To: Esteban Margaron
From: Max Foran
Date: June 24, 2020
Subject: Peer Review of your Research Proposal
I have enjoyed reading your research proposal and I look forward to the finished product. Your solution of placing the responsibility of co-op positions into the hands of the students seems like a good way to strengthen the professional skills of students. After all, the goal of education is to challenge students in unfamiliar environments, and the added level of bureaucracy in the co-op program seems to detract from this opportunity. Although your proposal is generally well structured, I’d like to offer some constructive feedback.
Content
The document has all the necessary components of a research proposal. I will begin with some brief comments on each section:
Introduction – Brief and to the point. The introduction gives the audience a strong explanation of the role of the Science Co-Op program as your focus shifts towards the problem at hand.
Statement of Problem – Providing three different areas of inefficiency clearly points to the existence of a problem. Rather than focusing on just one issue, the separation of the issues helps to strengthen the argument.
Proposed Solution – Discussing the benefits of the proposed solution further strengthens the argument that there are inefficiencies within the Science co-op program
Scope – These questions will help to guide your research well
Methods – Appropriate for the proposal
Qualifications – Strong
Conclusion – The desired result of your research proposal clearly explains the benefits of your investigation.
Organization
• As per the proposal template, the qualifications sections should follow (not precede) the methods section.
• Be sure to number the questions in your scope as is done in the template
Expression
• The expression is clear and professional. Many reasons are provided for the usefulness of your research, helping to gain audience support.
• The second paragraph in the ‘Statement of Problem’ might be better suited in the ‘Conclusion’ as it points to the benefits/possible outcomes of your research. I believe that this will do well to cap of your proposal and help readers to contemplate on the necessity of your investigation.
Grammar
• Although the content of your research proposal is easy to follow, it might read better with a review of sentence structure and comma placement. Furthermore, some of the sentences are packed with more information than necessary affecting the ability to be concise.
• Here are a couple of examples:
“One could observe three main areas of inefficiency and redundancy in the Science Co-op program. Firstly, in a few important contexts, the administration creates an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy by acting as a middleman between the company and student.”
Could be improved to:
There are three main areas of inefficiency within the Science Co-Op program. Firstly, the administration creates an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy by acting as a middleman between the company and student.
“Thirdly, the student side of the software Science Co-op uses, Scope, features bugs and inefficient, poorly designed features for tasks such as application filing.”
Could be changed to:
Thirdly, the student side of the Science Co-Op software, called Scope, contains bugs, inefficiencies, and poorly designed features.
Concluding Remarks
After reading your proposal I have become intrigued as to what the outcome of your investigation will be. The proposal clearly demonstrates a problem and offers a solution that not only fixes but also improves the current system. That being said, a review of the sentence structure might help to improve the readability of the document. Nevertheless, well done!
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