Assignments How to Write an Essay - Computer Applications in ...

Overview 

Assignments 

• Brief introduction to the basics of essay 

writing. 

• The essay assignment. 

• Suggested essay titles. 

• The website assignment. 

David Gamez IUA Week 4 Autumn 2007 


How to Write an Essay 

How to Write 

an Essay 

• Your essay must be clearly written in 

reasonable English 

• It must have a coherent argument. 

• It must cite its sources. 

• It must not be copied off the Internet! 

• Resources section has some guides to 

writing an essay. 



Stages in Essay Writing 

• Research + ideas. 

• Outline 

• Iterative writing process 

• Introduction and conclusion 

• References 

• Improve the English. 

Research 

• First look at some introductory articles, for 

example on Wikipedia. 

• Then start to follow up links and look up 

any technical terms that you do not 

understand. 

• This research should turn up some more 

in depth articles that are worth reading in 

detail. 



1

Research – Multiple Sources 

• Don’t just use Wikipedia – draw on a 

variety of sources. 

• Not everything that you read online is true! 

• Try to evaluate the reliability of different 

sites and their potential biases. 

• For example, an online version of a 

newspaper is likely to be more reliable 

than a blog. 

Research - Reliability 

• If you are citing something as a fact, try to 

see if it is confirmed by more than one 

website. 

• Be aware that websites often copy content 

from each other – so see if the information 

is phrased differently on different sites. 

• Keep a careful note of all of your sources - 

you will need to refer to them later and cite 

them at the end of the essay. 



Research 

• A well-researched article should draw on 

material from books and officially 

published papers. 

• However, for this assignment just websites 

is ok. 

Ideas 

• As you research the topic write down 

ideas about what you will include in the 

essay. 

• This can include short notes, quotations, 

statistics etc. 

• These will be extremely useful when you 

actually come to write the essay. 



Outline 

• When you have done most of your 

research and have a decent number of 

ideas, it is time to start planning. 

• Every essay has an introduction, a 

conclusion and a references section. 

• The difficult thing is what goes in between! 

• Plan this middle part first and the rest will 

fall into place. 


Outline 

• I work by writing down a list of paragraph 

topics. 

• I then change their order and edit them to 

give a list of the paragraphs that will form 

the main section. 

• It is easier if you do this in capitals 

• I then paste all my ideas and quotations 

into the appropriate paragraphs. 

• And the bulk of the essay is almost done. 


2

Outline Example 

• PARAGRAPH 1 IS ABOUT … 

– Idea 3 

– Idea 7 

– Quotation 21 


– Idea 55 

– Statistic 34 


– Quotation 1200 

Iterative Writing Process 

• As you research, you write down ideas. 

• As you write the essay, you need to do 

more research. 

• Move back and forth between the two until 

the essay is done. 

• Make sure that each paragraph relates to 

the others and that the main section tells a 

coherent story. 



Introduction and Conclusion 

• Tidy up the main section and make sure 

that it is readable. 

• When the main section is almost 

complete, write an introduction explaining 

what the essay is about. 

• Write a conclusion summarising the 

results of the essay. 

• Add the references section. 

References 

• You must reference all of your sources in 

a section titled “References” at the end of 

the essay. 

• Use [1], [2] etc. to indicate the reference in 

the text. 

• List all of your references in alphabetical 

order at the end of the essay in a section 

called “References”. 



References - Example 

Overall Structure 

The tiger website [2] had some great 

pictures of cats. However, the cats on the 

lion website [1] were bigger. 

References 

[1] Lion website: www.domestic-cats.com 

[2] Tiger website: www.tigers.com 

Introduction 

Paragraph 1 

Paragraph 2 

Paragraph 3 

… 

Conclusion 

References 

Main Section 



3

Improve the English 

Questions 

• Spell check your essay. 

• Grammar check your essay – although 

bear in mind that Microsoft Word is far 

from perfect at this. 

• If English is not your first language, it may 

be a good idea to get a friend to read it 

through and correct it. 

• I always read my essays out loud before 

handing them in. This reveals many errors 

and results in a smoother style. 

• ? 



Essay Instructions 

Essay Assignment 

• 1000-2000 words. 

• Must be typed, not handwritten. 

• Worth 10 marks (out of 100 for the whole 

course). 

• Can be emailed to me at iua@davidgamez.eu or 

printed out and handed in on paper. 

• State your full name in the email and make sure 

it is written on the essay 

• Must be handed in by the 29 th November 

2007. 



