Completing the Proposal: Understanding our Process and Requirements October 11, 2012 EPD 397 Sections 8 and 9

Today you should be turning in the Partial Proposal, with these sections: A title and your name – for now, you do not need a cover page. A one-paragraph Summary A Project Significance section, of about 1.5 pages in length. An Objectives section (with numbered points and at least one paragraph on limitations), total here is about.5 pages long. References (without annotations) All of the above should be single-spaced, with a line-skip between each paragraph, and each paragraph should be indented. Provide more space between sections. Use one-inch margins and a common, professional typestyle like Times New Roman, with 12- pt. font. If you’ve missed anything above, don’t panic: fix it and re-send to your peers by .

Over the next couple of weeks, you will be working on a 2 nd draft to bring in to your conference with us. The 2 nd draft of the proposal improves on the existing sections. It is NOT a full proposal, though we can answer your questions on other sections if time permits during the conference. Bring in to your conference the drafts marked by your peers, your critique sheets, and TWO copies of your 2 nd draft – one for us to mark, and one for you to re-read on the spot.

What should you be prepared to do during the conference on the 2 nd draft of the Proposal? Be ready to introduce your project and explain briefly what you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the draft. Be able to explain or show what you’ve changed (or not changed) after talking with peers. Have questions for us about the draft.

Be sure to be in contact with us if you have to change your conference time or if you have a delay.

Work on the remaining sections of the Proposal on those class days that are cancelled. What remains? --Research Plan ~ one page --Schedule --Motivation and Credentials --References I’ll go through each of these briefly.

The Research Plan identifies sources that will enable you to complete each Objective. Organize it by one paragraph per Objective. Identify 3 sources per Objective. Discuss credibility and relevance of those sources for completing that particular Objective. If your 3 rd or 4 th Objective is to offer recommendations based on your own analysis, we do not need a set of sources for that Objective.

The Schedule can be a Gantt chart or simply a table listing tasks and corresponding deliverable dates. The purpose of this section is to be sure you know when the remaining work on this project is due, and for you to plan time to work on different chunks of the remaining project. Consider scheduling time to get more research and drafting done; make this schedule true to your own real schedule! Feel free to adapt the Gantt chart I’ve supplied in the course homepage. Right after the “Schedule” heading, use one sentence to introduce your figure and place a caption underneath it drawing attention to the key deliverable dates – formal presentation and final report.

Motivation and Credentials simply is one paragraph explaining why you’re interested in the project. Some of you may be working on a similar project in a different class, and that should be explained here. Some of you are interested in the project because they think it may lead to a career path. Others may have some sort of personal investment in the technology or the problem presented in this project; that too can be worth sharing.

References should follow an identifiable format; we suggest APA style. Remember that APA style is explained thoroughly at the UW Writing Center website – see the link from our course homepage. s.html s.html

Use the UW Writing Center’s website to be sure you are documenting parenthetical citations and reference material correctly.

Notice that reference entries are left reverse-indented in APA style. This function is easy to set up under Format > Paragraph > Indentation: Special: Hanging at 0.5.

Work on completing these sections and plan to meet with your peer group to review the final draft before the final proposal is turned in. The Final Proposal is due October 26, a Friday. You can turn it in to my dropbox on the ground floor of ECB, north side of the building – look for the clearly marked Student Dropbox with my name on it. It is among a number of faculty mailboxes in the wall. Include Final Proposal, 2 nd Draft (with our comments), 1 st drafts (with peer comments and sheets). You may hand the assignment in early if you wish.

About the Elevator Talks: we want you to view your video and write a short evaluating strengths and weaknesses. Consider what you see in the context of the needs of the assignment. Consider the feedback from peers, and refer to it. Emphasize what you will work on going forward. We want a brief (half page) but not bulleted points: use paragraphs to group ideas. The self eval can potentially help your grade.