units

AZA2453

Faculty of Arts

18 September 2017 22 December 2024
Monash University

Undergraduate - Unit

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

LevelUndergraduate
FacultyFaculty of Arts
Organisational UnitSouth Africa School of Social Sciences
OfferedSouth Africa Second semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)Dr Rose-Marie Bezuidenhout

Synopsis

The unit introduces critical and practical approaches to research in the media and communication industries. It presents a critical overview of the rationale for research in industry and academia. Various traditions of inquiry are explored and applied to typical research studies conducted in communication and the media with specific reference to South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Specific quantitative, and qualitative research methodologies are investigated. Various key ethical and critical research issues are deliberated.

Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

  1. Understand the uses of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in academic and industry contexts.
  2. Understand the uses of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in science and non-science environments
  3. Understand the nature and use of a theoretical framework in a research project
  4. Define and formulate a research project, including hypotheses, research problems and questions, goals, ethical considerations, literature reviews,theoretical frameworks, and data collection, analysis and interpretation methods.
  5. Demonstrate sound awareness of ethical principles in research practices.
  6. Demonstrate familiarity with specific methodologies, including, for example, ethnography, case study, survey, textual-, thematic-, discourse- audience- and quantitative content analysis
  7. Reflect on relationships between local and global frameworks in developing approaches to research.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 70%
Exam: 30%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

See also Unit timetable information

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Rose-Marie Bezuidenhout

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Communications
Criminology and criminal justice

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of first-year Arts units.

Prohibitions

AZA3453, ATS2453, ATS3453