Roles & Ground Rules 2013

*Meet up date has changed to Friday 1.15- 2.15 at the Infohub.

MMP

Interdisciplinary Research Proposal

STUDENT NAME(S)
KOK YONG EN CHRISTOPHER
LOH XIAN ZE BRYAN
MEREDITH TEO SHUYI
PAN ZIYUE

SCHOOL / TEAM
SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, SINGAPORE / GROUP C

MENTOR
MR NG GUOHUI

PROGRAMME / INSTITUTION
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES / SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

TITLE OF PROJECT
An investigation of the average sleeping duration of SST secondary one students compared to students from other express secondary schools

CATEGORY
Medicine & Health

PURPOSE OF RESEARCH
For scientific investigations

HYPOTHESIS / HYPOTHESES

a) SST secondary 1 express students sleep less than secondary 1 express students from other secondary schools. (HEALTH)

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

a) School of the student

DEPENDENT VARIABLE

a) Sleeping durations

CONSTANTS

a)Secondary 1 express students in Singapore

RELEVANCY OF RESEARCH
1. Why is your research important?

a) It is important as many people say that due to the use of the learning device, SST students are sleeping later than everyone else.

2. How does it contribute to existing body of knowledge?

a) It helps to tell parents of SST students the impact the SST curriculum has on the sleeping durations of their child who is in SST.

3. How does your research contribute to impact the society or the community?

a) It would be one of the factors parents would be considering before sending their child to SST to lead their secondary school life, hence this research is important to benefit the community.

SCOPE OF RESEARCH
- The scope of our research is that we are going to limit to about 100 people to do the survey as it is almost impossible to get so many people to do the survey and also, we have a very limited time to do it.

- A poll conducted in Singapore on 940 students in 26 secondary schools has revealed that 80% of them are getting less than eight hours of sleep daily. (AsiaOne, 2007)

- A survey carried out by The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revealed that a heavier workload leads to less sleep. (Pharmacy Times, 2004)

LITERATURE REVIEW

1. A poll conducted in Singapore on 940 students in 26 secondary schools has revealed that 80% of them are getting less than eight hours of sleep daily. (AsiaOne, 2007) A survey carried out by The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revealed that a heavier workload leads to less sleep. (PharmacyTimes, 2004)

2. Singapore students get very little sleep mostly due to their heavy workload. This will help us to identify if students in SST have a very heavy workload or not.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

METHODOLOGY
Procedures
1. Set-up a survey that can be used to survey out target audience about their sleeping durations.
2. Conduct the survey on the selected batch of students for a period of time.
3. Collect the data and plot them into graphs.
4. Analyse the collected data and draw conclusions.

DATA ANALYSIS
From the graphs plotted, we are able to determine the best value for the following factors:
- Whether the SST curriculum affects the sleeping durations of SST sec 1 students.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jessica Jaganathan. (2007). Singapore: The Straits Times. Retrieved 28 August 2012 from http://www.asiaone.com/Health/Wellness+%2540+Work/ Story/A1Story20070625-15642.html.

<No Author>. (2004). United States: Pharmacy Times. Retrieved 10 August 2012 from http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/20_04/2004-12/2004-12-4841.

DESIRED OUTCOMES/SKILL ACQUISITION

1. Videography and movie-making Skills
This project required us to learn filming, acting and basic iMovie editing skills.

3. Communication Skills
This collaboration taught us how to get along with our groupmates. We learnt how to voice out our opinions in a constructive way and we learnt how to accept feedback from our fellow groupmates.

4. Commitment
We were committed to this task as we believed in doing our best in everything we do.

5. Organisation Skills
We had to organise our information orderly and we also had to plan meetups and mini deadlines to produce satisfactory results.

6. IT Skills
We used many online platforms to aid us in our task. Google Documents played a big part in our task as we could edit it simultaneously. IT Skills are also very important in the 21st Century.

7. Research Skills
This project gave us a chance to learn the fundamentals of research. We also learnt how to quote references, which is something that will be useful for researches in the future.

PROPOSED TIMELINE

Phase	Description	Proposed Timeline
1	Creation of survey	Term 2 Week 1
2	Launch of survey	Term 3 Week 2
3	First Data analysis	Term 3 Week 4
4	Data collaboration & Proposal making	Term 3 Week 7
5	MMP planning	Term 3 Week 10
6	MMP filming	Holidays between T3W10 and T4W1
7	Video editing & compilation of MMP	Term 4 Week 2
8	Touch up on proposal	Term 4 Week 2
9	Submission	Term 4 Week 6

THE END

Improved chosen area of focus

What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?