Essay Instructions 

• Contact me before this date if you think 

that you are going to hand it in late. 

• Note that the end of term exam will contain 

an extended essay-type question on 

similar topics. 

• Writing a decent essay will help you with 

this! 

Topics 

• Only a limited amount of the information 

that you need is in the lecture slides. 

• You will need to do your own research 

online. 

• And please supply links to your sources in 

the ‘References’ section of your essay. 

• You are welcome to suggest your own 

title, but please discuss it with me first. 



4

Suggested Essay Titles 

1. Discuss some of the emerging developments in 

computer hardware and software and suggest 

three business opportunities that these will 

create. 

2. What is the difference between open and 

closed source software? How do people make 

money from software developed with these 

different approaches? Illustrate with two 

examples. 

3. Discuss some of the problems with software 

piracy and how companies are attempting to 

prevent it. How can software piracy increase a 

company’s revenue? 


4. Outline the advantages and disadvantages of 

two software development practices. Suggest 

areas in which each is applicable. 

5. What are the costs of bad software? Illustrate 

with two case studies of poor development 

practices. 

6. Describe the hardware and software behind a 

major e-commerce site. This cannot be 

MySpace, so search for your own example. 




7. Outline all of the steps (hardware, software, domain 

names, Internet service provider, company registration, 

etc.) that you need to take to set up your own rival to 

eBay. 

8. Give a detailed analysis of three different ways of 

making money online and do a detailed estimates of the 

costs. This should include startup and maintenance 

costs for the site, shipping costs, advertising, likely 

revenue, etc. Typical examples would be a standard 

online website selling goods, such as Pixmania, a 

website offering free services supported by advertising, 

such as Hotmail, Google, and MySpace, and a website 

that charges for a service, such as Paypal. 

9. Discuss three examples of Internet censorship and 

describe three ways in which Internet censorship can be 

circumvented. 



10.Explain data warehousing and data mining and 

give two examples of how these have been 

used to improve a company’s revenue. 

11.Discuss the economic cost of cyberattacks to 

business and how this can be reduced. 

Illustrate with a couple of case studies. 

12.Produce a comprehensive computer security 

plan for a small Internet company. This should 

include physical security, staff training, and 

security at the hardware and software level. 

Estimate some of the costs. 



13.How do data privacy issues affect companies? 

Discuss some of the laws that apply to this 

area and illustrate with a couple of cases. 

14.Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of 

Ajax technology. Suggest two services or 

applications that Ajax could be used for and 

how these could make money. 

15.How is artificial intelligence applied in 

business? Give three examples. 

16.What are the current markets for robots? 

Discuss three new business opportunities that 

are emerging in this area. 

• ? 

Questions 



5

Website Assignment 

Website 

Assignment 

• Worth 10 marks (out of 100 for the whole 

course). 

• Must be all your own code. 

• Must be hand written HTML, CSS and 

JavaScript created using a text editor. 

• Use of website design software, such as 

Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc., is not 

acceptable. 




• Website can be on any topic of your 

choice (except cats!) 

• It would be a good idea to write a simple 

plan of your site and discuss it with me 

during the tutorial hour. 



• Your website must have: 

– At least three pages. 

– HTML tables, forms, images and links. 

– A external cascading style sheet controlling the 

formatting of the whole site. 

– Either an embedded style sheet on one of the pages 

or an inline style on one or more tags. 

– A small amount of JavaScript. This can be used to 

check the formatting of data in a form, to hide an 

email address from spammers, or for another 

purpose, such as animating an image, changing a 

button when the mouse hovers over it, etc. etc. 


Handing in Website Assignment 

• Zipped up website must be submitted 

to me by the 29th November 2007. 

• Can email it to me at iua@davidgamez.eu 

or submit on CD/DVD. 

• State your full name in the email or write it 

on the CD. 

• Contact me before this date if you think 

that you are going to hand it in late. 

Oral Exam 

• There will be a 5 minute oral exam on the 

29th November / 6th December. 

• You must be able to explain the HTML, 

CSS and JavaScript in your site. 

• Note that 1/3 of the final exam will be on 

website design using HTML, CSS and 

JavaScript. 

• Practising HTML, CSS and JavaScript is 

the best way to learn. 



6

Questions 

• ? 

Resources 



Resources 

• How to write an essay: 

http://www.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers 

/home.htm 

• Guide to writing a basic essay with many 

useful links: 

http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/es 

say/index.html. 

• Detailed essay writing guide: 

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/ind 

ex2.html 


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