CS Education Research

Agenda

• Demonstration of writing a detailed outline
• Structuring your project proposal

Outline Writing Demonstration

• See the example outline reverse engineered from the Yestercode paper.

Essay Structure

Tool Project Proposals

• Introduction
  • What’s the big problem? Why’s it interesting? What’s your big idea? Specifically, what will your project do about it?
• Background: xxx
  • What information does the reader need to know in order to understand what follows?
• Tool: xxx
  • What is the tool design like? What key design decisions? What was the rationale for those decisions?
• Evaluation Method
  • What is your study design like? What data will you collect? How will you analyze it? What key threats to validity do you anticipate, and how have you addressed them?
• Related Work (may go before tool; may be combined into Background & Related Work)
  • What competing (or maybe appear to be competing) approaches are there to your tool? How is your tool similar/different? Why might your tool be better?
• Conclusion
  • What have you proposed (recap)? What do you anticipate the benefits/contributions/impacts could be from the work?

Study Project Proposals

• Introduction
  • What’s the big problem (gap in knowledge)? Why’s it interesting? What’s your study idea? Specifically, what will your project do about it?
• Background
  • What information does the reader need to know in order to understand what follows?
• Study Method
  • What is your study design like? What data will you collect? How will you analyze it? What key threats to validity do you anticipate, and how have you addressed them?
• Related Work
  • What competing (or maybe appear to be competing) studies are there to your study? How is your study similar/different? Why might your study reveal something new?
• Conclusion
  • What have you proposed (recap)? What do you anticipate the benefits/contributions/impacts could be from the work?