Putting the report together

We started today by thinking about reports in general.

Four groups designed posters that came up with ideas to my question, "what makes a report a report?"

We had some good ideas on this - some points focused on the various sections which we would expect to find in a report. Other ideas mentioned the style of a report - how it was written and how it looked (the layout). Some points were also made about the purpose and readership of reports. Great work on that - well done!

I then asked the groups to come up with headings for the report that forms part of the assessment for this unit. Between you all, you came up with a good structure. While you had a break, I tweaked it a bit, so that we ended up with this as the structure for the report:

Title page

Contents page

1 Introduction (the purpose of your report will be made clear here)

2 Research methods (what did you do to research the report - ie internet research, consultation of course text, research meeting)

3 Findings

3.1 Overview of event (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

3.2 Social impact (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

3.3 Economic impact (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

3.4 Political impact (this should come from what you had to do for Caroline's report)

4. Conclusion (In general terms, or in summary form, what are the social, economic and political impacts of your chosen event - write a sentence on each)

5. References (detail of specific sources you used to research the event - ie. website address and when you accessed it.)

6. Appendices (copy of agenda and minutes for research meeting)


Everyone typed this structure up and saved it as the starting point for the report for this class.

We finished with an exercise on formal writing style. The point of this exercise was to get you to practise more formal writing as is required for report writing.

Here are some links on report writing and formal writing that you may find useful:


http://www2.napier.ac.uk/gus/writing_presenting/reports.html#style

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/writing/


Next week, it's just a matter of putting the information that you have into the report structure which we devised today.

Working on minutes - more meetings.

Today groups 1, 2 and 3 worked on producing their minutes for the research meeting. Remember that everyone has to submit their own minutes - I can't accept the same set of minutes for each member of the group. I know that this isn't the way minutes would be done in a work setting, however, as part of the assessment, each student is required to produce minutes (I asked people to submit their work at the end of the class - I got some, but not all, of the minutes. I presume the rest are on their way to jerryoneill@stevenson.ac.uk).


As the groups worked on that, Group 4 had their meeting (I'll give you feedback next week). And we set up a Group 5 for the three folk who still need to do their meeting.


One thing that came out of the meetings so far is that there is little use in going to the first sites that Google suggest. These sites are often more to do with the marketing and promotion of the event and you may find that there is little there on the political, economic or social impact of your event. You need to dig a bit deeper and, as one member of Group 4 said, "Go old school - use the library".

However, all of this is part of the reasons for having these research meetings in the first - you get to discuss some of the problems you are having with your research topics.


Next week, you will be putting all of your research together in your report.

What did you do today?

Write a comment telling me what you achieved today.