ISYS 2402 / 2403: written reports
This page covers the following sections
- Assignmengt prologue
- Assignment specification
- Assessment levels
Imagine you are a keen junior researcher working for a medium sized
company involved in distributed IT systems. Senior management is
requiring reports on a number of strategic development directions that
the company may want to pursue in the near future. Your task is then to
pretend that the chosen question is one that management needs to be
answered.
Clearly, if your report is poorly organised / factually incorrect /
makes errors in citing other works (bearing in mind that the company
may need to pay royalties in some cases, so mistakes can be costly),
management is unlikely to use your report for anything but a bookstand,
and your future promotion remains a dream.
Whereas, if your report is the kind that the company might put up as a
‘white paper’ on their web site, management would be proud,
and your promotion (or at least extra pay) is assured.
1. Assignment Prologue
Please read these instructions very carefully.
- There are 3 assignments, each identical, but on different topics,
and each carrying a total of 33 marks; these will account for 33%
of your overall marks in the course. Each assignment has two parts:
presentation (which counts for 11 marks) and report (which counts for 22 marks).
- Taken together, the assignments form a hurdle, that is, you must achieve a minimum of 50%, in order to pass the course.
- You must start to work on your assignments early, and submit the
work you have done by dates specified for each assignment.
- For the written reports, each submission must include the file README.txt in the following format:
StudentID: [your Student ID - without the initial "S"]
Login: [your CS username]
Name: [your full name]
Notes: [any other relevant information]
- Reports must be submitted in PDF format. Content and pages must be accessible and load properly in the Acrobat viewer.
- A penalty of 10% per day of the total marks for each assignment
will apply for each day a submission is late. Submissions
received more than five days late will receive zero marks.
- Ensure you follow correct referencing guidelines, and list
references in your Report. All work will be checked for
plagiarism and incorrect referencing, and it is your responsibility to
adhere to the School guidelines.
- See: http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/students/integrity/
- Full marking of assignments may take up to two weeks.
When results are released, an announcement will be made on the
forum.
- If in doubt about any matter, please ask the Course coordinator or lecturer, preferably on the discussion forum.
- There are no hurdles in this course.
2. Assignment Specifications
Version: 1.0
Marks: 33 (=33% of semester mark each), 11% on the Presentation, 22% on the Report
3 Submissions:
Week 4, Monday 23rd March, 9.59am
Week 8, Monday 27th April, 9.59am
Week 12, Monday 25th May, 9.59am
Late assignments may not be reviewed by the lecturer before class,
hindering the process of discussion, and reducing the benefit you may
receive from such discussion.
How and What to submit:
- Make a directory Assignment2 containing the files:
- Readme.txt containing the student ID, name, and yallara user name of both members of a pair.
- Report.pdf
- Remember that all references should be active links that are clickable by the markers.
- Submit the files with the command:
turnin -c atds -p ass1 Assignment2
Where you substitute ass1 ass2 ass3 ass4 as necessary.
- Check that your files have been submitted correctly:
turnin -c atds -p ass1 –v
Assignment Details
Your task is to write a report on one
of the research questions listed on the website for each
assignment. You are to review the literature and state of the art
in that area. You might find some papers directly addressing the
issue of the research question, or indirectly addressing it. You
may choose a question already chosen by another student, but the
lecturer will not accept all students choosing the same question
(obviously). Be aware that choosing the same question as another
student also makes it easier to compare between students. You may
or may not like that idea.
Your report should specifically answer the questions shown by citing
the appropriate source material and describing how they answer the
questions or part thereof, supplied with each topic. The theme of
each report is thus the question answered.
The report size should be around 4 A4 pages in the suggested
format. Remember to make the report look professional with proper
diagramming where appropriate, and proper citations.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with report writing of this type,
we have included some overview material that you might find interesting
in the following pages.
Assessment criteria
- Demonstrated understanding of the questions and the issues raised.