IRS Research Focus & Justification (Edited on 28 Aug)

SECONDARY ONE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH STUDIES

Research Topic: Health in Singapore

Chosen Area of Focus: What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?

1. Framing our research topic

Our chosen area of focus is “What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?”. We have chosen this topic as many Secondary students have very short sleeping durations nowadays. Our parents and teachers are often concerned about our sleeping durations. A poll conducted in Singapore on 940 students in 26 secondary schools has revealed that 80% of them are getting less than eight hours of sleep daily. (AsiaOne, 2007) For IRS, we would like to find out if the SST Student’s sleeping duration is different from students from other express schools in Singapore. We will then be able to find out the causes of short sleep duration in SST so that we can tackle the problems and lengthen our sleeping durations.

1. Possible reasons why students from different schools have different sleeping durations are the difference in the curriculum hours and the workload. Long curriculum hours give students little time to do homework, resulting in less sleep. A survey carried out by The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revealed that a heavier workload leads to less sleep. (PharmacyTimes, 2004)

2. The advantages of SST’s curriculum is that SST is a member of the futuristic schools which take a different approach to learning. SST emphasises on applied learning instead of the normal textbook style learning. SST’s curriculum offers a more hands on approach compared to normal schools.

3. Some SST students may be spending too much time on the Learning Device, resulting in a short sleeping duration. Some possible solutions to the above mentioned problems would be to control the usage of the learning device for the SST students.

2. Reasons for choice of topic

1. We have chosen this topic, as we want to find out more about the sleeping durations of SST Students to assure parents that their children are have sufficient sleep compared to other schools.

2. This allows us to fulfil the requirements of the project task as it looks at the causes of students sleeping late at night as well.

3. This benefits those who do not get enough sleep to compare with the average sleeping time and from there, we can help that person to reflect on what makes him/her sleep so late at night. Students nowadays spent more time on social networking sites then doing what they are supposed to do especially during the holidays.

3. Feasibility of the research

1. There is a need for our research, as many people do not know If sst’s curriculum cause them to sleep later than their peers each day. Hence our research can help them to be more aware of their problems.

2. It is possible to complete this project as there are many students in Secondary one 2012 express cohort and SST that we can survey on.

3. The proposed course of action is logical and realistic as it can be completed with the help of some students who would be willing to do a survey and without hard work and group effort.

4. The research provides sufficient opportunities for generation of ideas as we will have to think of ways to do certain things in the project. As for analysis and evaluation of ideas, we certainly have many opportunities to analyse and information and evaluate ideas on how to go about deciding what to do next.

4. Manageability of the research

a.   This research requires a lot of teamwork and requires us to have good allocation of work in our team so that we can carry out our plans without any hindrance. We will also need to be very organised when we collect our data so that it will be easier for us to examine the results.

b.   Data collection could be one of the key problems faced by this research as there might be a problem with the number of people willing to participate in the surveys/ polls that we carry out.

c.   We anticipate difficulties along the way such as not being able to update each other about the latest happenings. To solve these difficulties, we have decided to upload our findings and our part of the project to our group’s personal Google document so that we can edit the document simultaneously.

5. Accessibility of the information required

a.   Information/knowledge that will be relevant to our research would be the amount of time Secondary ones usually spent on sleeping on average.

b.   We will be obtaining this information from different secondary sources depending on which one gives more reliable and useful information.

c.   Some alternatives we have thought of would be to ask friends and family members for information or from where or whom can we find the information we need.

d.   Some of the problem we anticipate is that some information might not be relevant to the project and that already is the best piece of information we found.

REFERENCES

AsiaOne, 2007 (Retrieved on August 28 2012)
http://www.asiaone.com/Health/Wellness+%2540+Work/Story/A1Story20070625-15642.html

PharmacyTimes, 2004 (Retrieved on August 10 2012)
http://www.pharmacytimes.com/publications/issue/2004/2004-12/2004-12-4841

Final 3 Questions

1. What is the average duration an SST student sleeps?
2. What are the average sleeping durations of the different secondary levels in SST?
3. What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?

Questions- Sleeping time of secondary school students in Singapore

1. Does homework cause SST students to lack sleep? If not, what other factors affect their sleep duration?

2. Does the sleeping duration of SST students affect their wellbeing?

3. Is there a difference between the sleeping duration of students taking the O-level route and the students taking the IP programme?

4. What is the average duration an SST student sleeps?

5. What are the average sleeping durations of the different secondary levels in SST?
6. What is the main reason SST Students lack sleep?

7. What is the average Sec 1 SST Student's sleeping duration compared to Sec 1 express students from other Secondary schools?

Mind-Map (Latest update)

Reflection on Skills learnt in semester 1

1) What is research to me?