General Directions

The prototype deliverable is intended to demonstrate a proof of concept for your final project report. Large multi-week projects are challenging, this deliverable is intended to provide additional structure to ensure you are making progress and on a path towards success. It also is a good milestone to reevaluate if your current research question is a good course of action.

It consists of a written report detailed below along with any accompanying data, code, or other supplementary resources that demonstrate your progress so far in the project. You can think of it as a rough draft for your final project. The report should stand on its own so that it makes sense to someone who has not read your proposal.

The report should contain at least three parts, which we define below. In terms of length, it should be about 3-4 pages using standard margins (1 in.), font (11-12 pt), and line spacing (1-1.5) OR you can use the ACM standard 2 column template (see general proposal feedback below). A typical submission is around 2-3 pages of text and 3-4 pages overall with tables and figures. You should convert your written report to a pdf and upload it to Gradescope under the assignment “Project Prototype” by the due date. Be sure to include your names and NetIDs in your final document and use the group submission feature on Gradescope. You do not need to upload your accompanying data, code, or other supplemental resources demonstrating your work to Gradescope; instead, your report should contain instructions on how to access these resources (see part 2 below for more details).

General Feedback from Proposal

Something to keep in mind is the general feedback given about the proposal:

• To cite a paper, consider using the same notation that is common in the ACM papers (SIGCSE, ICER, ITiCSE, etc.) and cite the work by saying something like “In Smith et al.’s [3] work, ….”
  • I (Prof. Stephens-Martinez) do not recommend using [#] as a noun (i.e. “[4] showed that…”), it is much harder to remember what a citation is about without at least the extra scaffolding information of who the first author was.
  • You could use the ACM template with two columns. If you want to use the LaTeX template, I’d be happy to own the Overleaf document if you need/want all of Overleaf’s features.
• Many of the research questions were vague or large. Which is not surprising for the proposal. Going forward, I encourage you all to consistently go back to your research question and consider how to refine it to something more precise/smaller.
  • If your research question is not helping you make decisions about how to analyze something, that means it is too vague/large and needs to be refined enough that you can use it to help you make decisions.

Part 1: Introduction and Research Questions

Your prototype report should still begin by introducing your topic and stating your research question(s) as in your proposal. Your research question(s) should be substantial and feasible. Briefly justify each of these points as in the project proposal. You can start with the text from your proposal, but you should update your introduction and research questions to reflect changes in or refinements of the project vision. Make sure to include at least a paragraph or subsection pointing out what has changed since the proposal. Your introduction should be sufficient to provide context for the rest of your report (a.k.a. your proposal should not be required reading to understand your report).

Part 2: Related Work

At this point in time, you should have read much of the related work you found for your proposal and likely found a few more. This section should now summarize the key takeaways of all of the papers you’ve found so far in some coherent whole. Remember the “how to write briskly” reading and that you can always use another paper as an example on how to write your own related work section.

If your related work is not done, this section should end with a subsection on what related work still needs to be found, your plan for finding it, and any questions you have for me when I give you feedback on this prototype.

Part 3: Preliminary Results and Methods

The preliminary results section of your report should summarize the results obtained so far in the project. Where possible, results should be summarized using clearly labeled tables or figures and supplemented with a written explanation of the significance of the results with respect to the research questions outlined in the previous section. Your results do not need to be final or conclusive for your entire project but should demonstrate substantial effort and progress and should provide concrete proof of concept or initial analysis with respect to your research questions.

Your results should be specific about exactly what data were used and how the results were generated. For example, if you filtered out some of the data due to A and B reasons you should state what the criteria was used to filter the data, why, and how much of the data was filtered out (or is left). These steps should be explained in enough detail such that an informed reader (like another group working on the same data set) could reasonably be expected to reproduce your results with time and effort. Just saying, for example, “we cleaned the data and dealt with missing values” is not sufficient detail.

Part 4: Reflection and Next Steps

In this part, you should answer the following sections in their own subsection:

1. Successes/Mostly Complete – What has been successful in the project so far or what is essentially complete and ready for the final report?
2. Challenges/Incomplete – What has been challenging in the project so far or what is incomplete in the prototype that needs to be finished for the final report?
3. Next Steps – What are your next steps? These should be concrete and specific actions that your group will take to address the challenges identified in order to complete a successful final project.

Feedback and Grading Rubric

Each section will be graded on a four-step rubric scale as follows.

• E (Exemplary) – Work that meets all requirements of that section.
• S (Satisfactory) – Work that meets all requirements with only slight mistakes or missing pieces of information.
• N (Not yet) – Work that does not meet some requirements and/or displays developing or incomplete work that needs substantial revision to meet satisfactory standards.
• U (Unassessable) – Work that is missing, does not demonstrate meaningful effort, or does not provide enough evidence to determine a level of mastery.

The entire assignment is worth 100 points.

• 12 points will be allocated for meeting general directions (length, on-time pdf submission, group submission, etc.). You cannot submit a proposal greater than 3 pages. Learning how to be succinct is an important skill.
• 22 points are allocated for each section. (22*4 = 88)

The rubric will be converted to points as follows:

• E = full credit
• S = E_full_credit – 1
• N = E_full_credit / 2
• U = E_full_credit / 5
• Blank = 0

Anything earning less than an E will receive feedback in Gradescope. If your submission earns less than an S in any section you will be allowed 2 resubmissions to bring it up to the E or S standards for all sections. If your proposal earns E’s and S’s only, you can have 1 resubmission if your group decides to aim for a higher score. Each resubmission must be done within 1 week, starting from when the feedback is returned. This is to limit the amount of time spent on the assignment for all those involved.