Assignments

Research Project 1 (RP1)

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

September 3, 2026

Task

Across four phases you turn a broad practical challenge into a focused, scientifically grounded research question, systematically review what is already known about it, and communicate the result to two audiences.

Frame the problem. Review the literature. Tell it to two audiences.

Each phase produces one concrete deliverable: a Map of Perspectives, a Problem Framing Brief, a Review Protocol, then a Paper, Poster, and Practice Pitch together. Every deliverable is judged on the same two criteria (Recker, 2021b):

Rigor

The degree to which your methods are carried out methodically and accurately, the standard a reader uses to trust your process.

Relevance

The degree to which your findings apply to a real situation, the standard a reader uses to act on your conclusions.

A rigorous review of an irrelevant question wastes effort. A relevant recommendation built on a sloppy review cannot be trusted. Every deliverable in this module is judged on both at once.

Deliverables

You submit the following components via Moodle over the course of the semester. For exact dates, see the schedule.

• Map of Perspectives (individual)
• Problem Framing Brief (team)
• Review Protocol (team)
• Paper, Poster, Practice Pitch (team)
• Competence Check-ins (individual, four total)
• Peer Review I and II (team, ungraded)

Map of Perspectives

The output of Phase 1. Structured notes on each industry input, clustered into a candidate phenomenon and knowledge problem, with the tensions between claims made explicit. Submitted as a clean, gradable PDF.

Problem Framing Brief

The output of Phase 2. Your team’s topic, framed as domain, phenomenon, and knowledge problem, together with a draft research question and a candidate theoretical lens.

Review Protocol

The output of Phase 3. Your team’s review-type decision, search strategy, and screening and appraisal criteria, revised after the assessment of another team.

Paper, Poster, Practice Pitch

The output of Phase 4. The same review, written up for an academic reader, condensed into a poster for a poster session, and pitched to a practitioner audience.

Competence Check-ins

A short individual reflection due at the end of each phase, drawn from your running research log. It states what you can now do that you could not do before, separate from what the phase’s artifact shows you produced.

Grading

The graded components determine the final grade with the following weights:

• 15% Competence Check-ins
• 15% Map of Perspectives
• 15% Problem Framing Brief
• 15% Review Protocol
• 10% Paper
• 15% Poster
• 15% Practice Pitch

Note: Compliance with formal requirements and good scientific practice are critical pass criteria for all parts. Non-compliance results in automatic failure (e.g., plagiarism, even light forms).

Competence Check-Ins

A check-in that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics:

• It draws on specific entries from your research log, not a general summary of the phase.
• It states what you can now do that you could not do before, not only what you produced.

Map of Perspectives

A map that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics:

• The map draws breadth from across the full set of inputs, spanning multiple positions and disciplinary lenses.
• Each claim is tagged by kind, practice, challenge, or question, and by the position it comes from, not just paraphrased.
• Each cluster it does develop shows real depth: claims are specific, not paraphrased, and the phenomenon is named precisely enough that a stranger could tell one cluster from another.
• The tensions identified are genuine contradictions and a reader understands why they signal real, unresolved knowledge problem.

Instructions on how to create a map of perspectives are shared in U2: Synthesizing Insights.

Problem Framing Brief

A brief that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics (Recker, 2021a):

• The chain from domain to phenomenon to knowledge gap to research question is unbroken and can be followed without you in the room to explain a jump.
• None of the four revision symptoms, monologuing, so-what, solving-the-world, multitude, or the five inappropriate-question types are present.
• The question’s target theory type is clear, and the rest of the framing consistently aims at that type.
• Every named theoretical lens is doing real work, generating a claim or a boundary condition, not sitting as decoration.

The template for the brief with further instructions can be found here.

Review Protocol

A protocol that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics:

• The protocol is executable by someone else: a reader who does not know the topic could run the search from this document alone.
• The review type follows from the question rather than the other way round, and the scope decisions are argued, not merely filled in.
• Each concept in the question has a working definition and a documented set of search terms: synonyms, variants and related labels, plus the near-terms deliberately excluded.
• The search operationalizes the question: the blocks of the search string are the concepts of the question, and the sources chosen can plausibly contain the literature sought.
• Screening criteria are rules rather than preferences: each can be applied by a third party, states where it applies, and carries a rationale.
• The plan commits in advance to what cannot be reconstructed afterwards (e.g., extraction fields, a priori codes, the double-coding subsample and the agreement measure).
• Revisions are substantive and reasoned: the log records what changed in scope, criteria or strings and why — not wording.

The template for the paper with further instructions can be found here.

Paper

A paper that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics (Brocke et al., 2015; Recker, 2021a; Templier & Paré, 2018; Webster & Watson, 2002):

• The introduction motivates with a hook, not a gap: it resolves a contradiction, surfaces an important phenomenon, or corrects a practitioner-relevant misunderstanding.
• The review question is a question about the literature, and the scope of the review is stated, not implied.
• The synthesis is concept-centric, organized by construct.
• The discussion theorizes the findings rather than restating them, and the research agenda names gaps that can be traced back to a concept matrix.
• The review is reproducible: search strings, criteria, stage-by-stage counts and the coding scheme are documented well enough that another team reruns it and lands on approximately the same corpus.
• The corpus is justified rather than convenient: inclusion follows from the criteria, and backward and forward search are done and reported.
• Coding is intersubjective: a subsample is coded independently by both authors, agreement is reported, disagreements are resolved on the record.
• Limitations are limitations of the review — search bias, database coverage, publication bias, coder subjectivity — not of the primary studies.

The template for the paper with further instructions can be found here.

Poster presentation

A poster that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics:

• The poster catches interest: it leads with the finding, not the topic.
• The poster works without its authors: a passer-by gets the question, the corpus and the result unaided.
• Decisions are justified rather than reported (e.g., why these databases, this time window, this concept and not the adjacent one).
• The corpus is owned: the authors talk about individual papers, not only about categories.
• Challenge is handled well (e.g., what the corpus supports is separated from the authors’ own inference, thin evidence is conceded, and the gap they would pursue next semester can be named).
• Both authors are accountable for the whole review.

The template for the poster can be found here.

Practice Pitch

A pitch that fulfills expectations has the following characteristics:

• The opening earns attention with something at stake for the audience.
• The message is stated in the audience’s vocabulary.
• The pitch says plainly what the evidence already supports and where it runs out.
• The proposed avenue is framed as value for this audience (e.g., what changes for them once the question is answered, in their terms).
• The pitch creates willingness to engage and the questions are about how to take the avenue forward rather than about what was meant.

A Note on Grades

It is unlikely that every student will receive a very good grade, i.e. deliver an outstanding performance (see the meaning of grades). Instead, it is to be expected that the grades will spread across the spectrum.

Grade	Meaning
1 — very good	A truly outstanding achievement that (not only) shows no deficiencies in the criteria mentioned, but also gives both the supervisor and external assessors an excellent impression.
2 — good	Work that exceeds the average requirements/performance and is easily recognizable and presentable to the outside world as a “good performance”.
Note	2.5 is the average of passed assessments, i.e., an “average performance”
3 — satisfactory	A performance that achieves the desired goal “to a satisfactory extent”; however, deficiencies can be identified here and there.
4 — sufficient	A performance that “still adequately satisfies” the requirements, but deviates from the expectations placed on it in several ways.
5 — not sufficient	A performance that does not meet several of the criteria mentioned.

Q&A