Academic Development II: Exercise Research Design

It is specifically designed for students of the master program “European Urban Studies” and is the second part of the module untitled “Academic development”, after Exercise Research Methods. In the second semester, the course continues from where it left off in the 1rst semester and teaches further methods of urban studies. These enable students to develop an independent research design for their thesis in preparation for the individual research project in the 3^rd semester. To this end, they prepare a research proposal that identifies research questions, methodology, objectives and theoretical concepts, as well as field access and potential difficulties.

At the end of the module, students will be capable of independently developing scholarly and practical problems and their solutions. They will also be able to reflect independently and critically on different methods of urban studies and apply them.

Methods: The teaching methods in the module consists of input from the instructor, reading and groups exercises in the course session. Methods are taught on the basis of concrete examples, content and exercises. The students will learn to develop and structure a research task independently. The didactic concept is based on a high degree of independent work on the part of the students. Individual consultations will also be scheduled with the instructor.