Success in your career will depend greatly on your written and oral
communication skills. Your instructor recognizes the need for students to
develop proficiency in these skills, and requires all students to submit a
research paper or provide an oral presentation in each class in this program.
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Papers
Goals:
- Display your ability to research and deliver information as a career skill.
- Develop technical writing skills.
- Explaining technical ideas in an understandable way. Training others will often be a part of your career.
Format:
- Length: 2 - 5 pages, including illustrationsand bibliography
- Margins: 1" left, right, and bottom, 1.5" top
- Spacing: Double-spaced for normal text, single-spaced for long quotes
- Font Size: 10 - 12 point
- Font Styles: Arial, Verdana, Times New Roman, or Courier
- Illustrations: Welcome if of good quality
- Cover Sheet: Optional
- Binders: NOT USED
Topics:
See the list of suggested topics below.
Audience:
Choose the type of audience you want to reach and present accordingly. Non-technical audiences have different
needs than technical audiences.
Attribution:
All works and illustrations used in your paper must be cited; this means crediting the source where you found the information you used to support your work. If you fail to give credit for copyrighted information you present as your own work, that constitutes plagiarism, and will be penalized by a zero for the project.
Citing Sources:
- Works used - This is the source material you used to support your research.
- Works consulted - You probably looked at many sources before you located usable material, and you deserve credit for this research. Your work will be considered for credit for works consulted; list your preliminary sources as consulted works.
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Presentations
Goals:
- Display your ability to research and deliver information as a career skill. Creative presentation ideas are welcome; use your imagination!
- Develop public speaking skills. If you have stage fright, this is the best way to overcome it!
- Play the part of instructor. Instructing others will be a part of your career. Oddly enough, some people even enjoy teaching!
Format:
- Length Approximately 10 minutes. Rehearse and time your presentation
- Visual Aids use of slideshows and the whiteboard are strongly encouraged
- Handouts acceptable if of lasting value -create something students can use later
Topics:
See the list of suggested topics below.
Audience:
Choose the type of audience you want to reach and present accordingly. Non-technical audiences have different
needs than technical audiences.
Attribution / Citations:
List your sources in your presentation, or offer to share them with the class.
Closing the Presentation:
When you have finished your presentation, remember to ask the courtesy question: "Are there any questions?"
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Research Topic Ideas
- Alternatives to Microsoft software
- Asset / Inventory tracking
- Backup strategies / disaster recovery
- Buy or build your own PC?
- Customer service and tech support
- Deployment strategies (deploying multiple PCs)
- End user education
- High-speed hardware interfaces (SCSI, FireWire, IEEE 1394, etc.)
- High-speed Internet connectivity
- History / overview of an operating system
- History of the PC
- IDE RAID concepts
- Improving PC reliability
- Network client software
- Network hardware
- Network operating systems
- Network topologies (peer-peer vs. client-server)
- New CPU trends and technologies
- Optical drives
- PC security
- PC troubleshooting software
- Professional certifications in the IT industry
- Tape drives
- Terminal emulation
- USB interface and devices
- Windows tips and tricks
- Elective topic ???
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