Draft Paper
ASSIGNMENT 8. DUE WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30 AT 4:00PM.
Table of contents
It’s time to start putting everything together into the paper. This is an exciting moment — this is when all the work you’ve been doing starts to take shape into a paper that you can submit for publication. This won’t be a complete draft, but it will put together the bones of the paper and incorporate text for a substantial proportion of the paper. You can continue to iterate on the final results. However, a common failure point for researchers is not to save enough time to write a convincing paper before the deadline, which is why we’re starting now.
In class, your draft paper will be passed to other students for a mock peer review, and you’ll do a mock peer review on their paper.
Your TA has been giving you feedback on each submission. The draft paper is an excellent opportunity to integrate that feedback into, e.g., the Introduction or Evaluation, to get feedback from the TA on whether it is improving. As a reminder, to encourage mastery learning, we expect that you will address that feedback in your final version. Final submissions that do not address feedback will be penalized in the final paper grades. They will not be penalized in the Draft Paper, since iteration is optional in the draft—just encouraged.
Download the LaTeX template here: CS8803-MDS: Final Paper.
Part 1: Make Your Paper Outline
Make an outline by planning out the sections and subsections, as well as figures and tables that you are planning to include in your final paper.
- Sections and subsections: What sections/subsections are you planning to include in the paper? What are the main points that you are trying to cover in each section?
- Figures, tables, graphs: For each figure and table you will have in your paper, what role does it play? Why is it included in that section/sub-section?
Here’s an example paper outline to show you the level of detail you should describe your paper’s structure. You should have about 1 page for this part, but don’t go overboard. It is more important that you spend your time this week writing a good draft paper, but we’d still like you to explicitly do this meta-analysis so that you have something to reference when writing. This outline will also help your peers to get an overall sense of the paper during the peer review.
Part 2: Write your draft paper
Now, it’s time to flesh out your outline into a full draft paper. You are encouraged to use content that you generated in previous assignments, e.g., the introduction and evaluation plan. You may need to tweak your previous writing as your project has evolved.
At this stage, your draft paper can leave the Related Work, Discussion and Conclusion sections in outline form. Method and Evaluation sections can be incomplete or just pilot data. Most likely, you’ll be focusing most of your effort on writing out the details of your approach, and reporting any results you have so far. Include a References section with citations at the bottom. There is no specific word count for this assignment, but keep in mind the final paper should be at least 4 pages for one-person teams and 6 pages for everyone else.
Your draft paper will be traded with another group for peer review in section after the deadline. We, the staff, will also send feedback on the draft.
Submission and Grading
Submit a PDF with (1) your draft paper and (2) your outline on gradescope before class. Your submission will be used in class for peer review and as the basis for your Completeness grade.
Your submission will be graded on the following criteria:
- Outline: does your outline provide a clear and complete plan of the paper? (5pt)
- Completeness: does your draft paper have reasonable content coverage for the method and evaluation section of the outline? (5pt)
- Clarity: is the writing overall clear and easy to follow for a technical expert in the field? (5pt)
- Peer review: is your peer review on your peers’ draft (in class after the deadline) thoughtful and helpful? (5pt)