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Writing a Course

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Writing Handbook

2

Table of Contents

Creating Major Sections ………………………………………………………. 3

Writing Fundamentals………………………………………………………….. 7

Expressing Ideas in the Course Paper……………………………………..10

Writing Handbook

3

Creating Major Sections of the Course Paper

Title

The title should provide enough information to allow the reader to predict the general

contents of the paper. The title should describe the paper’s main topic, concepts,

theories, issues discussed, and, in some cases, the relationships between the

concepts or theories.

The title should be as specific as possible without being too long. Avoid redundant

statements such as “A Study of….”

Original

Cultural differences between Chinese and American business people.

Revised

Cultural differences between Chinese and American business people: The

contract pre-negotiation stage.

Abstract or Executive Summary

The abstract or executive summary tells the reader what is in the paper. (The reader

will often decide whether to read the paper based on the abstract or executive

summary.) The abstract or executive summary provides brief descriptions of the

position statement, topic, or hypothesis; supporting evidence; results; and conclusion.

The abstract or executive summary must be very concise and yet provide a coherent

and accurate description of the contents of the paper. Note in the “revised” abstract

below that a topic sentence is placed at the beginning and a logical flow of ideas is

presented.

Original

Troubleshooting manufacturing machines is a difficult task for operators to do.

There are many examples of corporate training programs that fail to effectively

train operators to troubleshoot. In fact, most corporations do not even know that

training programs should be evaluated using the criteria of the rate of skill

acquisition, the transfer of training, and long-term retention. There are many

approaches to training for troubleshooting skills such as accelerated learning

(Sanders, 1997) and the cognitive psychology approach of Lesgold (1999). In

this paper the two approaches were compared. The cognitive psychology

approach was found to be best on all three criteria. Empirical studies of the

approaches were used to compare the approaches.

Revised

Published research studies were compared to determine the effectiveness of

two training methods used to teach machine operators how to troubleshoot

manufacturing equipment. The methods are (a) Sanders’ (1997) accelerated

Writing Handbook

learning and (b) Lesgold’s (1999) work in cognitive psychology. Three

categories of effectiveness were examined: 1) the rate of skill acquisition, 2)

transfer of training, and 3) long-term skill retention. The analyses indicate that

the cognitive psychology method is the most effective in all three areas. The

cost-effectiveness of each method is also briefly addressed.

See the style guidelines for your degree program to determine the maximum number

of words in the abstract and the location of the abstract or executive summary in the

paper.

Headings

Headings briefly describe the topic to be discussed in the following section of the

paper. They also clarify the structure of the paper for the reader.

In some style guidelines, the rules for the form of the headings and their location are

complex. See the style guidelines for your degree program to determine the maximum

number of headings permitted and where the headings should be placed in the paper.