Improve Your Academic Reports with these Twelve Tips
For almost every course you have at the undergraduate level, you need to submit an academic report that will be evaluated by your teacher. The fact is that we, as professors, look for patterns in the report and disregard most of the things many students waste their time on. Here are some simple tips that immediately give you a better chance for a higher grade.
Don’t State That Your Particular Work Is Above Average
The goal of the evaluation is to evaluate. Some students may think they’ve surpassed their expectations (and it’s highly encouraged a sense of self-criticism), but the ultimate responsibility for the grade is from the lecturer. Thus, when writing the conclusions chapter, focus on presenting the challenges you’ve had and if there is room for improvement. A student that doesn’t know what else to do with its work is a student without vision. Nothing is perfect. Excellence does not require perfection; it requires self-awareness, though.
Motivation Is About The Significance Of Your Work
The study of the “Implications of Formal Methods in Systems with Unstable Requirements” or “Agile Methodologies for Safety-Critical Systems” may be motivational because there seems to exist apparent, intrinsic antagonism. Implementing something in Piet may be motivational due to the exquisite underlying language. These affirmations show more about why the student chose its work than something like “I did this because I always enjoyed riding bikes”; it shows that the student cared to analyze the significance of its work to the underlying course. Which, by the way, leads to…
Your Work Has A Context
If you’re taking a course on dogs, and you’re asked to make a work about cats, it’ll probably be wise to compare dogs to cats. It would be unwise to try to *meow* your way through it. In other words:
Focus
If the course is about Object-Orientation, and you ignore Inheritance, Polymorphism, Decoupling, Encapsulation, and Abstraction, then get yourself ready for a low grade, even if it just works.
Don’t Waste Time On Prettying-up Reports
If your teacher doesn’t give you a pre-defined format, then grab one of the standards out there: ACM, IEEE, LNCS… Unless you’re taking a course on typography or design, trust me: the font you’ll choose will be hideous. Make use of graphics and images if they’re relevant. Aesthetic distractions waste your time, don’t give you extra credits, and will not replace useful content. But if you insist on designing your report then:
If You Must, Read Something About Typography
Use sans-serif fonts for titles and serif fonts for the body with enough spacing. A combination of Arial/Georgia using 10/12 for text size is good enough. If you care about making your report as aesthetically pleasing as possible, this book is for you.
Form Follows Function
Instead of putting your effort into the aesthetics of the report, apply it in the elegance of the solution. Perform your work with pride, as if everyone would be looking at it. After some experience, one knows when something was made in a hurry — we all were once students, you know?
Use Collaborative Tools
If you’re technological savvy — as in a 2nd year CS/SE student — use a version control system (such as GitHub or GitLab). If you aren’t, Google Docs and Overleaf is here for you. Such tools become especially relevant within big groups: not only it will ease cooperation, but will provide a history of your work for later review — though I believe some don’t like that prospect ;-)
It’s Not The Goal, But The Path
The goal of a course is seldom to develop the best product in the market or to fulfill 100% the requirements — which by the way, unless stated, tend to be guidelines. The goal is to learn — not memorize — the underlying concepts. You should be able to, after several months, easily recall with small effort and then infer your way throughout the subject like a pro.
This said, claims such as “we’ve fulfilled all of the proposed requirements, so we deserve a 20/20” are, at best, silly! In contrast to final exams, evaluation of essays have into account parameters like overall work complexity, the elegance of the solution, and potential scientific relevance. Essays shouldn’t be regarded as functional black-boxes; the how is as relevant (if not more) than just being done.
Learn By Trial And Error, Reductio Ad Absurdum
If something doesn’t work, don’t rush calling your teacher or giving up. Read your error messages, try slight changes, learn to debug. Citing Guido van Rossum — “you are debugging your entire life.” If all else fails, start again from a consistent point — the use of version control systems starts to pay off here. If the problem reveals to be non-trivial, then discuss it in your report: extra credits for those that surpass difficult challenges!
Cite Your Sources
Original research is only required for a Ph.D.; and even at that point, ideas don’t usually appear out of nowhere. Research is typically an iterative, incremental process, introducing small changes to an already existing body of knowledge. Having said that, cite your sources. And if you don’t have references, then learn how to find them a priori! Get acquainted with using Google and Google Scholar for this purpose.
Also, unless stated, it is not wrong to reuse; au contraire, it may reveal the pragmatism you’ll need in the real-world™. But, by all means, cite them! Credit where credit is due. And if you don’t like the culture of copy-paste (which you shouldn’t), then use your newly gained time to improve upon it.
Still, Google is not a valid source per se. Point to the actual pages/papers you’ve used, and when appropriate, use those references inside the text of your report. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of links.
And Finally…
Writing, no matter what, is an art that should be practiced. Its ultimate goal is to act as a medium for communication. Don’t disregard grammar, be objective, and always assume the target audience can’t read your mind. Nowadays, tools like Grammarly are so pervasive that there’s no longer any excuse not to use them.
Would you like to know more to guide you on your Masters Thesis? Read our Pattern Language for the Masters Student, recently published here.