Computation, Organizations & Society Lab

Final Paper

Objective

The capstone of the COS Lab course this year is a Tech Report bearing student results for the Robotic Walker Project. Each student will write one chapter in the Tech Report presenting her substantiated clams about the Robotic Walker Project. Because this is a permanent, formal academic writing, each student must take extreme care in substantiating claims and making a coherent, well-formed presentation.

Task

In Lab 7, you made substantiated claims regarding the Robotic Walker Project, but many of you did not state your claims precisely.

In Lab 8, fellow students commented on your prior writing with respect to your claims.

The Main Claim Statement
Claim about the Likelihood of Occurring as a Barrier
Claim about the Intensity of Negatively Effecting the Outcome

For your final paper in the COS Lab course, you will strengthen your prior writing by addressing student comments (as you deem appropriate) and by expanding your writing to include statements about the consequences of your constraint on the utility of the Robotic Walker. The description below explains how to expand your writing.

So far, your writing makes a particular claim about a barrier for a robotic walker.
You need to include clear statements about uses related to your claim. The Robotic Walker Project is not about the constuction of a single walker, necessarily, but perhaps a host of walkers, each of which may accomplish different tasks. To make your writing applicable, you need to be clear which uses of a robotic walker relate to your noted barrier.
Make your claims related to the barrier clearly and precisely. Use only the best evidence to substantiate your claim.
Express the consequences on uses (or design) imposed by your claims. This expands your paper by enriching the relationship between the barrier and uses. (See Lecture 7 for an example.)

Write carefully and follow the SCS Template for Tech Reports. Your paper will be merged into an SCS Tech Report, so follow the style guidelines for the SCS Tech Report. You will find these online. You must provide a Word document of your paper.

Be extremely careful in your choice of words as well as your statements. This is a publicly available permanent record that will always be part of your publishing career, so you want to take special care. Avoid making sweeping statements. Be sure to qualify your claims. Use meaningful and applicable citations. make your case clear, concise, and precise.

You will use the standard academic headings --Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. your paper should be about 3-6 pages and include references.

It is important that the document appear uniform. So, Yiheng Li, the TA for the course, will provide additional style constraints.

What to submit

By 9am Monday, 12/18, send your paper as both a Word document file, and as a PDF document to coslab3@dataprivacylab.org. Include copies of any references that were not previously provided to the course. Your submission will be placed on-line.