I chose my title because my interests lie with History, in particular Ancient History, and this ties in with my plans to be doing a Classics degree at University so my title is therefore very useful in preparing me for such a degree. I decided upon Alexander as the topic as I wanted to do a topic and era I had never studied before so I would be learning something completely new, I also enjoy studying history by looking at the individuals which was also a factor in this choice. My finalised title developed from ‘Why was Alexander the Great given the title of ‘Great’? and I believe it is a significant improvement on the previous because it allows for a depth of argument to be discussed, my original question could simply be argued with a list whereas my final question demands a depth of argument for it to be answered making it a much more academic question and more in tune with what my aims were in that I wished to prepare myself for University. Nevertheless this question has presented me an issue that it is very broad and subjective, great means a different thing to everybody and Alexander the Great is a hugely complex individual with an incredibly vast history surrounding him which meant that to answer the question I had to be very selective in what I argued and the arguments I used, when I wasn’t it resulted in an unclear dissertation which was much too long, so it was important to remember my questions and argument whilst writing it. However, this question really helped me achieve my aim of learning a topic that I have never studied before because of its breadth. If I were to do another project on Alexander rather than going for a question similar to my current one which allows me breadth I would choose a narrower topic which would allow me to go into more depth about him, such as Hellenization and its relationship with religions such as Christianity.
After choosing my title the next logical step was to organise my project and this meant creating a long term plan the format of which I chose to be a Gantt chart. I chose to create two Gantt charts, one depicted the progression of my project showing me where I was in the timescale of it and how much time I had left, and the other was colour coded to demonstrate prioritisation of all the tasks I allocated to myself. The latter of which I found the less useful because its purpose of showing me what the priority was overlapped with what my short term plans did, which were in the form of Eisenhauer grids, however the first Gantt chart described was much more useful because it really helped me understand where I was in terms of deadlines and kept me on track and focused – especially when combined with my short term plans. These Gantt charts were a new skill I learnt and something I will use again because of how they really put into perspective from an early time what I needed to do which helped me complete a project that went on for this long and was this independent. Nevertheless, there were some difficulties as I was very optimistic with my plans and I did not take into account other commitments I would have such as UCAS and History Coursework which were much more immediate deadlines and therefore for a time more important to me, this did mean I fell behind in my EPQ in terms of my long term plan after Summer however other things in my long term plan hadn’t taken me nearly as long as I thought so I was able to reorganise it (I also had to add other things into it which hadn’t occurred to me such as doing presentations) and overlap certain things which went hand in hand but I had originally kept separate – such as writing and proof reading my dissertation. I would therefore, if I did it again, lay out my long term plan in a way which gave me a 2 week gap at the end so if things occurred as they did it would not mean needing to revaluate my plan quite as much as it did because I would have leeway to deal with. Despite these minor issues I am, overall, happy with how my long term plan turned out and the positive impact it had on my organisation of the project. As I have said I have never done anything on this scale before and this really kept me on track and is therefore a valuable skill I have learned.
Leading on from long term plans into my short term plans, these were Eisenhaeur grids which I initially produced whenever I completed a task set to me but changed to become more deadline style plans. I found them much more useful in the former format and producing them every week added a depth to my planning which my long term plan couldn’t because they were able to account for other work I had to do as well which meant my prioritisation using these was a lot more effective than that of the other Gantt chart. By learning how to use Eisenhauer grids I have really improved how I organise myself and have learned the skill of prioritising work, I was never very good at this and Eisenhauer grids have really helped me become a lot better. I would therefore suggest that by learning to use Eisenhauer grids I have learned a very valuable skill which will really help me at University so I will probably continue to use these if I ever have a heavy work load.
Another part of this project which I have never really had to do before was keeping track of my progress in a reflective project log, I did this in the form of my PPR and a blog. I put all of my planning onto this blog, as well as some research, evaluations, planning and things relevant to my dissertation and general progress updates. Initially I found remembering to update my blog quite difficult – it was an alien concept to me – but when I started posting my short term plans onto it I got better as I needed to do these weekly and they therefore reminded me to keep my blog updated. I found this a valuable way of assessing my progress, useful in that it kept my plans in the same place and helped me evaluate and reflect on myself and my work which helped improve the things that I was doing as I took it on board. This new skill of blogging – and learning to use Weebly (the site I used) – has proved very useful for my EPQ and I am very happy with the end result.
