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CSCI 303.1W – Technical Communication for
Computer Professionals
Research Project
Fall 2020
Write a research paper on the recent job trends in Computer Science (CS). In order to identify
trends in current job openings you first need to collect data about current CS job openings from job
search web sites such as Indeed.com. The main goal of the data collection is to summarize the main
job requirements described in listings, such as technical skills, programming languages, tools,
location, salary (if available), and any needed certificates. Then, you present and organize your data
using charts or figures. Your last step is to identify trends or important features from the data that
you collected. It is up to you to decide which trends to focus on, but make sure to justify and clearly
explain your results using your data. There also should be a Related Work Section of the importance
of Computer Science as a field in the industry.
The project should be done individually. Your project should be objective, clear, direct to the point,
and have supporting evidence. The main tasks of this project are to:
– Clearly define the problem and its importance
– Learn about a new topic (job trends) and be able to write about it
– Identify the recent related work about this topic
– Document your findings using figures and tables
– Discuss and justify your results and findings
– Be familiar with reference management systems such as Zotero or Mendeley
– Format your paper following common CS formatting styles such as IEEE.
– Present your work
Research Paper:
Due Date: week 15
Grade: 25% of total grade
The final outcome of this project is a research article of 3 to 5 pages long. The format of your report
should follow the IEEE (A4) template for conference papers
(http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html). Your paper
should consist of the following sections:
– Abstract: summary of your paper. This section should be one paragraph.
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– Introduction: an introduction about the problem, its importance, and your main
contribution.
– Related Work: The literature survey section is a must to include in a research paper as it
gives your research historical perspective and places your work into the context of
established work in the field. A literature survey helps answer the questions: “What has been
done in this area?” and “How does your work relate to other work that has been done?”.
This section needs to reference at least 8 references and briefly discuss them in narrative
format.
– Main Section: the main section that describes your findings. This is where you describe
your data: what type of data you collected, and how you collected it. You can either use
Python code, Excel or Words to generate your figure and charts that summarize your data.
– Conclusion: focus on the main points in your paper and mention the future work.
– References: cite any references used in your research report. Use Mendeley, Zotero or MS
Word reference management system to automatically generate your list of references.
The tutorial should be written using MS Word. All figures and tables should have captions and
should be referenced throughout the text using cross-references. This research paper does not
involve programming (except if you decide to use Python to generate tables and figures). Please
start working early on this project to properly collect your data. Please be careful about
plagiarism.
Presentation:
Due Date: week 15
Grade: 15% of total grade
Your recorded presentation should be 15 minutes long and should include:
1. An introduction to your project.
2. Your data and your collection process.
3. The CS job trends that you identified. Make sure to explain your results through the use of
tables and figures.
4. Lessons learned and challenges faced.
5. A brief conclusion.