3.4 Level of guidance that will be provided

Students come into the research process equipped with varying skills. The degree to which students are allowed to develop their projects independently depends on their maturity to tackle such an undertaking. Issues that need to be considered regarding the level of guidance include:

• determining the degree to which the research process will be demonstrated to students through specific exercises;
• choosing the number of intermediate points of evaluation at critical junctures (such as the effective economic question, situating current research in past literature, developing and analysing the evidence, and the conclusion); and
• the degree to which face-to-face meetings will be conducted to guide and push students to do better research.

While it might appear that senior research theses or capstone courses are the time at which more independence can be assumed, this depends entirely on the degree to which students have developed the necessary skills in previous courses.