For this assignment you will write a Position Paper identifying an important problem or issue in your field and proposing a specific solution to address this problem or issue. In order for your Position Paper to be successful, both your problem and solution should be as specific as possible, and your paper should be written with a specific audience in mind. You may want to imagine that you are trying to convince a particular audience to adopt a new technique or tool, approach, or method. You must include a clear process description and at least one figure or table in your Position Paper.
Please remember that effective Position Papers should be written from a reader-centered perspective. This means that you should consider why the problem is of significance to the audience, not to you, and why the solution is workable or appealing to them, not to you. Explain both the problem and the solution in terms that would be understandable and relatable to a technical but non-expert audience, such as a doctor, engineer, or scientist with a different specialty, or an administrator or executive who majored in the same subject as you did, but who has not done technical work in many years.
Because they are written for a wide variety of audiences about a wide variety of subjects, many different topics and tones are appropriate for Position Papers. You can see examples of more and less commercial or technical Position Papers here (note: all of the links below should be live. Please notify me if any of these links do not work, although you may need to reload them since links launched through word sometimes generate garbage text when opened the first time):
Many of these papers are also available on Blackboard with some others.
Your Position Paper shoulduse material from at least 3 sources to explain at least two approaches, although you may need to do additional, general research about your topic, problem, and solution/approach. Please cite all figures, data, ideas, examples, words, etc. taken from other sources, as well as following the conventions for references and citations when referring to previous work in scientific writing.
Note: The problems and solutions in this paper may be a mixture of your own and ideas you have read in the course of your research. You are expected to properly acknowledge the source(s) of ideas encountered in your research as explained above and in accord with scientific conventions of referencing and citation as discussed in the textbook and in class. In addition to obvious forms of academic dishonesty such as copying and pasting text from the Internet or direct plagiarism from any other source, examples of unacceptable practices on this assignment include, but are not limited to:
- Copying both a problem and a solution from an existing paper, a friend's paper, a newspaper article, or other source, with or without attribution
- Paraphrasing or summarizing any portion of your paper from any source without citation
- Telling your friend exactly how to solve the problem they have chosen or designing their solution for them
- Allowing your friend to copy your essay or telling them which strategies are most appropriate for this assignment
- Designing a solution; visual presentations of data such as graphs, tables or charts; writing equations for a friend or having someone or something (such as WolframAlpha) do these things on your behalf without acknowledging their contributions.
- Editing a friend's essay and fixing their errors to give a false impression of their writing ability
Examples of acceptable practices include:
- Reading multiple sources for background on your issue and synthesizing them to come up with a problem and/or solution, using proper citation
- Advocating a solution proposed one or more specific sources, using proper citation
- Using facts that are common knowledge without attribution
- Brainstorming terms with friends
- Discussing your problem, solution, or the assignment in general terms with a group of friends
- Discussing the possible topics and problems/solutions and strategies for research or writing for different types of audiences with friends
- Directing your friend to resources to help them understand their problem/solution, the assignment, or brainstorming about problems/solutions more completely
- Proof-reading a friend's essay and pointing out errors or typos
Guidelines:
- All papers must follow citation rules of style appropriate for your particular major
- All papers must be typed, double-spaced, and printed on standard A4 paper. You must use Times New Roman, Calibri, or another standard font in 12- or 10-point size and the default margins for your word processing program. You may use either American or British English spelling and usage, but must be consistent. That is, if you use "judgement" rather than "judgment" you must also use "colour" rather than "color," "lift" rather than "elevator," etc.
- Your paper must be carefully proofread and spell-checked and must not contain any careless errors or typos.
- Papers should use little or no quotation. Most scientific and technical writing uses quotation rarely, if at all.
- All papers must be bound and pages should be numbered.
- All paraphrased, summarized or quoted material must be properly attributed to the author.
- If you want me to read a (non-graded, optional) draft of your paper, please send me a copy at least 24 hours in advance of an appointment that you can schedule with me by filling in your details on the sign-up sheet on my office door (SOS 126).