The research paper is one of the longest works we have done in the class. It is required to be over 3,000 words long and thankfully, Mrs. Jean-Stern had given us more than enough time to complete the task. This assignment was different from others as we had to work in a team of three or two. I was assigned a team of three, partnering up with my good friends Hong Fei and Jacky Nguyen.
The teams were assigned by Mrs. Jean-Stern based on our similar interests. The project began with teams meeting up and discussing any topic related to engineering. My team is composed of striving computer scientists and so we agreed upon writing about Cyber Security and Hacking. The next step of the project was creating a memo.
Memo
First, my team and I had to create a topic Memo, it is similar to a proposal, but in it we would only introduce our topic, ideas, interests, and possible subtopics. Since this is a team effort, we all sat down in class and made a list on the topics we would like to explore. As stated before, we decided to go with Cyber Security and Hacking. We also created our main argument: Is hacking morally right or wrong?
Although this seems like a simple answer (hacking is bad), our goal was to highlight the positives in hacking.
The Research Proposal, Working Schedule, and Annotated Bibliography
With the memo written down, we decided to move on to creating the Research Proposal, Schedule, and Annotated Bibliography. My team and I decided to split the work between us. I wrote the Research Proposal, Hong did the schedule, and Jacky found the research sources. In a sense, we all worked equal amounts on each task.
Schedule
We began to the whole process by creating the schedule. In it we would split the work and check for dates where we would work together wether online or in person. We mainly worked online as it was the more convenient alternative. During class, we got together and told Hong what we wanted to do and when we all were free to work on the project, and he wrote all the information down. In the end, our schedule was extremely detailed.
Annotated Bibliography
After picking each other’s task, we decided to get to work. However, I could not begin writing the research proposal without any reliable information. The subtopics and topics were researched by all of us. However, Jacky found most of the sources from the CCNY Library. Hong also did research on it while I did research on outside sources.
Research Proposal
Now with the research, I was able to move on to the Research Proposal. Since it seemed similar to the memo, I took some points and ideas mentioned in the memo and expanded upon them. I also added more subtopics we researched and ended it with our argument. I did get some aide from my teammates as they reviewed my work. I think with our information so far, we are ready to start the research paper.
Research Paper Outline
In order to write the research paper, my team and I had to first create an outline. The outline would highlight our ideas, but we had so many it was difficult to organize at first. Fortunately, Mrs. Jean-Stern provided us with strategies on how to create one. She provided us with a mind map and examples of research papers. Using these methods we were able to make an outline for our research paper.
Research Paper
Finally we came to writing the research paper. In order to do the research paper we diced to look back at the outline and split the work evenly. Hong wrote about the negatives of hacking, Jacky wrote a little about the positives and future of hacking, and I wrote some positives, predictions, and the introduction. At this point, we only focused on writing the body of the research paper, so we did not add many features such as visuals, a table of contents, or a cover page. However, I still feel as though we did a great job organizing our research paper through the use of subtitles. The next step was to bring the rough draft to class and sharing it with another group.
After sharing our research paper with group D, we got a lot of useful points. Group D informed us that our organization was great. In addition, our claim was clear and supported throughout the paper. Now we had to add visuals and finalize the research paper. Since we did our work separately, some ideas are heavily repeat or overly explained. Furthermore, our tones were not similar. So I decided to look over the paper and fix some of these errors while the rest of my teammates worked on the presentation.
The hardest part of the research paper was fixing it, which was not really difficult but extremely time consuming. This is because a lot of information that was written was not explained well. The research paper had a very odd flow, many grammatical errors, redundant information, and much more. In addition, the table of contents, abstract, and graphics were still missing. Because of this, I had to fix many issues as well as add the missing sections. Sadly, I worked on this alone and so the process took even longer. Overall, the research paper seems to be in order now and I feel proud over my hard work. The last step now, is working on the presentation.
