The Research Paper on Social Media Analytics for Business in technology, education or hospitality
Learning Outcomes
This assessment of a 4,000 word research paper is designed to demonstrate a student’s completion of the following Learning Outcomes:
- Demonstrate an understanding of concepts underlying social media analytics and be able to apply them appropriately in business settings;
- Critically evaluate and implement specialist technologies to harvest, analyse and visualise “social data” from individuals to corporate perspectives;
- Synthesise and apply social analytics and appropriate techniques on social information;
- Critically evaluate, design, prototype and implement social media applications and visualization for business story telling.
EDGE
The Cardiff Met EDGE supports students in graduating with the knowledge, skills, and attributes that allow them to contribute positively and effectively to the communities in which they live and work.
This module assessment provides opportunities for students to demonstrate development of the following EDGE Competencies:
ETHICAL
Critical understanding of the importance of ethical, social, cultural and legal agendas in social media analytics.
DIGITAL
Advanced digital skills for the fourth industrial revolution: social big data harvesting, visualisation and business story telling.
GLOBAL
International horizon and benchmarking for social media analytics corporate specialist software (Tableau) and Python programming knowledge. The assessment involves creating online Tableau visualisations on Tableau’s cloud system to be shared with the world and as a continued portfolio for students.
ENTREPRENEURIAL
Use students’ creativity to solve business and/ or public problems and spot social media entrepreneurship opportunities. The in-depth social media skills and Tableau Public visualisations are parts of the assessment to develop entrepreneurial characteristics.
Assessment Requirements / Tasks (include all guidance notes)
There is ONE assessment components you must complete for this module with a total of 100% weighing: Written Research Paper (WRIT1), supported by a zip file of original evidence to construct the research paper.
The chosen subject of the research topic must be around Social Media Analytics of a business of your choice, within the sector of Technology, Education or Hospitality (choose ONLY a business or comparative two businesses in one sector).
The subject of the social data scrapping, results visualisations, analysis and discussion are left for the student to choose. For examples (and not limited to):
§ You could scrap for keywords related to some educational corporate social data, e.g. Cardiff Met, MIT or any university of your choice on its corporate website and look for students’ experiences or students’ views analytics.
§ You could scrap for keywords related to some public data on Twitter, e.g. McDonald, KFC, Starbucks or any company of your choice and look for public perceptions, market trends or brand monitoring.
§ You could scrap customers’ reviews for products data from technological companies, e.g. IBM, Dell or HP for competitor analysis or product review comparison.
§ You could also harvest overall sentiment towards an international brand or a global company and provide data analytics and visualisations for a business story telling.
§ Any social media analytics topic of your own choice (within or beyond technology, education or hospitality sector), i.e. the company you worked for is recommended to understand the insights of social data from your work experiences.
Please ensure you discuss your topic with your tutor in the studio/seminar as early as possible before you begin working on it.
You are required to write a 4,000 word (with 10% over/under) research paper based on your practical project for this module. The paper should contain rigorous evidence and references from the primary (your own effort of social data harvesting) and/ or secondary data collection (third-party available dataset or current literatures) you undertook.
Research Rationale and Motivation
As part of practical research in this module and learnt from the weekly studios, you will be harvesting a suitable dataset using the relevant tools, i.e. Tableau, Python, Facebook or Twitter API or third party Tool(s) and extracting relevant information from the results.
Therefore, you should start your paper with the motivation or rationale of your research, especially the business aim of your project. The design and approach of your project such as the reasons for the choice of social web harvesting, scope for strategic or tactical decision making, business values, public interest, marketing campaign, product reviews, branding and marketing, customers’ preferences or other etc.
Research Tools and Methods
You need to discuss your research into suitable tools and/ or APIs and the justification for your choice. Based on this, you should then document the design of your project and show clearly how your research project communicates with any third-party service or API.
Results and Visualisations
You should discuss the results with necessary business or social implications and relate that back to the motivation or rationale of your social media project. Visualisation is very important, so the report should also contain suitable visualisations for your business storytelling out of the social data you collected.
Limitations and Implications
In addition, project limitations and recommendations are desirable.
Conclusion and Appendices
Finally, draw a conclusion with key results to nicely conclude your web harvesting research.
You are encouraged to compare various technical tools and techniques to demonstrate the social media analytics skills you have learnt.
You can implement your social web harvesting research project using any suitable language / technology / third-party tools you see fit. You can hard-code queries or you can provide a suitable front-end where users can enter search keywords. In addition, you can show the results in any suitable form, e.g. tables, various forms of innovative graphs or information overlaid on a map. The final visualisation needs to be published on Tableau Public and include the link and evidences in the paper as Appendixes.
Additional Information
Referencing Requirements (Harvard)
The Harvard (or author-date) format should be strictly used for all references (including images). Further information on Referencing can be found at Cardiff Met’s Academic Skills website.
Assessment Criteria
WRIT1: Written Research Paper (4,000 words)
100%
§ Title Page: A title of not more than eight words should be provided and the student’s name and student ID.
§ Biography: a brief professional biography of not more than 100 words about your role in this research paper.
5%
§ Abstract (less than 200 words): students must supply a structured abstract in their submission, set out under 4-7 sub-headings
o Purpose (mandatory)
o Design/methodology/approach (mandatory)
o Findings (mandatory)
o Social or Business implications: the original value of the research (mandatory)
o Research limitations/implications (if applicable)
10%
Introduction: Motivation or Rationale of the project
5%
Design and discussion of data sources / tools/ APIs and justification of choice: Understanding of the social media analytics for business design and anticipated implementation, APIs and techniques used
20%
Key Results, Visualisation and Business Story Telling: “So What?” aspects for the business value / anticipated research impact
20%
Conclusions, Project Limitation and Recommendation
10%
References, Research Paper Presentation and Format:
Latest and Relevant references; logical, creative and clear presentation
15%
Appendixes, e.g. A link to Tableau Public of your visualisation work; Screen shots of data source file, interfaces or third party tools you used or Source code. Please zip everything and submit via a separate submission link on Moodle. Feel free to put the key screen shots in the main report as well.
15%
Total:
100%
Submission Details
Please see Moodle for confirmation of the Assessment submission date.
Any assessments submitted after the deadline will not be marked and will be recorded as a Non-Attempt.
Submit the assignment online through Moodle, including
(i) a research paper in Word document (include the Tableau public link, references and appendixes);
(ii) a zip folder including final presentation slides and appendixes, such as the source files, e.g. Excel sheets, interfaces or third party tools you used or Python source code.
The assessment must be submitted as a (i) MS Word document and (ii) zip file through the Turnitin submission point in Moodle
Summative feedback for the assessment will be provided electronically via Moodle Grademark Feedback Studio, and will normally be available 4 working weeks after initial submission. The feedback return date will be confirmed on Moodle.
Feedback will be provided in the form of a Tunitin-GradeMark rubric and supported with comments on your strengths and the areas in which you could improve. Guidance on how to access the feedback is published on Moodle module site.
All marks are preliminary and are subject to quality assurance processes and confirmation at the Examination Board.
Further information on the Academic and Feedback Policy in available in the Academic Handbook (Vol 1, Section 4.0)
