USF Parking problems at University of South Florida Research Summary

USF Parking problems at University of South Florida Research Summary

Note: The research writing subject of this assignment is “Parking problems at University of South Florida”. please see Team Mission to get an idea.

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Team mission:

The team chose the name Green and Gold to symbolize their strong and caring relationship for the University of South Florida (USF). As a group we have chosen to discuss and analyze a problem a lot of USF students suffer from, limited parking spaces. It is important that we address this problem because students are required to purchase expensive permits to use USF parking facilities. However, they often find themselves driving around full parking lots looking for an empty slot to park in. This issue causes students to arrive late to classes and sometimes even skip classes because they don’t want to risk being fined for parking in a non-designated student parking.

We want to explore some solutions to this problem and one of the solutions we came out with is building parking garages instead of surface parking lots to increase the capacity of parking spaces. We are also exploring the possibility of developing a system or an app that signals empty parking spots to keep people from wandering around and wasting time. One more solution we also came up with is developing some of the empty lands and parks, that are hardly ever used on campus, into parking garages to increase the capacity of parking spots.

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Research Summary

Research in the workplace solves problems. Tasked with a significant problem, you may be asked gather the information necessary to fully understand the issue at hand, solve that problem (or offer potential solutions), prove that your solutions are viable, and/or test your solution(s). Doing this work requires different types of research that go beyond simply querying a library database or using Google. You will often need to speak directly to target populations and audiences, and directly contact resources and experts in different professions and in the community. Local and national journalism may add context and perspective. Professional experts, government agencies, state and local authorities all may be relevant sources, as are individuals in target populations. Essentially, research in the workplace requires you to think critically and creatively about

  • The type of information you need; and
  • The best way to get that information.

Your job is to address, explain, and/or solve a problem using the most relevant and applicable methods and resources. If a resource can supply information you need, then it is the right resource for the job.

It’s also important when thinking about a problem you’re researching to keep in mind that you probably aren’t the first person or organization to deal with this issue. Look at other organizations, groups, or communities negotiating the same or similar issue. Research how those groups describe and deal with the problem. The perspective of experience is invaluable to your work. If your solution closely resembles another organization’s, it might mean that’s the most effective solution.

Assignment

This project asks your team to do workplace research into a local problem impacting the USF community (which you can define however you like). Your overall goal is to describe the problem in detail using as much information as you can gather from as many different sources as are useful and begin to explore potential solutions. That means you are looking at research gathered by others (e.g., government agencies, non-profit organizations, professional and academic experts), but also you might gather your own data by contacting experts and asking impacted populations for their perspective. You will produce a memo that reports your findings, giving readers a robust understanding of the problem you have researched and some of the possible solutions.

This memo should adhere to a professional memo format and will probably run 500 to 1,000 words. There is no particular citation format required, but please be consistent with whichever format you use.

Remember that this is a summary. Summarize what you know and how you know it. You will be adding much more detail to this research in the recommendation report itself.

How much research is enough? Think about it this way. Your team has a certain amount of time before this memo is due. Within that timeframe, you all have other obligations. How much research can you reasonably do in that time? How much research will help your team in the next project deliverables? That’s how much research you should shoot for.