Note: The research writing subject of this assignment is “Parking problems at University of South Florida”. please see Team Mission to get an idea.
Team mission:
The team chose the name Green and Gold to symbolize their strong and caring relationship for the University of South Florida (USF). As a group we have chosen to discuss and analyze a problem a lot of USF students suffer from, limited parking spaces. It is important that we address this problem because students are required to purchase expensive permits to use USF parking facilities. However, they often find themselves driving around full parking lots looking for an empty slot to park in. This issue causes students to arrive late to classes and sometimes even skip classes because they don’t want to risk being fined for parking in a non-designated student parking.
We want to explore some solutions to this problem and one of the solutions we came out with is building parking garages instead of surface parking lots to increase the capacity of parking spaces. We are also exploring the possibility of developing a system or an app that signals empty parking spots to keep people from wandering around and wasting time. One more solution we also came up with is developing some of the empty lands and parks, that are hardly ever used on campus, into parking garages to increase the capacity of parking spots.
Research Summary
Research in the workplace solvesproblems. Tasked with a significant problem, you may be asked gather theinformation necessary to fully understand the issue at hand, solve thatproblem (or offer potential solutions), prove that your solutions areviable, and/or test your solution(s). Doing this work requires differenttypes of research that go beyond simply querying a library database orusing Google. You will often need to speak directly to targetpopulations and audiences, and directly contact resources and experts indifferent professions and in the community. Local and nationaljournalism may add context and perspective. Professional experts,government agencies, state and local authorities all may be relevantsources, as are individuals in target populations. Essentially, researchin the workplace requires you to think critically and creatively about
The type of information you need; and
The best way to get that information.
Your job is to address, explain,and/or solve a problem using the most relevant and applicable methodsand resources. If a resource can supply information you need, then it isthe right resource for the job.
It’s also important when thinking about a problem you’re researching to keep in mind that you probably aren’t the first person or organization to deal with this issue.Look at other organizations, groups, or communities negotiating thesame or similar issue. Research how those groups describe and deal withthe problem. The perspective of experience is invaluable to your work.If your solution closely resembles another organization’s, it might meanthat’s the most effective solution.
Assignment
This project asks your team to doworkplace research into a local problem impacting the USF community(which you can define however you like). Your overall goal is todescribe the problem in detail using as much information as you cangather from as many different sources as are useful and begin to explorepotential solutions. That means you are looking at research gathered byothers (e.g., government agencies, non-profit organizations,professional and academic experts), but also you might gather your owndata by contacting experts and asking impacted populations for theirperspective. You will produce a memo that reports your findings, givingreaders a robust understanding of the problem you have researched andsome of the possible solutions.
This memo should adhere to a professional memo format and willprobably run 500 to 1,000 words. There is no particular citation formatrequired, but please be consistent with whichever format you use.
Remember that this is a summary. Summarize what youknow and how you know it. You will be adding much more detail to thisresearch in the recommendation report itself.
How much research is enough? Think about it thisway. Your team has a certain amount of time before this memo is due.Within that timeframe, you all have other obligations. How much researchcan you reasonably do in that time? How much research will help yourteam in the next project deliverables? That’s how much research youshould shoot for.
