| Performance Element | My Interpretation and suggestions |
| 1. Purpose and Focus [15 pts] | Purpose: The topic addresses an important issue relevant to the course and the business environment of today. Focus: Always have your utmost topic/goal in mind when you develop your ideas and write your paper. You may have sub-topics under the main topic. However, they should provide strong support to your main topic. The flow of your thoughts and writing shall serve the purpose of conveying a solid and convincing story about the man topic. |
| 2. Development of Ideas [15 pts] | These few steps may help you develop ideas for your paper. (1) Collect and read articles related to your topic. Try to underdatnd the main issues discussed in the articles, and for the time bing, ingore technical details during your first round of review of literature. (2) After the first round, you get an better idea regarding which articles you read are useful to your paper. (3) Read those articles surviving your first round of review again. This time, you should try to gain a deeper level of understanding. (4) Set the articles aside. Organize your thoughts and develop a story line (plot) based on your understanding of the topic area from reading those articles. (5) Draft a higher level outline, supported by the literature. |
| 3. References [15 pts] | (1) You need to have a good mix of references from peer-reviewed journal (academic journals) articles supplemented by publications from other sources such as books, magazines, newspaper, and online, etc. I expect you to cite at least 10 to 12 peer-reviewed journal articles. The reason is that after reading about 10 articles, you develop a better grip of the subject area. (2) Articles in peer-reviewed journals are reviewed by independent individuals in the field and provide a more objective view of the subject area. (3) Typically, articles in peer reviewed journals have a "References" section listing all articles cited in the paper. (4) Start searching from recent issues of journals. Once you find one good article, you can trace from the references of the article to find more. And from there, you find even more. (5) Sometimes, it is difficult to judge whether an article is relevant to your topic by its title aline. You can read the abstract to see whether it helps or not. If it is still not enough, read the introduction section. (6) Start reading the whole article when you know it is relevant to save your precious time. |
| 4. Organization [15 pts] | The first three elements organize your ideas into a cohesive story line. This and the next few steps work on the presentation of your research findings (story). (1) The first step in organizing your paper is to divide your content into a few sections. Sections allow you an easier way to capture readers' attention with a sub-focus. (2) Despite the division of sections, the whole paper still need to focus on your main topic by making a good transition from one section to the next. (3) Use the outline developed in Step 2 as a starting point for organizing your materials. |
| 5. Language and sentence structure [10 pts] | (1) Use your own words: The key to success is to use your own words when writing your report. It is hard to break the temptation of mimicing the writing style of the articles you read. However, given that you read quite a few articles, this may create an incosistent tone in your writing. (2) We talked about the transition between sections earlier. The same apply to sentences. Make sure when you put the sentences together, the flow nicely from one to the next. Check if those sentences together convey the message you want to send to readers, your sub-focus, in each section. (3) Sentence structure: There are many good resources about sentence structure for writing research paper. I will find some. |
| 6. Grammar/Spelling [10 pts] | (1) USe spelling and grammer checks provided by your word processor. They are not perfect but they provide the first line of defense. (2) Have your friend read it over |
| 7. Format [10 pts] | (1) The format of your paper should be similar to those you
see in the peer-reviewed articles you collected. You can use any
styles as appropriate, for example, American Psychological Association,
Harvard Reference Format, IEEE, etc. (2) Number your pages (3) A typical format usually contains the following element, a title, author's name and affiliation, a brief abstract (250 words or less), serveral sections, subsections within a section (optional). Typically, you will start with an "introduction" section and close with a "conclusion" section with several sections in between to present your story. |
| 8. Woah factor [10 pts] | Overall, your paper should give readers an impression that they learned something from reading your paper and your paper is written in a clear, concise, and organized manner. The readers can quickly learn the basics in a subject area without spedning a great deal of time doing the reseach themselves because of your effort. And the topic of your paper is of significant importance to the knowledge covered in the course. |