Musculoskeletal Biomechanics
Spring 2014
Term Paper Guidelines/Suggestions/Rubrick
 Overall

You are telling a story. Make sure you set it up, explain it clearly, and summarize at the
end.

I am your audience. You don’t need to cover basic info that you might in your
presentation.

The writing must be your own. If you take an idea from a reference and don’t
paraphrase then you’d better put it in quotes and cite it. I may use software such as
Turn It In to check for plagiarism.

I only need 1 copy per team

You can submit them to me via email (preferred) or in hard copy

I generally grade these as a team effort with a single grade. If there was a clear (and
unequal) separation of duties in writing the paper, feel free to indicate who was
responsible for which sections.

Feel free to give it to me earlier if it is ready (no extra credit, though I’ll probably be less
burned out reading it early).
 Length roughly 10-20 pages, double spaced

Tell me what you need to, but don’t put words on paper just to make it longer

Length doesn’t have a direct effect on your grade. I don’t count words, paragraphs, etc.
 Spelling/grammar

Consider this to be a professional paper so take care

I’m not going to take points off for every spelling/grammar mistake, but if it makes the
paper sloppy or hard to read, you may get dinged.
 Organization/format

Can follow standard research paper format, but doesn’t need to if it doesn’t work for
your project

Introduction
 What are you going to tell me about?
 What important background info would someone need to know?

Body
 Tell me a story, set up by your introduction.
Musculoskeletal Biomechanics
Spring 2014
 It can sometimes be tough to integrate the work of several people, but give it a
shot. This won’t affect the grade unless I get whiplash from really obvious
transitions.
 Include strengths & weaknesses, and what you’d might do differently next time

Summary
 1 paragraph or so summarizing the paper

References
 I’m not tied to any particular format
 Include references to web sites and other electronic media
 If in doubt, cite it.
 Try to find the original reference. There have been occasional instances where
someone used a derivative reference that actually took the material from
elsewhere.

Appendices
 If you have calculations and/or code, figures that don’t contribute directly to the
body of the document, etc. then feel free to put them in an appendix. This
could make the paper longer, but that’s fine.
 Equations necessary to the calculations can (should?) be in the body of the
document.
I generally don’t have a formal Rubrick, but roughly speaking I’m considering the following
 Clarity ~ 30%

how well is the information presented?

is it reasonably easy to follow the logic and flow?

are graphs, tables, etc easy to follow and understand?
 Completeness ~ 50%

was the topic covered thoroughly?

were calculations of appropriate difficulty (where relevant)?

was the content of appropriate depth for a senior level ME course?
 Style, organization, care ~ 20%

were transitions between topics and/or authors fairly smooth?

were there significant spelling and grammar problems

is the flow logical or at least easy to follow?