Course Title: Design Contract

Part A: Course Overview

Course Title: Design Contract

Credit Points: 12

Course Code	Campus	Career	School	Learning Mode	Teaching Period(s)
GRAP2079	City Campus	Postgraduate	335H Applied Communication	Internet	Sem 2 2006, Sem 2 2008, Sem 2 2009
GRAP2079	City Campus	Postgraduate	345H Media and Communication	Face-to-Face	Sem 1 2012
GRAP2079	City Campus	Postgraduate	345H Media and Communication	Face-to-Face or Internet	Sem 1 2011, Sem 2 2010, Sem 2 2011, Sem 2 2012

Course Coordinator: Russell Bevers

Course Coordinator Phone: +(61 3) 9925 3029

Course Coordinator Email:russell.bevers@rmit.edu.au

Course Coordinator Location: City campus

Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities

Research Methods

Course Description

The Design Contract is a student-negotiated course within the Master of Design program. Aimed at providing students with the opportunity to explore a topic or issue that is related to both this program of study and their work environment. Students will negotiate their area of study with their specified member of staff and a mutually agreed topic, research strategy and outcome focus.

Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development

As a course within the Master of Design the Design Contract provides students with an opportunity to explore topics and issues that are raised from other core and elective courses in greater depth. The content, methods and expected outcomes are negotiated with the Program or Course manager.

Capabilities
On completion of this course students will have: 
- Utilised their research skills, including library and data sourcing, to identify and define their research topic
- Explored and analysed appropriate research methods to undertake the study
- Critically evaluated the topic and its relevance to their design industry
- Developed a comprehensive research design for the research project
- Presented their research outcomes in an appropriate format

Students should be equipped to undertake research for the Major Project within the Master of Design program or move on to a Research based Masters degree.

Overview of Learning Activities

The planned learning experiences for the course are based on developing students individual research skills and knowledge. This will be done on an individual basis with students presenting their final outcome to the lecturer and in some cases - to their peers.

Overview of Learning Resources

Resources can be sourced from the RMIT Library and its data base of journal articles, reciprocal arrangements with other Australian university libraries, local libraries and web sites.

Overview of Assessment

There are three assessment tasks for this course: to be outlined in full -online at the start of the course.
Broad outlines of assessments  will be provided in Part B.