Category: Projects

In this post, we’re wrapping up discussion of your collaborative projects, which are due on Dec. 17. The last three components are the Report on Collaboration, Website, and Submission Post on our OpenLab site.

First, the Report on Collaboration should be a single memo written in Google Docs and finalized with a sharable link, which you can add to your Submission Post on our OpenLab site. Your memo should begin with a standard header (to, from, date, subject). Please include all team member names under “from,” address it to Prof. Ellis, and give it the subject “Report on Collaboration.” The first paragraph should be written together as a team and it should give an overview of how the team worked together, and it can include descriptions of what worked well and what didn’t work as well. Each paragraph after that should be written individually by each team member and each should have a header “Your Name’s Contribution.” From your individual perspective, what did you contribute to the team’s project and how would you approach collaborative work in the future (consider communication, delegation, digital tools and services, and other ways of facilitating team work). After you’ve read through it and corrected spelling and grammatical mistakes, create a sharable link and add the link to your Submission Post on our OpenLab site.

Second, your team will create an OpenLab Project Site for your team’s website. This is a WordPress-based site similar to our course site, but you will have control over how it looks and feels. Follow these directions to create your Project Site, and refer to these guides to customize your Project Site with your own content. We will walk through creating a site during tonight’s class. Your site should have some customization (e.g., changing the header image and changing the theme), and the content that you add should be presented across pages linked from the site’s menu (e.g., Introduction, Problem, Solutions, About). Think of your website as an online summary of the writing that you’ve done in your report. The website makes the main points easy to read and digest. You should include a link to your full report in the introduction. For example, you can write: “This website presents a summary of the report titled “Our Awesome Report,” which was prepared for an assignment in Prof. Ellis’ ENG2575 class.” Select the title of your report and add a link to your Google Doc’s sharable link.

Third, in addition to giving your presentation on the last day of class on Dec. 17, your team will create one post on our OpenLab site. In general, follow these directions for creating your post, but make one change: go to Document > Categories > Student Work > check “Collaboration Project.” The title of your post should be: “Collaborative Project: Title of Your Report.” In the body of your post, write it in a memo format like this:

TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: All team members' names
DATE: Dec. 17, 2019
SUBJECT: Collaborative Project: Your Report's Title

Write one short paragraph summarizing your project's problem and identified solutions.

Below we are including links to our project deliverables:

REPORT, Your Report's Title > link to your research report Google Doc's sharable link
PRESENTATION > link to your Google Slides' sharable link
WEBSITE > link to your OpenLab Project Site's URL (note: the URL should be to your Project site, not your Project Profile--if the directory "groups" is in your URL, then you are on the Project Profile. Click the Visit Project Site link to go to your Project Site)
REPORT ON COLLABORATION > link to your report on collaboration Google Doc's sharable link

Double check your links and then click Publish and then click Publish on the screen that pops up. Have another teammate verify that the post is published on our OpenLab site and click all four links to verify that they work and open the correct documents. If anything is wrong, the team member who created the Submission Post can click the title of the post, scroll to the bottom and click “Edit,” make the necessary changes, and then click “Update” in the upper right corner.

Finally, we will discuss all of this during class tonight. Take that opportunity to ask Prof. Ellis questions. Email Prof. Ellis with questions after class. He is available by appointment with individuals or teams, too (time permitting). Also, we can resolve last minute issues during our last class either before or after the presentations are completed.

We’ll talk about other elements of the presentation, which I will include below following discussion:

7 to 10 minutes

1 page, double-spaced = 2-2.5 minutes reading time

3-5 pages, double spaced = 7-10 minutes spoken presentation material

Scripts are okay—printed, not handwritten.

Use Google Slides (for collaborative writing and getting a sharable link to submit your work)

Images that you use must be your own

No text-heavy or many bulleted list text

Let the slidedeck anchor what you have you to say.

KISS

Remember that your project should first identify a problem of a scientific or technical nature.

Your research using the library, other sources, and primary research with interviews and surveys, should explore what the problem is, how it came to be a problem, what is its history, and what is its context (what does it impact, relate to, etc.).

The next phase of your research should focus on solutions to the problem. Of course, you need to understand the problem well before delving too deeply into possible solutions, so do research on the problem first. Then, armed with that knowledge, research possible solutions to the problem.

