Independent study project report outline
From GeoClasses
Contents |
Abstract
This is a short summary of the project including the hypotheses tested, the methods used, the results and conclusions. It needs to be brief; approximately 100 words.
Introduction
Explain the problem you are trying to solve. What is the fundamental question being asked? Why is this important? How have others tried to answer this problem (literature review) and how does this work relate to the previous work. How will the results of this project be applied?
There must be a specific sub-section (see below) detailing the hypotheses that are being tested by your work.
Hypotheses tested
What are the specific hypotheses being tested by this project?
Methods
What methods did you use to answer the problem? Did you do field work? What data did you collect? How was the data analyzed?
You should have separate sub-sections (see below) where you provide a description of any data you collected, the data collected, data analysis methods.
Data collection
How was the data collected? From online sources? From field work?
If you collected your own data, carefully describe how the data was collected.
- What instruments were used? What were their capabilities (accuracy and precision)? How did you use the equipment (a step by step description of the field or lab procedure)?
Data collected
Provide links to the sources of the data you used, and to the data files (eg. Excel spreadsheets) with the raw data. Be sure to provide a good description of each link, and an explanation of how to read your spreadsheets.
Data analysis
What methods did you use in your analysis? Linear regression? Krieging?
Give a succinct description of each method you used (what does the method tell you, what are its shortcomings). You must go into as much detail as necessary to explain the method to someone who has never used it before; assume the reader is intelligent but not a scientist.
Results and Discussion
Report the results of your data analysis. Present graphs and diagrams, and explain what they mean (upload and link to your data files such as Excel or Surfer files).
Discuss what the data tells you about your original hypotheses. Do the data support the hypotheses or not? Explain carefully. Consider how if you can accept, reject, or modify your hypotheses.
Conclusion
Recap everything, explaining explicitly the results of your testing for each hypothesis you introduced in your introduction.
Future research
What further work needs to be done to prove or disprove your original hypotheses. What new hypotheses/questions were generated by your work?
