Writing Skills Improvement Guide

1. Writing Skills Improvement Guide Dr. Zubair A. Baig Computer Engineering Department KFUPM, Dhahran

2. Intended Audience • All course instructors and students involved in writing any form of report for a given course In particular, • Courses where g-W is to be introduced/injected as a program outcome (COE 203, COE 360, COE 390,399) • Courses with g-W as a program outcome requiring assessment (COE 351, 400, 485)

3. Why should you Write? • You are assessed for your course work through the report that you write • You cannot convey your ideas and findings unless you write • You must share and collaborate with others to achieve a high degree of success in your career, and therefore you must write

4. Very Important High-level Tips • Think out loud before you start writing! • Try to be as coherent as possible. Be a little patient and don’t rush with submitting jargon – write, re-write, revise, re-write,….. • Run through your ideas by scribbling on a piece of paper – then start writing clearly and by following a given report-writing template • Run and re-run through your written draft – keep improving! • Use simple language and try to be clear in conveying your ideas • Ask others to readandcritique your work

5. Checklist before submission of your writing assignment! • Run a spell checker to make sure that no spelling mistakes/grammatical errors are present • Do not have section titles at the end of a page • Do not have a figure on one page, with its caption on the other! • Assign meaningful names to your figures and tables • Use correct page numbering, figure numbering, table numbering, reference numbering, Section numbering,….. • Use consistent font size, and consistent line spacing

6. Components of a Report • Abstract • Introduction & Background • Technical Content • Statement of Problem • Design of the Solution • Experiments and Results (including snapshots of simulations) • Conclusions • References

7. The Abstract • A brief summary of your solution, approach or design • Motivation for this particular solution, approach or design • Assume the reader does not have more than 10% knowledge of your idea! • Length = 250-350 words

8. The Introduction & Background • You must identify your approach, design or solution in the Introduction • Objectives of your proposed approach • Assumptions of your approach • Why this approach, design or solution was selected • A brief description of other approaches, designs or solutions that are available in the literature – this is the background for your work

9. Technical Content • Present your purpose or application for this project • Present your approach, design or solution here • Present all problems faced during your project or laboratory work • Present how you tackled these problems • Show illustrations of your work through figures and tables

10. Experiments and Simulations • How were your experiments or simulations conducted • What were the assumptions • Description of various scenarios tested

11. Results and Analysis • Enlist all results obtained from your experiments and simulations • The results can either be represented in tabular format, or as figures • Do an analysis of the results, and explain WHY these were obtained • Provide your personalinsight into the results

12. Conclusions • Summarizes your approach • Provides a brief description of your results and analysis • Provides a feel of how well your approach fitted the problem • Provides a future direction to extend your work

13. Appendices • Contain information which may be too large to be presented within the report Examples • Program or Source code • Large tables with results of experiments or simulations

14. Template for Grading a Report