In this course, you will plan, execute, and present the results of a term-long project of your choosing. If you are an Information Technology major, your project must relate to your cognate discipline.
In the project, you will be asking a question and defending an argument in a Final Paper, in Class Presentation, and Poster at Furman Engaged.
In addition to our seminar discussions, many class sessions will be devoted to instruction on planning, executing, and presenting your project.
The steps of your project are to mirror the steps of the scientific method:
Identify a question that you want to answer. Project PreproposalDue September 15
Identify a data set (evidence) that will help you answer the question. Project ProposalDue September 15
- Conduct a literature search to see what others have done. Due October 1
- Identify a model (hypothesis) that will help you answer the question. Due November 1
- Analyze the results using the model and data. Due November 15
- Draw conclusions from the results. Due December 1
- Presentation of your findings Last two weeks of class
You might want to start by identifying a data set to ground your question.
Peer Grading: A substantial part of the grading of the projects will be done by peers: each student will be charged with grading three other projects on the same topic. Peer review is how research papers are selected for publication in academia, and I hope this will be revealing. I am hoping that this review will provide insights to improve your own projects as well.
To preserve anonymity in submissions, it is important that the papers you submit online for grading not contain your names or ID numbers. Indeed, the peer grading form/rubric will include a question if the grader can figure out whose paper they have, and if so we will take off points.
Your project code should be on Github and your manuscript should be on Overleaf. See links below for more details.