500 words). An oral presentation of the interim results within a tutorial group is also required. The final report (Assignment 3) shall include full details of the research procedures, results, discussion and conclusions (not more than 15,000 words). An oral examination may also be needed if recommended by the examiners. Students are required to submit assignments via the Online Learning Environment (OLE).

Set book(s)
There are no set books for this course.

Students with disabilities or special educational needs
Depending on the nature of the project, students with disabilities or special educational needs may have difficulties carrying out some of the experiments in the laboratory or on the field trips. Please contact the Course Coordinator for further advice.