THESIS PAPER

We will be workshopping in class each stage to get you to your final written document. Below are descriptions of each section that may appear in your final paper.

The page requirement of your paper is not fixed. I would rather see a concise and well-written paper, than one that is inflated with filler material. All papers should have a thorough background section. The other sections may vary, based on the type of project you are producing. Where appropriate, you should also include images, figures, and graphs. Below you may find a guide to the paper sections:

Abstract

  • Write it last!

  • Identify the field in which you are operating, and the problem/issue that you addressed

  • Describe your project

  • Outline your research methods

  • State your main observations/findings/conclusion(s)

  • Indicate your recommendations for future perspectives

  • Include keywords

  • Keep to one page or less

1. Introduction

Describe the field or topic you are interested in. Describe the state of the art of the field in a way that someone who knows nothing about it has sufficient information to understand the importance of your project. You should reference previously published papers, projects made by others, books or other literature.

Everything in this section must be properly cited.

2. Background

Here you give your reader the specific information related to the topic of interest that they need to know to understand the importance of your project.

You should discuss in scholarly detail the work that has been done in this field and how it leads you to your research question. You should interpret, synthesize, and relate these works in a reflective and scholarly manner: what you say here is a NOVEL interpretation of the references you have collected, taken as a whole, not a paraphrase or summary. It is often useful to provide a brief history of your topic area, while citing key works in the field.

In addition to a scholarly review, your background section should identify relevant projects/products, which you may view as precursors to your own work, as inspiration, or as competition. Demonstrate that you are aware of the important predescessor projects in your field, it is often the first thing people will ask you. Depending on the project, it may also be useful to provide background information on a particular tool or technology you plan to utilize.

The background section leads to an open question in the field, or an unmet need. End it by a statement that places your project in the context of what you have just described, and how it addresses that question or need.

Everything in this section must be properly cited.

3. Project

The Project section has several sub-sections, listed below

3.1 Description and Rationale

Summarize your project - is it a game, a VR piece, an installation? How does it work and who uses it? Describe how the overall design of this project addresses the open question you arrived to in your Background section.

3.2 Methodologies

Describe the methodologies you have used to approach your research question. Refer to List of Methodologies in the class resource folder for an (incomplete) list of possible methodologies to use.

3.3 Methods

Describe in detail how you made your project, and each subsequent iteration. This needs to have enough detail that someone could reproduce it exactly, without having seen it. Think Instructables tutorial.

  • parts numbers
  • code
  • materials
  • tools

This section also covers how you assessed it. Some assesment procedures may include:

  • experimental setup
  • qualitative feedback
  • research journal, personal account
  • user testing
  • data collection
  • data analysis

Please note any intrinsic limitations or biases in the methods you have chosen.

This should be done for each iteration (Pilot 1, 2, 3; Experiment 1, 2, 3; Prototype alpha, beta, gold). This section is purely descriptive, and you do not go into interpretation of the results.

3.4 Results and discussion

Describe in detail how you have assessed the performance of your project, and the results of that assessment. Depending on the project, this could be one or more of:

  • a measurement (how high did my hot air ballon rise?)
  • user testing (how long did my users take to figure out my app/game?)
  • audience feedback (did my audience understand the message conveyed by my installation/performance?)
  • hypothesis (in)validation (did my experiment disprove my hypothesis?)
  • performance analysis (did my car drive itself in the way I designed it to? did my algorithm execute faster than the competition?)

Use figures, plots, images to illustrate the results described.

For each assessment discuss how these results can be interpreted with respect to the goal set in your introduction.

Describe how, given the results, you redesigned/altered/reassessed your project.

The conclusions for each iteration can be:

  • Compare data/findings against your Literature Review, Related Work, or Competitive Analysis findings.

  • Summarize main empirical findings

  • Place evidence of (non-confidential) empirical research in appendices (questionnaires, interview transcripts/notes, experiment results, etc.)

For clarity, you can name each iteration (Pilot 1, 2, 3; Experiment 1, 2, 3; Prototype alpha, beta, gold)

Note: Please do not claim to have performed a formal, quantiative study, if that is not what has occurred. Every project is different and assessment procedures will vary. You should never falsify or misrepresent the work you’ve done. You may complete a project and find that the results did not align with your initial hypothesis. You may find that rather than a conclusion, you’ve been led to more questions. That is ok, and is a valid finding in and of itself.

4. Conclusion

  • Remind reader of your initial research objectives

  • Summarize Literature Review, Comparative Analysis, and Research findings as related to research objectives.

  • Elicit main conclusions from your findings, and how they fit with aforementioned summary

5. Future Perspectives

  • Offer recommendations for next steps in this investigation. If you were handing off this project to someone, where should they start? What initial questions did you not answer? What questions arose that are new?

6. References

  • Choose a citation style and stick with it. See this link for more info. Your bibliography should include a diversity of sources, including contemporary publications and “canonical,” texts in your field. You should use a mixture of primary and secondary sources, and your sources should be relevant to your topic area. The thoroughness of your reference section will be a significant factor in your overal paper grade.

Proofread your work and use TurnItIn

Before turning in any written assignment, get writing feedback from Liz McEnaney and integrate her suggestions.

Use TurnItIn in NYU Classes to check for plagiarism or mistakes in references/citations.

TurnItIn is the originality detection service available through NYU Classes. Before using TurnItIn, it is important to understand the implications under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) regarding student work. Once a student submits an assignment or a piece of work to an instructor, this work then is considered an education record under FERPA. (For more info regarding FERPA at NYU, see www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/policies-and-guidelines/FERPA.html)

TurnItIn will currently accept the following file types to generate Originality Reports:

Microsoft Word® (DOC/DOCX) OpenOffice (ODT) Google Docs via Google Drive™ WordPerfect® (WPD) PostScript (PS/EPS) Adobe® PDF Microsoft PowerPoint® (PPTX, PPT, PPSX, and PPS) HTML Rich text format (RTF) Plain text (TXT) Hangul Word Processor file (HWP) Note: The paper being submitted must contain more than 20 words, must be under 20MB (remove images if necessary to reduce file size), must not exceed 400 pages in length, and must not contain spaces in between every letter (l i k e t h i s).

TurnItIn does not support the following file types:

Microsoft Works (WPS) files Apple Pages files Spreadsheets (e.g., Excel files) PDF files of images, or PDF files which do not contain highlightable text (e.g., a “scanned” file, which is often simply a picture of text, is unacceptable) File names with special characters

Thesis Printing and Binding

1) Formatting:

  • consult the formatting guidelines in the shared drive folder.
  • After you have made your corrections, send a pdf to Jose Ulerio for him to check formatting

2) Print it on acid-free paper (1 copy). This can be done on a regular printer.

3) Binding: Bind your printed thesis along with the signature pages here:

Henry Bookbinding Company 35 Henry Street (Basement) New York, New York 10002 Tel. (212) 962-1977 Hours of Operation: Sunday – 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday thru Thursdays - 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Fridays - 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Expect about a week of turn around time for binding

4) Turn in 1 hard copy to Eric Maiello, turn in pdf to google drive folder, see “IDM Archive Materials,” page. The hard deadline to turn in your bound copy and archive materials to Eric is December 19