The purpose of this assignment task is to produce a scholarly report (1500 words) at an appropriate standard. It should demonstrate an ability to communicate ideas and information in a professional manner and must be written in a form that will assist with the development of a final research project report (6000 words). Students were provided with an insight on how to identify a research idea from a topic area using a three tier approach. The first step in this task is to identify a broad topic area of research (for example e-security). The second step is to identify a specific aspect of e-security that you would like to focus on (for example transaction management). The third step is then to identify a specific idea (for example investigating, comparing and evaluating transaction management and encryption using payment gateways like Paypal, Google-Pay etc). Several broad topic areas in information technology have been identified as early as in Week 2 - (please consult on this in your Moodle- News Forum where several IT related topic areas have been provided for your ready reference). Students are encouraged to read various IT related topics and then identify various journal articles using search engines like Google Scholar and Federation University reference works for gaining access to Library databases. This will then enable students to identify areas of current relevance in IT. It is important that students choose a research idea that is original based on literature review and has the substance to then develop a research report of sufficient detail (5000-6000 words). Students are therefore asked to choose a novel idea (and is therefore different from some one else's idea ) for the purposes of this assignment. In other words, it is best that you identify an idea about which you are able to communicate effectively and thereby analyse and interpret your work and report your findings through your project. Students for this purpose are advised to produce a reflective journal that is ongoing and progressive in terms of reporting ideas developed and findings for the purposes of this work. This journal can be in the form of a diary or notebook that contains details of how your research topic has evolved through the weeks and how it has been useful towards producing the final research project report. This should be produced to your lecturer in Week 11 when you make a Moodle submisison of your research project report as discussed prior. The process of identifying articles of interest has been developed in lecture session and tutorial activity sessions, and the guidelines for Bibliographic referencing was illustrated through the tutorial activity. Keywords and identifiers that are helpful towards narrowing down the topic idea were discussed in conjunction with Week 7 Lecture Slide material. In this weeks lecture session, Research Process in terms of Design Methods and Methodologies was discussed with specific examples in an IT context. The Research Proposal for this assignment task must be in the format of the Exhibit Slides 32 and 33 provided in Week 8 Lecture and the appropriate template should be chosen for this depending on the nature of your research that is quantitative or qualitative. Guidelines for referencing must be according to Exhibit Slide 34 and you are advised to consult the Federation University Guidelines for Referencing Professional work (both in-text citation and end of proposal referencing should be provided).