Economic History/Economic and Social History 3 Project and Dissertation Preparation (ES0031)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : HCA-3-DPP

This course is compulsory for single honours students in Economic and Social History and optional for joint honours students. It is designed to ensure that all students by the time they enter the summer vacation of their third year have a set of basic skills - in information collection, description, analysis and presentation - appropriate for potential graduates in an 'information-related' discipline. It is not intended to provide a high level of expertise in any one area, though some attempt will be made to create an awareness of situations where more advanced advice would need to be sought so that an inquiry could be conducted (and/or analysis be carried out or presented) in a professionally satisfactory manner. The main objective is to ensure that students have a basic grounding which will provide the capacity to conduct the kind of social science investigations required in dissertations and smaller pieces of project work, and that they are capable of presenting the results of their investigations, in written reports and orally, in a structured, analytical, and clearly comprehensible way.

Entry Requirements

? This course is not available to visting students.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Economic and Social History, (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Schedule E)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 3rd year

? Delivery Period : Full Year (Blocks 1-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 18 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
19/09/2007	12:10	13:00	Room G17, Adam Ferguson Building	Central

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Wednesday	12:10	13:00	Central
Lecture	Thursday	16:10	18:00	Central

? Additional Class Information : Please note: Both Wednesday and Thursday slots run in semester one. In semester two, only the Wenesday slot runs.

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will acquire awareness and skills across a range of computing applications and in the use of databases containing historical information, specifically:
- Electronic mail, the internet, spreadsheets, and Power Point presentation software.
- Text processing, where all students in all courses in Economic and Social History are expected to submit essay and other work in a text-processed form with appropriate footnotes and numbered pages.
- Data manipulation and presentation.

Students will acquire knowledge of a range of theoretical and intellectual debates in the practice and practicalities of historical research in a social science environment. This will include:
- Approaches to analysing numeric data;
- The potential of oral evidence and visual materials;
- Narrative analysis of documentary texts and other written sources.
- The use of on-line databases containing numeric, textual and visual data.
- Student-led seminars are intended to develop the presentation and verbal skills of participating students.
- Written assignments are intended to develop the literary skills of students and their ability to construct cohernet argument and analysis.
- Finally, students will gain knowledge of best practice in researching the secondary literature, on how to cite this literature and primary evidence in footnotes, and how to write-up research in a way appropriate to a piece of social science academic work.

Assessment Information

Five tasks = 10%
Oral presentation using Powerpoint (10 minutes) = 5%
Oral presentation on the Project (15 minutes) = 20%
Project (3-5000 words) = 65%
Total = 100%

There is no examination for this course.