- Able to compare the techniques described in the supplied reference with the references that you found,
- Clearly written and well-organised,
- References appropriately and correctly cited
- All references to be implemented as hyperlinks and clickable. See the document style in any W3C standards document.
- Citations are as a number [2] within the body of the text, but
with a full reference as an endnote at the end. The number
hyperlinks to the endnote entry. This entry links to the source.
- This is the “Vancouver” style of referencing.
- Size limits: around 3-4 pages of printed text in PDF format.
Suggested Report Layout
A typical report layout of this type would be:
- Title/author, etc
- Around 10-lines of abstract – summary of the contents of the report
- Introduction – stating the problem, repeating and expanding
the question, so that it is clear what part or aspect of the question
you are actually answering
- 1 section outlining a summary of each of the papers
- The research question may have several aspects so. Address each in a section:
“..A solved it this way”
“..B tried A’s way on different data but found a better way..”
“..C saw the similarity of
A’s way applied to to G,H,and I’s method, so proposed a
third way…”
“..so A, B and C each deal with the issue in a different way..”
“..D saw an application of
A’s method applied backwards in some circumstances, that would
answer this question better..”
“..E found D’s method to be illegal, but modified it to be legal by redefining backwards to be forwards..”
- “..A’s and E’s method appear to be the most
general solutions, although B’s method is more optimal for
…, and C widened the scope of the question for a more general
approach, but …”
- Conclusion and Recommendation
- “Given the discussions above, one conclusion we can come to is that …”
- “For a medium-sized company, the most cost-effective solution is …”
- “The design implications are …”
So your report should include:
- A summary of the supplied paper(s), and at least 3 other papers
(3-4 preferred) with each providing a different approach or viewpoint
to the common problem addressed by the questions for that topic,
- A discussion of the question itself, citing appropriate references as needed.
- A comparison of the topic with other ways that the same question can be answered,
- A conclusion and recommendation for a medium-sized company.
Some good sources of additional material include:
- Google Scholar – use genuine journal and conference papers only.
- Any IEEE or ACM security or business-related journal paper
3. Assessment Levels
| Mark |
General comments at this mark level
(NB. not all comments may apply to you, but it is the overall picture) |
| <PA |
Some aspects of questions were not answered or answered badly.
It is not clear that you were fully conversant with key aspects of the technology.
The report was not organised sufficiently well that it was possible to
survey the coverage from the table of contents (if there was
one).
Key similarities between competing technologies poorly or not compared.
The report content suggested that the authors had not covered the area sufficiently well.
Management is unlikely to base any decision on the report contents alone. |
PA |
Most questions answered ‘sufficiently’ and adequate understanding has been demonstrated on the topic
Report organization shows a fair ability to suitably structure and order the main points of analysis and discussion
Many points are adequately stated or compared, however, a limited understanding of the material is demonstrated in the report. |
| CR |
All reasonably predictable aspects of questions answered correctly.
Some insight shown into the implications of the technology to the company direction.
Report organisation is coherent and navigable.
Points made are generally clear, but lack great depth.
Good understanding of the technology issues raised is shown and points are well stated and compared. |
| DI |
All questions answered very well. Further implications also explored.
Significant insight is shown into how to apply the research and developments to the needs of this company.
Report is organised succinctly and ‘to the point’ (ie no
diversions into irrelevant detail) with all relevant items well
described and compared. Navigation is straightforward.
A very good depth of knowledge is demonstrated in how the report was written. |
| HD |
An excellent report with all questions answered in a
manner that allows senior management to easily make informed decisions
about strategic directions and weigh up the merits of which way to
go. Further implications also well-covered.
Report is well-organised, so that key points are easily visible and
succinct and that all important aspects of the technology are easily
visible in the section headings.
Comparisons can quickly be made between competing technologies.
An excellent depth of knowledge is demonstrated allowing management to
be confident that all relevant material was presented to them, and to
release this as a white paper on the company website. |