Table of Contents

1. Aims and objectives of research
2. Primary and secondary research
3. Defining research
4. Different ways of looking at the same thing
5. The purpose of research in software engineering
6. The dissertation in software engineering
7. But I just want to develop a computer-based system
8. Attributes of a good dissertation topic
9. Readings on software engineering research
10. Tutorial activities
11. Bibliography

Aims and objectives of research

As this is the first week of the module you should use it to familiarise yourself with the online material, navigation and links. You should also aim to fulfil the following by the end of this week:

• Understand the purpose and process of the module.
• Understand the purpose and process of the dissertation.
• Understand the concept of research in software engineering and how it relates to the dissertation and research proposal.
• Familiarise yourself with the assessment for this module.

The purpose of this session is to introduce primary research in software engineering and distinguish between different types of approaches to primary research in the discipline.

To begin, it is useful to distinguish between primary and secondary research and how they will feature in the dissertation process.