Resume: You will generate a general resume, to be no longer than a page. Make sure you print out and sign the grade sheet when you hand in your assignment. For those of you who haven't written a resume before and need help, career services is a great place to start.
Resume/Cover Letter: You are applying for the following job. To do this, you must modify your resume to target it for this job and write a cover letter. Neither your resume OR your cover letter should be over one page. The point of this assignment compared to the last assignment is judging how well you target your resume for the specific job opening.
Regarding the formatting of the letter, use the following style guide. Also, make sure you print out and sign the grade sheet when you hand in your assignment.
Technical Writing: You have to write novice instructions on how to create a homepage with straight HTML (no FrontPage, Dream Weaver or other wysiwyg editor), including how to do different fonts (italic, bold, etc.), formatting (indentation, spacing, font type and color, etc.), inserting pictures and/or graphics and inserting links. You are encouraged to use pictures and tables as appropriate. The total assignment cannot exceed 600 words (words in tables do not count towards this ceiling). Paper should be single spaced. Please see the gradesheet for more details.
White Paper: You must write a two-page, single-spaced (no longer than 500 words!) white paper on the following topic:
Pretend you were part of the decision-making process that decided whether the CS dept. would go to the School of Engineering, School of Sciences or become its own school. Write a white paper on where the CS school should go and why, briefly discussing the tradeoffs of each possibility. Pretend your office is administration in the CS department.
A white paper is commonly used in work and and formats can vary. For this assignment, use the following format: executive summary (brief summary with a course of action, kind of like your conclusion but at the beginning of the paper) and then the discussion section that goes into more detail to back up your executive summary. The reason for this format is that the important information is at the TOP of the paper, making it easy for the reader to see what the purpose of the paper without having to read through it. Bottom line is that your reader should know what the issue is, have an idea of what the gist of the paper is about and what your conclusion is after reading that first paragraph. Supporting information should be put in the body of the paper. Writing style is business, which means that writing should be concise. You will be penalized if you go over the 500 word count.
Please print and fill out the grade sheet. Don't forget to sign the honor code.
Essay : There are three parts to this assignment.
a.) You will write a five page (1250 - 1500 words) double-spaced position paper on an ethical topic in technology. You must first discuss why this topic qualifies as an ethical issue, then you must present evidence, take a position and then argue your position in the matter. Don't forget to acknowledge any type of obvious counter-arguments against your position. This paper will be written in an iterative process, where you will write a draft (at least 1000 words), provide it to a to a peer for a review, and then write a final version based on the comments in the review.
b.) The second part of the assignment is peer reviewing somebody else's paper. You will be graded on how well you review their paper, and will be responsible for filling out a critique sheet, similar to a gradesheet.
c.) You need to write an abstract of your essay and attach that to the front of your essay. The abstract should run 200-250 words and be single-spaced. The abstract doesn't have to be included in the peer review but does have to be turned in with the final draft of the paper.
You will be paired with another student to create and present a presentation on a topic in class. Presentation will be 18-22 minutes. On the day of your presentation, must turn in an evaluation of your partner, which will be factored into grading. Fill it out and bring a hard copy the day of your presentation. The grade breakdown for this assignment is in this gradesheet.
There will be in-class quizzes given periodically as well as in-class exercises.