Final Project Workplan

General

The work plan is a tool. It is there to help you structure a plan for your final project.

It is also intended to help you become more aware of where you want to go with your work, to steer your development and to see how the course elements can best contribute to this. Here, writing is used as a tool to evaluate and speculate, and a means to be precise and explicit. The plan functions as a point of reference within the programme for both you and your tutors.

Working with this plan will teach you to develop your practice through self-evaluation and setting yourself a goal. Thus, in order for the work plan to actually ‘work’, it is important not to regard it as an aim in itself, but as part of a trajectory, or better, as a tool which will provide insight in the trajectory from one point in your development to another.

The learning objectives of the work plan are:

• to formulate a specific area of research which will be informed through both theory and practice
• to engage in self-evaluation
• to identify the trajectory of the work’s development and indicate steps and strategies for steering this development
• to enhance the ability to reflect critically on practice
• to develop your own criteria in relation to your work
• to theoretically speculate through writing, research and practice

How does the work plan develop?

In principle, the work plan will involve three stages:

• During trimester 4 and over the preceding summer break you begin to discuss, evaluate, research and plan possible projects to represent your transition to Master level.
• At the end of trimester 4, a second work plan is made in relation to the final project proposal. This is presented to and assessed by a panel consisting of staff and an external examiner.
• At the end of trimester 6, the end of your studies, you write an evaluation of your final project (this is part of the project report), which will be discussed at a final group critique.

Why a work plan in writing?

There are a number of reasons why writing down your work plan is important. First of all, formulating your aims in writing will stimulate you to be more precise and explicit than you would be in an informal discussion. Secondly, having this written document to refer to will make it easier to compare where you were when you first wrote it, and where you are at a later stage. And thirdly, writing and rewriting the work plan is a useful exercise in the writing component in the Master as a whole.

Tutorial support

Your tutors will be closely involved in the process of evaluating your progress, and in defining the aims for your work and their implications for your studies within the programme. As with the statement for the group critique, this may involve a process of writing and rewriting in order to be as focused and precise as possible.