CS 535 - Telecommunications

Introduction

Your progress report should be no longer than one page and have three sections: a topic, an outline, and some annotated references.

• The topic section should be a one-paragraph statement of either the topic of your term paper or the objective of your project.

  For a term paper, the topic will be essentially the abstract (or a first draft of the abstract), probably without a firm statement of conclusion.

  For a project, the topic section should contain the question your project attempts to answer, the method by which your project answers the question, and an estimation of the value of the result.

• The outline section should present the overall structure of your term paper or project.

  For a term paper, the outline should be a two-level outline; you may use more levels, as long as the overall progress report doesn't go over one page.

  For the project, the outline should indicate the analysis being used, the techniques begin used to carry out the analysis, the software used, and the form of the output.

• The annotated references should be a list of four to six references providing source material for your term paper or project. In addition to f full bibliographic citation, the each reference should contain a one-sentence description of the relevance of the reference to your project or term paper.

  Unless otherwise indicated each reference should to archival, peer-reviewed source material. You may use non-archival or non-peer reviewed source material, but these should only be cited in footnotes, not in the bibliography, and do not take the place of archival, peer-reviewed source material.

  If you've gathered more than six references, you may included them as long as the progress report remains one page long. If you have more references than can fit on one page, select what you consider the most important references.

  For a term paper, the references will be the standard bibliographic references.

  For a project, references would provide background to the problem, its analysis, and its solution. Software should be referenced through its manuals, which need be neither archival nor peer-reviewed.

Progress Report Grading

The fidelity of your progress report to the project or term paper you turn in will also effect your grade on the term paper or project. The effects are hard to quantify, but, generally, an obvious relation between a final term paper or project and the progress report will have a good (or at least benign) effect on the final grade, while no relation, or a poor relation, between a final term paper or project and the progress report will have a bad effect on the final grade.