Writing a synopsis for an MBA project at IGNOU
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is a well-established university offering distance-learning education to students around India. IGNOU’s School of Management offers a variety of MBA courses in a variety of management streams including Human Resource, Financial, Operations, and Marketing. The MBA program at IGNOU is high in quality and one of most sought-after courses in distance learning in India.
One of the course requirements of completing the IGNOU MBA course is the MBA research and the research report. Before submitting the report, students need to provide a synopsis of the research, which provides the research requirement, its objectives, and the proposed methods of data collection. The synopsis (typically, containing a maximum of 4000 words) provides a brief insight into your research work and must be approved by the project supervisors before the student can start with the research work.
The project synopsis must contain the following information:
- Synopsis title
A self-explanatory headline that should be related to your research objective. It can also include a sub-title to add more description about the research. The final research report title can vary from the synopsis title.
- Introduction
Introduces the main research topic or problem statement, along with the specialized niche in which the student will be conducting the research. The research problem should include the student’s contribution to the main research work, including any knowledge gaps or area yet to be analysed.
- Literature review
Provides a collection of the previous work done by researchers in your area of research. Literature review provides a background of the problem and expands the reader’s understanding.
- Research objective
Should clearly state the objective of performing the research, along with the importance of the selected project. The final objective is the statement of the student’s contribution to this field of study.
Provides a brief insight into the methodology tools to be used for data collection, and the justification for the same.
- Limitations
Provides an excellent grasp of the subject knowledge, along with the aspect of the problem that won’t be addressed by this research.
- References
Provides a listing of the published reference material and journals, which are relevant to the current project.
On submission of the project synopsis, IGNOU typically takes around 3-4 months to approve or disapprove the synopsis. Following the approval, the student can proceed with the research work and start on the final project report.