CS 4001 Term Paper

UPDATE: Term Papers are now due SUNDAY (April 29th) at 6pm

Term paper proposal

• Deadline: Tuesday, January 23 before class.
• Grade:5% (class participation). Anything sensible will score well. Just show that you are thinking seriously about this
• Turn-in requirement: Send your topic as the body of an e-mail message to the T.A. with subject "4001 term paper topic." Write the following:
  1. Term paper topic area: A phrase will do, such as "Patriot Act and privacy", "Open source reliability"
  2. Two or three issues that you make you want to explore this topic. List these as questions, such as "Is the Linux kernel more secure than Windows?", "Should ISPs be prevented from telling subscribers that their records have been requested?"
  3. Personal rationale. Why you want to explore this topic and issues. (No more than a short paragraph).

Notes

You will receive feedback on this assignment, but the feedback will not figure into your grade unless it appears that you are not approaching the topic seriously. This assignment counts as class participation, because the term paper is your paper, and taking this seriously and enthusiastically will automatically involve you in the class.

Take this seriously you will have to live with your choice for several weeks, so give your topic careful thought. You will be able to change your topic later if you hit a wall, find the topic less interesting than you originally thought, can't find sup porting information, etc. However, you should do this only with T.A./instructor approval and only after resubmitting a revised version of this assignment. Your default assumption should be that the topic you submit now is the topic you will stay with.

Hints

As soon as possible, look through FIRE, Chapters 2-9 for topics that interest you, narrowing them down to four or five themes. Then do the issue-brainstorming process described in WACE where you start from one issue and generate a set of related issues . WACE has a good chapter on composing proposal arguments. It would help to scan it now. You should definitely read it before you start researching and writing the paper itself.

Generate as many interesting-sounding issues as you can for a while, then leave your list alone. Later, come back to your list and choose one of the issues as your major research topic for this paper. During the term, keep a log of your research activi ties and be ready, in class discussion, to explain what kinds of arguments or evidence turned out to be most persuasive in helping you to take a stand.

Term paper outline or draft

• Deadline: Friday night, April 13th 11:59 pm
• Grade:10% (Note, your 35% grade for the term paper is the maximum of EITHER Outline/draft at 10% plus final version at 25%, OR final version at 35%. However, you MUST submit this draft/outline to avail yourself of this opportunity.)
• Turn-in requirement: Send as an attachment to an e-mail message to the T.A. with subject line "4001 term paper outline/draft". A 2-page document is about right, although a draft could be much longer.

You should have completed the research needed to write your term paper, and the next two weeks will be spent actually writing it. To help in this process, EITHER write a detailed outline OR a rough draft of the paper. Some people prefer to outline docu ments in detail before they start writing. Others like to dive in and start writing. The choice is yours.

• Outline. An outline is a hierarchical plan of the document with indentation reflecting the organization of material. You should have much more detail by this stage of your project than a mere outline of section headings. (Such an outl ine would indicate what your paper will be about but not what it will say. Summarize what you're going to say.) In preparing this document, you should use an appropriate tool, such as OmniOutliner or MS Word in outline mode.
• Draft. A rough draft is a continuous prose document with section headings and placeholders for diagrams or tables. You don't need to worry about polishing English. In parts, you will have bullet points or theme sentences instead of wo rked-out paragraphs.

Whichever option you choose, this document should be a shortened, high-level, or more abstract summary of what your term paper says, not what it is about. If you can only list subtopics, not what you are going to say about them, then you haven't made e nough progress yet. We should have discussed this distinction in class adequately.

Both should list at the end or in the body of the draft/outline the sources that you are using. There is no need for a bibliography/reference section. If you do include one, there is no need to use any standard format, although this will be necessary i n the final version.

Term paper final submission

• Deadline:End of week 14.
• Grade:25% (Note, your 35% grade for the term paper is the maximum of EITHER Outline/draft at 10% plus final version at 25%, OR final version at 35%. However, you MUST have submitted the draft/outline to avail yourself of this opportun ity.)
  Here are the grading guidelines used:
  1. Is the claim clear? [10%]
  2. Are the claim and its supporting arguments well argued? [30%]
  3. Are counterarguments fairly presented and addressed? [30%]
  4. Is sufficient background given to explain issues to the target audience? [10%]
  5. Are sources quoted and cited appropriately? [10%]
  6. Are the mechanics and style of writing appropriate? [ 10%]
• Turn-in requirement: Send as an attachment to an e-mail message to the T.A. with subject line "4001 term paper".

Your paper should be professionally written and formatted with section headings, diagrams and tables where appropriate. Aim for between 10 and 20 pages, with the length depending in part on the amount of factual background that you need to provide for the audience.

The page requirements are not strict, but fewer than 10 pages probably indicates that you are not getting to grips with the problem in sufficient depth, and more than 20 probably indicates that you are not editing yourself sufficiently as you write. If some of the background details make the paper too long or unwieldy in style, use your judgment and consider moving some of them into an Appendix.

Don't try to game the system. If your paper is shorter than 10 pages, don't pad it. If it is longer than 20, don't squeeze it into tiny margins. Use 1.5 or double spacing in a font such as Times 11 or 12 and regular sized margins. Please number your pa ges and include a running head on each page in case the pages get separated.

Correct grammar and spelling are important in communicating effectively as a professional. These factors will be taken into account. However, this is not a technical writing course, and the quality of your ideas and research, and the structure of your argument are more important than the mechanics of your writing.

There must be a bibliography section using EITHER the APA guidelines (see Writing Arguments for details) OR ACM or IEEE format, if you are already familiar with them. Do not use MLA guidelines.

Make sure that the references you cite are appropriate, correctly formatted and all appear consistently in both the body of the text (citations) and in the references/bibliography section.