The results section should present the facts/quotes/figures from your research. The discussion section should talk about what these mean and how they related to one another (you can combine the results and discussions sections if your team would like to do so–just label it as such). Conclusions establishes why your research is important–why is the problem and its solutions important? Finally, recommendations are your synthesis of the problem and solutions into actionable recommendations that should be implemented, based on your research and expertise, to solve the problem.

As discussed in class, the following are the major deliverables for this project and the method for submission of those deliverables. We will go into more depth on these after the break. They are being presented now as a big picture view of the project.

The major deliverables are:

• Research Report > Google Docs > Shareable link
• Presentation > Google Slides > Shareable link
• Website > Create an OpenLab Project > link to site
• Reflection Report > Google Docs > Sharable link

Turning in Your Collaborative Project (due before the last day of class)

Have one team member create a post on our OpenLab site.

Title of your post: Collaborative Project, Your Title

Body of your post:

Title of your project

Byline for all team members

Write 2-3 sentences summarizing your project and its recommendations.

State project deliverables are linked below.

Create a bulleted list

– Link to your Research Report

– Link to OpenLab Project Site

– Link to Google Slides for Presentation

 – Link to Reflection Report

During today’s class, you will want to finalize your scientific or technical problem topic for your analytic research report.

Use class time to begin doing some library research while you are in class. You may also think about interviews and surveys for additional data collection. For this latter possibility, you should look at research already done on the problem so that you devise informed questions.

Below is the superstructure of your report as discussed in depth during today’s class:

Superstructure of your analytical research report

• Introduction (topic and why your report is important)
• Objectives of the research (what were you attempting to do?)
• Method (methodology–what kinds of research did you do, how did you do it, and why is the research sound?)
• Results (what did you find in your research? facts, quotes, figures, interviews, surveys, etc.)
• Discussion (how do you interpret your results? what story does your data tell us? results and discussion can be combined, but title this section appropriately if you do so)
• Conclusions (what conclusions do you draw from your results and discussion? what is the significance of what you discovered?)
• Recommendations (what do you think should be done to solve the research problem based on your research? this section is what all of your work is leading up to.)

In the previous post, I shared who everyone will be working with on the collaborative final projects in the class: report, website, presentation, and reflection. All components will be due on the last day of class when all teams will give their presentations.

During today’s class, we will work toward identifying what scientific or technological problem your team will work on for the remainder of the semester.

Use the following image to help visualize these final projects.

We will discuss some of these resources during class:

• Technical Report Design
• Sample Technical Report

Before our next class, have one team member copy the sharable link from your Google Doc and paste it into a comment added to this post.

Looking ahead to our next set of projects, the randomly assigned teams are listed below. Your team will be responsible for working together on the analytical research report, oral presentation, website, and report on collaboration. We will begin talking about these projects and how they work together in our next class on 11/12.

Team 1	Alpha, Tariq, Dominick, and Devina
Team 2	Jeremy, Amir, Daniel, and Julia
Team 3	Karmoko, Liuming, Masum, and Alain
Team 4	Huzaifa, Marco, Samuel, and Eric
Team 5	Luke, Mustafa, Haider, and Jing Sheng
Team 6	Hector, Fernando, and Burhan

Today, we are having studio time to work on your instruction projects. We will also share team assignments for the next project, which will be a collaborative effort.

Remember, the new due date for the instruction manual project is before class on Tuesday, 11/12.

Adding to the sample instruction manual shared in our last class, here is an excerpt with useful examples of the materials and directions sections for a photograph-focused set of instructions.

Today, we’re focusing on your instruction manuals. We will go over the general layout and how to publish your work.

NB: I want you to produce the highest quality instruction manual possible given the time that we have available. Therefore, I am extended the deadline for this assignment to Nov. 12.

We will be using Google Docs to create your instruction manual. Use this document as a model for your instruction manual.

You will be able to share your document and link to it from our OpenLab site. Use the directions below to submit your work.

After copying the link to your instruction manual, create an OpenLab post for your project. Follow these steps:

Confirm that your post appears on our OpenLab site and that the link to your instruction manual on Google Docs works correctly.

Here are some pro tips for using Google Docs:

During today’s class, we’re going to focus on the main components of your instruction manual and do the brainstorming work needed to identify what should be included in your instructional manual. In our next class, we’ll focus more on the formatting and submission of your deliverable.

Let’s look at the sections of the Online Technical Communication textbook on Instructions, User Guides, and Standard Operating Procedures.

Before class, you found sample instructions and user guides to use as models. We can take a look at some online-based guides that I published on my blog here, too.