Project Tips

The deadline for the project draft and final submission is fast approaching. You have one week to complete the draft and two weeks to submit the final version for marking. Here a reminder of the project process.

Gathering Information

To conduct any research you need to gather information. For this particular project you were required to:

1. Conduct a literature review.
2. Conduct an observation of the cafeteria.
3. Write and administer interview questions to pose to the cafeteria's staff and users of the cafeteria.
4. Write and conduct a questionnaire to about 30 users of the cafeteria.
5. Tabulate your questionnaire responses to create charts/graphs/tables/diagrams.

Literature Review: After doing the lit. review you woud have had a clear set of guidelines to which cafeteria's should adhere.

Observation: Using your guidelines, you examine the premises to see if the conform to or breach the set of guidelines

Interview: Allows you to question the workers about areas that you could not observe, areas that you observed but you needed some clarification. The inteview of the users (about 5) allows you to ask open-ended questions to determine how users feel about the food and services offered by the cafeteria.

Questionnaire: Based on the points or views raised in the interviews, the questionnaire is designed to determine how many other persons had similar views. After the questionnaires are conducted then you would have an idea of how the sample feel about the cafeteria and its products.

Tabulating Data: At this satge you tabulate your responses to create charts/diagrams. Tip: Separate your responses into two groups (1) Food (2) Services. For each of these you then organize the respones into negative, positive and neutral. Then comb through your questionnaire responses and tabulate them.

Click on the link below to see a tabulation sample. The sample shows how the response from three questionnaire sheets were tabulated and how one part of the tabulation was converted to a chart.

Sample Tabulation

Click the link below to view a PowerPoint show that explains how to create charts using Excel

Creating Charts in Excel

Organizing The Information

After you have made all the diagrams you intend to use you need to prepare what you are going to say about them. In other words you must describe what each chart is saying and what the information implies as it concerns the research topic. Please note that you may and should have other information that may not be represented by any chart e.g. data about physical breaches or inadequate furniture e.t.c.

Bear in mind your research topic every time you write or prepare a chart. Your aim is to determine if the cafeteria is operating up to standards. Which standard? The standard or guideline you found when you did your literature review.

Once again I urge you to work diligently on your research project and your incident reports. You are almost out of time! Do not procrastinate any more! Email your questions and/or sample work at marvin.williams9@gmail.com or m_williams99@yahoo.com

Incident Report Assignment Tips (Question 2)

Hopefully by now you have started to write your responses to the three incident report scenarios. I sincerely hope that you are assidiously working on the project as well. Each group should send me a copy of your questionnaire and interview questions today, February 4, 2010. You should submit the items to me via email at marvin.williams9@gmail.com . You may also give them to Miss Chambers or Phil Dacres. I will not be in the institution until next week but Phil will forward the items to me so that I can provide feedback next week. You may also submit any drafts of the incident report that you have done.

Now back to the assignment for today's class. In class today you are required to work on your draft for question 2 from the incident report assignment. Being kind, generous and benevolent I have decided to give you further assistance. Below is a link to an extract that explains the safety precautions that should be followed when operating transformers and the how to treat persons who have been exposed to electrical shock. Download and read the extract, it should provide good technical information that can be used for question 2.

Extract taken from Integrated Publishing

After you have read and digested the information form the extract, you need to write an outline of the incident report. You may use the following steps to help create your outline.

Step 1: Select the characters for your report.

• What are the names of the persons involved in the incident?
• Are any of the crew members new or inexperienced?
• Are any of the crew members normally careless or not careful enough?

Step 2: Determine the level of safety guideline breach

• Was the incident just a bizarre accident that cannot easily be explained?
• Was there a small or a large breach of safety guidelines?
• Which safety precaution, if any, was ignored?

Step 3: Determine the level of injury

• Has anyone died as a result of the incident? If not, what is the extent of the injury?

Step 4: Creating the outline

• Separate your outline into three sections: before, during and after
• For each section, write down some points that you will address in that section

Step 5: Organize the points so that they make sense logically

And voila! Your outline is complete!

Now you may start writing your draft. Simply develop each point into cohesive sentences. Be careful when your writing. Check for incorrect spellings and improper paragraphing.

Tip!: If you type your draft you may use the spell check feature in Microsoft Word to check your work. Even if you are writing the draft you can still use Word to check for a single word. Just type the word. If a red line appears below it then the word may be spelt incorrectly. Right click on the word and the programme may show a list containing the correct spelling.

Incident Report Assignment

Below is your report assisgnment. Learners are encouraged to conduct research that may aid them in writing their incident reports. Learners are also encouraged to ask their electrical instructors to verify the validity of the information they intend to use in their report.

The reports require carefull thought and a lot of effort. Time is of the essence so do not procrastinate! Start working on them NOW!

Incident Report Assignment

WRITING TECHNICAL REPORT ADVANCED
SCENARIOS

READ THE FOLLOWING SCENARIOS CAREFULLY AND WRITE SUITABLE REPORTS FOR EACH


1. You are a supervisor at Electrotech Ltd in charge of maintaining the plant equipment. On Monday, January 21, 2010 one of the generator units went out of commission. The disruption lasted for two days and severely hampered production. The manager is demanding a report from you explaining the reason for the initial problem and the lengthy downtime.

2. You are a new employee at JPS and you are assigned a crew to replace a set of damaged transformers in the Helshire area of Portmore. During the installation of one of the transformers, one of your crew members was electrocuted. Write a report to your immediate supervisor detailing the unfortunate incident.


3. You are a supervisor at the National Water Commission in charge of the generators that operate the main pumps at the substation at Mona. During a routine servicing of one of the generators it was discovered that the generators showed signs of tampering. Upon further investigation you found evidence that two of your employees were guilty of negligence, theft and willful destruction of property. Write a report to your immediate supervisor outlining the situation, your investigation and your subsequent findings.

Questionnaires should be user-friendly in their design yet structured to ensure that the essential data is collected. To achieve this, the researcher must create a carefull blend of the following:

1. Open-ended questions


2. Likert scales


3. Close-ended questions

Open-ended questions can elicit complete answers and thus provide useful data. However many persons do not like to write. These persons tend to avoid answering a lot of open-ended questions.

Close-ended questions are much easier to answer but sometimes do not allow respondents to fully express their thoughts or feelings. These questions normally receive a yes or no as the response.

Likert scales provide a compromise between ease of use and completeness of reponse. They offer the respondents a range of responses from which to choose. Thus they can easily express them selves in a more or less complete manner. The "drawback" is that likert scales require more thought and preparation time. However, researchers should invest the time and effort required to ensure that their questionnaires are designed to elicit accurate and complete data.

Click on the link below to view an excerpt of a sample questionnaire

Sample Questionnaire