Moving more onto the actual product of my EPQ, the dissertation, I had to conduct a lot of primary research. This was probably the most challenging, yet enjoyable, part of the whole project because of how independent it was. Previously I’ve always had a safety net of a teacher or my fellow students to fall back on if I didn’t understand anything or wanted opinions, however this project removed this and left me completely independent. It was therefore the reading of my contemporary sources (Arrian and Plutarch) and my independent analysis of them which I am most proud of, I selected quotes which really supported the argument being made and analysed what they meant for such an argument something which I have never done completely along before.
Other areas of primary research I gathered was in the form of a questionnaire I sent out to my fellow EPQ students titled ‘What is it to be great?’ with the aim of helping me define the term. Difficulties I faced with this was getting a representative sample, my final one was quite small and only generalizable to Farnborough Sixth Form EPQ students, so if I were to do it again I would send it to more people (maybe all of the college) or even post it on history forums which would create a much more generalizable sample and make my questionnaire more useful. I would also improve the nature of the questionnaire itself for it is gathering a very modern vision of greatness which I didn’t want to enforce onto Alexander’s, very different, time because of how the anachronisms may have impacted on the validity of my research. Therefore whilst I found this questionnaire useful in helping me understand different concepts of greatness but the overall trends were difficult to apply to my dissertation’s argument for fear of being anachronistic. I would therefore do it slightly differently if I had the chance, rather than ask questions about greatness generally I’d tailor them more to Alexander e.g. “Can someone be considered great if they found a great empire during their life but it fractures after their death due to their poor consolidation of it?” which would make it more relevant and therefore more useful to my research. Nevertheless, I have never conducted a questionnaire or survey before so this was a new skill learned as was the analysis of questionnaires which I used my psychology notes to help me do – the main challenge was analysing the qualitative data which I decided to do by looking at trends within the answers and this did help me reach a conclusion within the questionnaire.
Other primary research I conducted was the analysis of some Ancient artefacts such as coins and the Alexander sarcophagus, this was difficult because some of the coins had Greek lettering on which I had to learn how to write so I could translate it. I also tried to get into contact with academics, this is an area of my project I would really like to have the chance to do again as in the end I only managed to contact one who didn’t answer any of my questions and just gave me a book recommendation. I was intimidated with the idea of contacting academics, especially those at Universities which I had applied for, which really constrained this facet of primary research. So if I were to do it again I would start earlier and email more academics and try not to worry about it so much, I should have been more perseverant in this area of my project in hindsight. Nevertheless this did help teach me how to email formally to academics, and how to structure emails in such a way as I researched how to do it so it wasn’t a complete loss.
This primary research was supplemented with secondary research and sources, this didn’t prove to be a real problem because there was such an abundance of it. I used books by historians, journal articles which I found using JSTOR – something I had never heard of but have since used since outside of EPQ such as for finding secondary sources for my History coursework – and a few websites. The latter was perhaps the most challenging because I wanted to find internet sources which I could trust, however I did find some from reliable corporations or individuals. Finding this research was never really an issue although at times it was very densely written and perhaps projected more at undergrads or experts than an A2 student so there were pieces I had to spend time on, looking up words and reading again to make sure I was understanding it. This project has taught me how to be selective in research, how to search for the exact kind of source I want and has improved my reading of academic works.
I also learned a new skill when I evaluated all of this sources, I had never done a literature review before and as something which universities will probably ask me for has been a very useful skill which I have learned. At times I did find it quite difficult to update and I did neglect it for a while which meant it was even harder to go back and update, I did persevere with this, but if I were to do it again I would update after I researched every source which would spread the workload out and make it more manageable. Within all this researching of sources and evaluation of them I also learned how to Harvard reference something which I had never done before and will doubtless do at university, this was exceptionally useful because I also used it in my college work with my history coursework. I think this is one of the most useful skills for the future which this project has helped create.
