Pharmacology research project guidance: Project Management

Your supervisor will be responsible for guiding the direction of your work and for ensuring safe working. The day-to-day supervision of your work may be delegated to another member of your supervisor’s research group, if appropriate.

If you are having any problems with your supervision, then it is imperative that you let the module convenor know straight away.

Your supervisor is a valuable resource when working on your research project but they won’t tell you how to do your project. You need to take charge and ‘own’ your project as you will be the one who has to stand by it and will receive the marks for it. Owning your project means being pro-active and thinking of the ideas and direction of the project yourself. This does not mean you have to do everything alone as your supervisor can give valuable advice and act as a sounding board for your ideas. Consider your supervisor’s advice carefully as they have the experience to know what is likely to work and not work in a research project.

Working with your supervisor is a partnership and you need to negotiate a way to work that suits both of you. Things to find out are:

• How many meetings with your supervisor you can have
• The best methods of communicating with your supervisor – e.g., are they willing to give feedback by email
• When it is appropriate to ask them questions – e.g., only during their office hours for seeing students
• How much of your draft project they are able to look at and provide feedback on
• Any deadlines for handing in drafts for feedback
• Any times they will be away and out of contact

The kinds of things that your supervisor can advise on:

• Whether your project is manageable in the time you have
• If you need to have a more focused title or question
• Whether your project outline is reasonable / workable
• Suggestions for books and resources to get you started
• Design of the research protocol
• The data collection process
• Analysis of the results
• Advice on the structure and plan of your project and report
• Feedback on specific chapters or sections of chapters

Meeting with your supervisor

Plan to arrange regular meetings with your supervisor (at least once every two weeks). It is your responsibility to arrange these meetings.

Prepare the following for your meeting:

• Results - summary of how your project is progressing
• Questions - A top tip is don't be afraid to put questions to your supervisor, but it is often better to ask specific questions that you have attempted to find answers to first. Instead of asking "How am I doing?" you are more likely to get the detailed answer you need if you ask, "What do you think of the methodology I am using in Chapter 3?"
• Issues - such as equipment failure, loss of samples

You are expected to dedicate most of Semester 1 to working on your project. Whilst you can seek guidance from your supervisor the organisation of your project time is your responsibility. The pattern of work may be irregular. For example, you may have a very intensive period of data collection, followed by a longer period of processing and analysing it. You may also find that, at times, your progress is held up while you wait for a variety of services e.g. interlibrary loans, chemicals arriving or analyses. You will need to be flexible in your approach and show a greater degree of time management.

For lab-based aspects of the project:

• Find out realistically how long experimental procedures take – speak to the researchers in your laboratory. Preparation often takes longer than you think.
• Plan time to clear up after yourself - this is part of the experiment!
• Plan experiments to finish around five - you are not allowed to work out of hours without permission and certainly never on your own.

For the literature-based aspects of the project:

• Prepare for your literature search using scoping searches on potential databases
• Allow time to accurately construct a comprehensive search and adapt it for specific databases
• Be prepared to apply for inter-library loans to get key articles not covered by Library subscriptions
• Learn how to use EndNote or Mendeley for managing your references if you aren't already using one

Manage the tasks associated with your project using a Gantt chart. This will:

• show the time allocated to each task and the dependency between tasks;
• establish the feasibility of your plan and as a baseline against which to measure progress;

The chart may need to be revised at each project planning meeting, in consultation with your supervisor.

Even though you've got several months in which to do your project, the time will soon go. Find tips on making the most of your time in this video from our Study Advice Team:

Be aware of your resources.

Physical resources

• What equipment do I need?
• What access do I get? Do I need to book it?
• Who knows how to drive it?
• Do you need access to additional publications not held by the Library? How do you get them?

Human resources

When are the people you need free to help? Respect their time!

• Who will help in the lab?
• Who runs the Stores?
• Who runs the prep rooms?

Budget

• Be aware of the budget.
• Your supervisor uses his/her own research funding to support your project.
• Minimise wastage - for instance don't order 500 agar plates unless you are definitely going to use them.
• Only order inter-library loans for key publications not available in the Library.