Pretty decent because you can ez get 90%+ without watching any lectures, but enjoy being guilt-tripped by your nerdy ass group because you're not up working on the google doc at 11pm every night

Ingrid and Dino are nice people but this unit is just not interesting. It is not too difficult by any means but it was always annoying to do because it felt like a unit that you just had to do because you do Bphil. The lectures were never very interesting but the quizzes were quite easy to get full marks on. The literature review was an absolute pain. It was confusing on what was really expected and how to write it, especially when you are stuck with a niche topic without many research papers. The group assignments aren't too difficult to complete as long as your group members communicate with each other. Its Bphil so you will probably end up with at least 1-2 motivated group members that pushes everyone along. No exam is a nice bonus to this unit.

Honestly a waste of a unit. It attempted to teach the basics of research, like writing literature reviews, research proposals, teamwork and presentations, but fell short by far. I had to teach myself practically everything, including how to write a lit review and proposal, which made up about 70% of the unit's grade. The lectures were widely a waste of time, I don't recommend you attend them, especially since they are two hours long. The marking is also very harsh, considering the poor job of teaching the lecturers do. If you make just one typo, you will likely lose about 5% from your final mark. The group project topic is likely going to be very unrelated to your major, as you are made to be in a group with people from a range of disciplines. I did like that aspect of it, however it also resulted in a rather uninteresting topic of research, at least from my perspective. Overall, the enjoyment of this unit will greatly depend on your group. If you have a group that is focused and are good communicators, you'll do fine. Conversely, if you end up in a group where half of them just don't care or communicate, you will struggle and likely end up doing most of the work, with no way to give formal feedback on peers at the end of the unit.

It's not FUN, but it's not too hard. Annoying how centred it is on group work, you really want to get a good group! At the end of the day, I felt they were still trying to sell the BPhil to us, so it was unlikely they would give anyone that bad a mark. I must say, 2 years on from doing this unit, the skills I learnt here have been very helpful throughout my degree. Honestly seems like skills they should be teaching every undergrad.

Not the most enjoyable unit, as lectures could be a bit arduous, but cos its BPhil you'll likely get a group who actually care and you can get most of the 5000 word project done in a week or two. Hopefully your group pick a good topic/issue that everyone is happy researching. Staff were readily available and helpful. Overall a decent intro to research/academic writing and the skills you learn in writing the lit. review/research proposal are pretty valuable even in other first year units. Pretty chill on the most part, which is always good and didn't take up too much time. Marking can be nitpicky but if you follow the marking key you should end up with an HD. No exam is a big bonus too.

The structure of the course has changed a bit, you are able to pick your own topic for the group project. If you somehow end up with fantastic group members with a couple that are really on top of it, you'll be set. This unit does take effort and organisation, I would recommend setting up times early on to meet up (in person or online), and to set deadlines throughout the group project. Overall I think that this unit gives a pretty good introduction to Research in general, and lets you see if it is something you would like to do in the future. I think that unit management is actually pretty good, but they don't 'spoon-feed' you so make sure to ask questions when you need, and use feedback opportunities. Double check Turnitin before submitting. Also, attendance at the Summer Residence doesn't seem to make much of a difference in the course itself.

It's a pretty "research-oriented" unit, so all the lectures and workshops are about research stuff which could be a bit boring. The group project proposal stuff weighed more than half of the mark, so if you are in a group that everyone is procastinating you might end up not so good. The project topic is allocated randomly and it's really hard to develop an idea on some broad topics. Lit review just needs a lot of time to think about the structure, but you can get a decent mark as long as you've really spent time on it. I personally won't recommend people to take this unit just for fun (ie. don't do it if you don't have to), but if you have to, it's not that hard to get an HD.

This is meant to set the foundation for your research career but all it seems to cause all students to lose motivation to carry on. You get grouped with people that somehow have even less motivation than you. The lectures are really boring and for some reason they ended up being removed from LMS altogether??? You seriously need to read every little bit of the hundreds of resources they give to get decent marks. There is a literature review worth 40% for some reason. And they are SO pedantic about tiny details. Is your line-spacing 0.01 mm off in your references? Minus 5%. The group project requires you to talk about any random topic they give you. If you're lucky you get a medical topic with a group of students studying medicine. If you get really unlucky you get a group of guys doing science and a topic about feminism. It seems you either get 65 or above 90 in this unit. Seriously no in between. They decided to triple the cohort size so now the coordinators don't really seem to care any more. You're just a number. And they wonder why so many people drop out. Thank god there is no exam.