The culmination of all of this research and written work has been my dissertation; my aim with this was to write a fully referenced and academic piece of work which answers the question in around 5000 words (+/- 10%) as guided by the EPQ board. My first draft was around 13,000 words which is clearly too long, I was also not at all happy with it because there was no clearly focused argument and it went frequently off on tangents and had no real cohesion. I’d used all examples possible for me to illustrate points, some of them confusing, which made the entire dissertation quite confused. I therefore decided to revaluate my position and I planned out my argument more clearly and then rewrote it. The changes I made from my previous mistakes were that I would always make sure that I was clear on my argument before I began writing it, I also didn’t use all of the examples available to me again but just the amount that would suffice 1 or 2 to keep the argument from getting muddled. Furthermore I changed the structure as the original one was done in subtitles and was effectively lots of essays combined into one dissertation, this obviously meant it wasn’t a cohesive argument and too long so by cutting out the subtitles and introductions and conclusions to these sections it really knocked back the word count. Then it was just a case of rewriting and refining my arguments – by doing this I reduced the waffle and made it a much more concise dissertation. I am pleased with this change because I didn’t lose any of the depth or argument from my dissertation, I just enhanced it and made it more concise and a better written dissertation. I have also met my target word count which is a positive.
When considering my final draft to the dissertation, I am very happy with it. It is fully referenced and I feel that every paragraph links back to the question – I ensured that the last line of each paragraph did – and that my conclusion answers the question in a way that it unique to me. I am exceptionally happy with how I did all of this research and then drew my own opinions, analysis and conclusion from that – something which I have never had the freedom to do before.
Writing this dissertation has been a new experience for me and I believe that I am a better writer from it, my really long initial draft which I had to solve myself I feel really helped me realise that I was an excessive writer which is not always a good thing. It taught me how to write a focused dissertation and this aided me in writing history coursework which I had a stricter word limit for. Overall I have achieved my goal of independently researching and writing a 5000 word dissertation on a topic of my choice.
I also had to give various presentations about my project and topic. My first presentation was in June and it was basically informing people of how I was organising my topic, the main constructive feedback I got was that I needed to project my voice more and make eye contact with the audience. The positives of this was the content and the way which I presented it as well as the layout, I took this into my other presentations. My next presentation was to my college history society, this was different in that it was just about the topic of Alexander and not about the project, however it was another chance to practice my presenting and the limited feedback I got was that it was engaging and interesting, personally for this presentation I also feel that I did improve my voice projection and eye contact because I made a conscious effort to. The penultimate presentation was the practice of my final presentation, this was given to my EPQ class and they really liked the format and content as well as the way which they were delivered, the fact that no one said anything about voice projection or eye contact so I am assuming that they were happy with that which suggests that I have improved since my first presentation. However, the constructive criticism I got was that I needed to take my hands out of my pockets and make some of the diagrams of charts bigger. My final presentation was given to 10 people during the presentation evening at college on the 3rd December, this included friends, teachers and fellow EPQ students. The feedback I got was that I was an engaging presenter and that I used a format which – my Father (working as a computer consultant) had never seen before in that I used a dialogue of a tree to remind people that it was all interconnected. Furthermore they liked the humorous touches – a picture of Tony the Tiger. I’d also made the improvements suggested to me, I kept my hands out of my pockets and made the charts bigger and my EPQ supervisor said in passing during my lesson the next day that the improvements which were made did improve it. Furthermore my Father also said that my voice projection was just right which demonstrates that my presenting skills have improved since my first one in June. Nevertheless there is still room to improve because my Dad mentioned that I kept fiddling with the clicker which could be distracting for the audience, so if I were to present again I would do so without holding anything. He also said that I maybe spoke a little bit too fast, I think this mainly came down to nerves as this was the real thing but I will take a lesson from this and be sure to speak in a measured way next time I present.
Personally, I believe that I have improved as a presenter. Particularly my confidence levels, I can make eye contact with my audience now and speak louder and more confidently. Admittedly nerves are still an issue – speaking quickly and messing with things that I am holding – but these are all things which I can learn from as they have been highlighted for me.
In summary the main issues I faced were the dissertation length which I solved by restructuring it, meeting deadlines which my Eisenhauer grids really helped me with, contacting academics which is something that I would try to work on if I did something similar in the future, updating my blog which the Eisenhauer grids also helped with, and the anachronistic nature of the questionnaire which I would change if I did it again. I have learned how to independently plan, research and write a dissertation on this scale as well as keep a blog, presenting, writing abstracts and literature reviews, Eisenhauer and Gantt grids along with technology such as Weebly and Google Docs. I believe I have achieved my goal of learning to be a more independent worker, produce a dissertation of my own work, and prepare myself for university and I am very happy with my end product even though there are things that I could improve, these are just things which I shall take on into University and further study.
Overall this project has been a success for me as my aim was to complete this project to an A2 standard in the time limit and to improve myself as an independent and academic worker and I believe that I have done this.