PRJ300 – Project Update – 29/09/08
Today I had a meeting with my project supervisor to discuss my progrees with the project. I told her that I had 23 replies since sending out the final e-mail last Wednesday, and that I have written 8,000 words on the report, and I still have two data security technologies left to write about. I have allocated 5,000 words for the writting of the results of the survey.
She said that was fine, however I need to work on completing my Literature review this week, start writting about the results of the survey, and finish writting the research methods section about survey design etc.
Also information was given today at the meeting about the presentation, a 20 minute presentation with 5 minutes for questions, and you are allowed to use powerpoint to write 5 slides.
Thats all for now as their is an example presentation at 2:00pm from a project student that I would like to attend.
Cheers,
Herb
PRJ300 – Survey Update – 25/09/08
Thought I would just provide an update of what is happening with the survey. On Monday I had a meeting with my project supervisor to discuss my progress with the project. I showed her that I had been constructing the background, and continuing with the literature review. She seemed to be okay with what had been written so far, however she said that at the bottom of the background section I should include something like: “And now to discuss my research findings which I have listed below: “.
As well as showing my project supervisor my progress on the report, I also told her that I had received 15 replies from the survey. She told me to get more replies I should now construct a respondent reminder e-mail which will be sent out to the people who did not reply. The respondent reminder was constructed yesterday (being the 24th of September), and sent out to all the people who did not reply to the survey. I checked the progress of the replies on: http://www.grapevinesurveys.com, and they are now up to 20 replies. So already I have gained an extra 5 replies, and I am expecting 4 more replies, which should hopefully take the survey up to 24 replies, and then I just need an extra reply, and I will have the maximum replies for the survey.
Anyhow thats the progress on the project. I will report back with any news.
Cheers,
Herb
PRJ300 – Late update – 15/09/08
Hi,
Sorry about the late update, but I was really busy last week. Last week I spent Tuesday finding web-based survey alternatives to moodle survey, the reason for this was I had not received my password for the moodle survey function. I stumbled upon a few which I will include in my report, but some of the trials were too limiting, for example, survey monkey, as part of its trial functionality would only allow 10 replies back from participants. In my case 10 replies were not enough, so in the end I stumbled upon grapevinesurveys.com, which allowed 25 replies, and allowed an unlimited amount of written questions. On Wednesday I was given clearance to the moodle survey function, which after spending a couple of hours trying to get it to work, I gave up as it was overly complicated. I reverted back to grapevinesurveys, and added a username, and password for each participant.
On Thursday I completed the survey, and finished writing the survey e-mail message, this was sent on Friday to the 86 participants.
Today, I checked the progress of the survey, and found out that 9 participants had participated in the survey, I only need one more participant, and I would have fulfilled my estimate. I also had a project meeting with Mary today, and she was quite pleased with my progress, however she did mention that I might want to consider sending a reminder e-mail before the 30 day trial of the survey is up, so I can get more results. It was also decided that in the next two weeks I should have completed the literature review, and have done more work on the introduction, and background sections. Mary wants to see the progress of my report next Monday, being 22/09/08.
Thats all for now,
Herb
PRJ300 – Update with project progress – 02/09/08
Hi,
Just thought I would provide an project update. Last week I did some more report work in regards, to the research methodology, and literature review sections, I also added some new questions to the survey. Yesterday I printed what I had done so far on the report, and printed a new copy of the survey for the meeting with Mary, yesterday @ 1pm. After Mary had reviewed the survey so made a few suggestions, these suggestions were:
In the disclaimer section, rather than writing: I Herb Hesketh have designed this survey to collect information. It should be changed to: I Herb Hesketh have designed this survey to collect information for my third year BIT degree, final year project.
Other suggestions: I should separate the questions, into different sections, under different headings, the sections which were recommended were: Role, Business, and Security.
Mary suggested that I should create some more questions, such as: What is your occupation? what qualifications do you have, what percentage of this businesses budget is set aside for data security?
Question 8: Does your business have documented procedures for reporting security breaches to the appropriate authorities (e.g., ITS security group)? should be moved to above question 7. Question 12 should be changed to servers rather than workstations as the workstations are repeated in question 10.
For question 13. Rather than describing the technologies there should be room for viewer to write for example. what Integrated Threat Management functions there business provides, or firewalls etc.
There are alot of multi-choice questions so there also needs to be more scale questions. With regard to the research report the following suggestions were given:
With the research methodology part, more references are required, to help give the research report more backing. For example include the reference for: as it is not as intrusive as a telephone, or face-to-face survey something like (****, 1975. Also I need to write why I choose each particular question / set of questions – link back to lit. review. I need to describe Why is 10 replies enough? could say something like Small scale research project, not intending to generalise from the sample. Also need to consider the report in past-tense, refer to myself as ‘the author’ or the researcher.
With the Introductions were made that I should not include the paragraph quote, as the first paragraph, however if I want to use it I must provide my own sentence lead-in. Just like the research methodology more references are required, and E-Commerce needs to be changed to E-Business. The informal use of lanaguage for the introduction section, such as: ‘either being that businesses want to make a quick buck’ needs to be changed to more professional language, refer to the past-tense concept.
With the abstract, once again E-Commerce needs to be changed to E-Business, and the informal language needs to be professional language. Should be worked on when survey results have been sent back as information about the results need to be put in the abstract section in a overall summary type of format.
The literature review section is good, however it needs more information added to it.
Mary also discussed dates with me when things are due. We worked out that this week should be focused on designing the survey further, and that on the 3rd of September being tomorrow, I should send a rough copy of the initial survey e-mail to Mary’s e-mail address. She will then get back to me with any changes that need to be made, and the final copy will be sent out on Friday the 5th of September.
On the 8th of September, next monday, the survey should be finished, as well as the Research Methodology section, on Friday the 12th the construction of the web-based survey should be complete, and a confirmation e-mail should be sent. On the 26th of september the results back from the survey will close.
Thats all I have for now,
I will report back with more information in due course,
Cheers,
Herb
