- “Include page numbers in
your report. “
- “Do not left align your text; text
alignment should be justified.”
- “When is citation appears at
the end of a sentence, it appears before the full stop.”
- “All figures must have numbered
captions below them.”
- “A number of typos, grammar and
syntax errors can be avoided, if you PROOFREAD your report before you
submit it!”
- “Avoid the use of first
person singular in a formal report.”
- “The table of contents should appear after the abstract.”
If I had a penny for
every time I added one of the above (and other similar) formatting comments on
a submitted report’s feedback form, I assure you I would have enough money to
quit my job today and live richly ever after!
The use of TurnItIn’s
GradeMark has made the repetitive addition of the above comments faster.
Still though, I cannot but feel frustrated every time I come across the
same error again and again. Especially when I see them in reports submitted by
Level 2 or Level 3 students who I know have made the same errors and received
the same feedback many times before.
The truth is that the
vast majority of students have very little to none prior experience writing and
formatting a report of an academically accepted quality. In the best case scenario,
new students know how to write hand-written essays. It is quite a challenge to
explain to them (and persuade them!) that a high school essay and an academic report are two
entirely different things. And then we have to teach them all the tiny little
bits and pieces that make up a good academic report.
For a number of years
(since the beginning of time, I think...) in the Computer Science Department we
have a tutorial session dedicated to report writing/formatting. We also make
sure that the lecturer that requests the first report for a coursework submission spends a
lot of time in class revising what a good report should look like. It turns out
this is not quite enough.
As a result of being
frustrated, I decided to gather all the formatting issues that make up a good report and
compile a “Report Formatting Checklist”, whereby all items that require
consideration are categorised with respect to what they refer to (report
structure, use of language, etc.). The idea is that every time students write a
report, instead of having to remember all the do’s and don't's, they go through
the list to literally check all the things they have done correctly, and
remember the ones they haven’t.
I have already presented
the checklist to our Level 1 students and even asked them to complete it and
formally submit it for a report they have to submit for their first coursework in one of my units. The good news is that it has been very well-received and,
though students have not submitted yet, I can already tell from drafts I’ve
seen that they have used it. I expect this will have substantial impact on the
quality of this year’s submissions (I’ll let you know in due time if I am
proven right or wrong!).
As a department we have
also agreed to make the checklist available to students at all times throughout
their studies, and ask them (formally or informally) to use it prior to
submitting any report.
I know that each department has its own conventions with respect to report writing and formatting. This is why I make an editable
version of the Report Formatting Checklist available here. Feel free to have a
look at it, drop in a comment to tell me what you think, and, why not, adjust
it to your department’s needs and use it. Enjoy!
P.S. The majority of
this post was written using voice typing. Thank you, Petros, for your previous
blog post!
Ioanna Stamatopoulou
Lecturer. Computer Science Department
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