A comprehensive guide to writing an effective project report for students

At present, MBA, M.Com. MCA, M. Tech. BBA and B.Com. students are in the fourth or final semester of their respective courses. This is the time for these students to prepare a project report as per the academic requirements. This is also a very crucial time for them to focus on the project report. Students should prepare a creative and research-based project report and submit it to the department concerned. The Department Research Committee (DRC) scrutinizes the project report carefully and conducts an oral examination (vivo-voce) on the project report prepared by the student. Examiners allocate marks to students based on the quality of the project report.

Moreover, if the student attends an interview for a job in any company in the future, this project report is examined and his/her abilities are evaluated. Therefore, Students should prepare the project report on innovative topics and submit with research results. It will be useful not only for him/her but also for all those who verify and use it. For this, the Department Research Committee assigns a project guide or project supervisor or project mentor for each student.

The student should consult the guide assigned to him/her frequently and take appropriate advice and prepare and submit a useful project report. For this purpose, I am presenting this article with the hope that the suggestions given below will be useful to the students.

Project Report means:

A project report is a comprehensive document that provides detailed information about a specific topic chosen. It usually describes the study objectives, scope of the study, methodology, progress, findings and results achieved. It serves as an official record of the research study conducted by students in their specialized subject they are studying. It also serves as a documentation of the research conducted by students and as a communication tool to convey the research findings to interested parties, especially the university and in some cases to selected companies.

Purpose of Project Report:

The main purpose of the project report is to provide students with the necessary experiential education outside the classroom in addition to studying theory subjects. All final semester students of MBA, M.Com. MCA, M. Tech. BBA and B.Com. programmes are required to work on a project as part of their academic programme. This is a practical course. The knowledge and skills learnt during the course of study in the classroom can be applied and noticed in a real workplace and in the production and management processes. These projects should be structured in such way that the students can learn new knowledge, relevant to their academic development and in line with industry standards. The final evaluation of these projects will be done by experienced academicians/industry experts.

1. Expectations from Students’ Projects: Students should deliver the expected outcomes of their projects. Each project should achieve at least one of the following outcomes. a) Publication of a quality research paper b) Acquisition of IPR – Intellectual Property Rights (Patents/Copyrights/Industrial Designs/Design) c) Guidance for new innovations d) Contribution to policy formulation e) Contribution to society i.e. having a social perspective. Experts expect at least one of the above from the projects done by the students. Students should also focus on the above aspects and prepare their projects in such a way to achieve any one of the above expectations.

2. Project Title: MBA, M.Com. MCA, M. Tech. BBA and B.Com. Students should work on a Real Time Live Project in Industry / Research & Development / Educational Institution / Software Company. MBA students can choose the project topic from their specializations. Name of the project should be appropriate to the chosen topic. This is called the project title. This is the first and foremost point in the entire project work. The project title should be somewhat novel and different from the previous ones. That project only will be recognized. Some experts recognize the uniqueness of the project title by looking at it. Therefore, the project title should be attractive with novelty.

3. Selection of Research Problem: After the selection of the topic to be researched gets completed, a research question with a suitable problem for the research should be formulated. The nature of the research problem should be close to the working environment. For this, students should select a suitable organization to conduct their project and get permission from it. To get permission from the company, students should assure the company that they are doing project work to obtain academic degree and knowledge and the information learned from the organization will be used only for academic purposes and company details should not be disclosed to others. After getting permission, they should start their research in that organization. The selected research topic should revolve around the research problem. Moreover, scientific and theoretical perspectives should be examined in this regard.

4. Project Planning: The project should start with a research report plan. The plan should include determining the objectives of the project report, who will review the prepared report and who will benefit from it, its real purpose, collection of necessary materials for preparing the report, collection of necessary information, analysis of the collected information, preparation of the report, etc. To utilize the time properly in project research and report writing, one should plan accordingly and explain the facts with suitable examples learned from the study.

5. Literature Review: Students who are currently doing the project should review the project copies done by their senior students or other researchers on the topic they have opted and other related research papers and thesis copies. Through this, many details like how the previous research was done, what kind of information was collected and analyzed, what kind of research method was adopted, what they examined and what they did not examine, etc. will be known. These details will become a compass for the current research and will use as guide to the current students.

(The author is Associate Professor Department of Business Management, Vaageswari College of Engineering, Karimnagar)