Homework: Draft Paper Outline

Background

The final summative assessment of this course will be based on a paper. This exercise is here to help you get started with writing.

Learning Objectives

After finishing this activity, you will be able to create an outline of a paper.

Instructions

  1. Refresh your memory of the final assignment by Individual Final Assignment: Paper.
  2. Create a draft manuscript file that uses the prescribed template.
  3. Add the working title of your paper.
  4. Add a placeholder for the abstract.
  5. Add section headers. The first one should be “Introduction,” and the final one can be a “Discussion” or “Conclusion”. The remaining ones in the middle are up to you.
    • A traditional scientific report includes an introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD). But here you are building an argument, more than reporting on an experiment, so we care less about reporting on methodology.
  6. Consider sections covering the following topics for the middle part. Try to have each section do one thing and one thing only. Of course, you can add subsections to your top-level sections.
    • A summary of any theory you will use to discuss the design situation and concept itself.
    • A description of the social issue you are addressing in the Amsterdam context.
    • A description of the design concept.
    • Arguments for why the design concept effectively addresses the social issue.
    • A discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the design concept.
      • For this, one approach is to compare the design concept to theories you have been exposed to in the course that discuss what makes an excellent ethical/responsible/human-centered/contestable AI system. If you do this, you should introduce the theory in a separate section before describing the design (see above).
    • A reflection on your analysis of the design concept for the overlapping fields of design, AI, and social innovation.
  7. For each of the sections you have identified, sketch out what you will be writing in a handful of bullets in that section. There is no need to do the actual writing just yet, but try to be as clear and specific as you can be about what you need to write there when the time comes, and if there are several steps to the argument you will be making in that section, try to describe them one step at a time.
  8. Finally, write a draft abstract. At this time, it is OK to speculate about the key insights from the paper.
    • One structure for an abstract that you could use is as follows:
      • A sentence or two that describes the problem and why it is essential.
      • The approach taken to address the problem.
      • A few sentences describing the key “findings.”
      • Conclude with why the findings are significant and how they could be used.
  9. Finally finally, have a look at the Map of Writing by PJ Stappers, particularly the Reviewing & Writing with CNTRL section. These criteria are helpful for evaluating your output, and we will also use them to assess each other’s work in weeks to come.

Product

An outline of your paper. Try to limit the outline to two pages.

Follow-up

Bring a hard copy of your outline, printed single-sided on A4 sheets of paper, to next week’s class. We will discuss these outlines during next week’s session.