You will write an essay in which you propose a program comprehension research project. Your proposal must make clear what problem(s) and/or research question(s) you will be working on, and why they are important and interesting. It must also describe your research approach, the rationale for it, and what is novel about it. In doing all this, you must situate your proposed work with respect to the relevant literature. In general, you should use the supporting papers from the literature to enhance any arguments you make.
Your final essay must satisfy the following requirements. Failure to do so will result in deductions.
In addition to your final essay, you must also make a detailed outline as part of your essay-writing process. The submission instructions for each of these parts is given below. See the course homepage for submission deadlines.
| Component | Points |
|---|---|
| Presentation | 25 |
| Informational Content | 75 |
| Total | 100 |
| Max Deduction | Criteria |
|---|---|
| -15 | Grammar, spelling, and spacing (including with respect to parentheses). |
| -12 | Used LaTeX template with the macros turned off |
| -15 | Use topic sentences correctly. In particular, each topic sentence must clearly express the point of the paragraph. (In other words, the body of the paragraph must serve primarily to clarify or support the message in the topic sentence.) |
| -15 | Each topic sentence transitions smoothly from the previous one (e.g., by using a segue), such that all the topic sentences flow together well. |
| -10 | Every important term appears in a topic sentence, and every important term is defined in the body of the first paragraph in which it appears. |
| Points | Criteria |
|---|---|
| 10 | Structure: Follows the basic structure of a tool/empirical proposal (as per the instructions in class). |
| 15 | Contribution: The author’s approach has a good chance of making a significant contribution to its area of study. (In other words, there is a good chance the work will generate important new knowledge.) |
| 15 | Approach: All the relevant details about the author’s approach (i.e., tool and/or empirical methods) are described clearly. |
| 10 | Validity: There are no unacceptable threats to the validity of the work, and the acceptable threats are discussed. |
| 15 | Relevant literature: The author’s work is well situated with respect to the relevant literature. (In other words, it is always made clear how the author’s work relates or compares to works from the literature.) Also, the minimum number of references are met, and the citations include sufficient information (as per the instructions). |
| 10 | Synthesis: The coverage of the related work displays effective synthesis. (In other words, the related work is structured based on key themes and concepts, and not based on a “laundry list” of individual works.) |
If the essay length is less than the required minimum, a deduction will be calculated as follows:
(1.0 - YOUR_WC / MIN_WC) * 100
Checking the word count for PDFs is a bit tricky. I plan to use UNIX-type tools to do it. In particular, I’ll follow these steps:
Max Deduction: -15
eCourseware automatically does plagiarism detection. You must score no higher than 12% after filtering out references and quotes. (There is a setting to do this filtering in eCourseware/Turnitin.) If your submission exceeds this limit, you will earn 0 points on the essay.