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How to construct Integrative Reviews.
Format. The length of the review is indicated in the syllabus. Reviews for the different
modules may differ in length. In general the reviews will be between 1,000 to 3,000
words long. The word count does NOT include the reference section, or any figures and
tables that you might wish to include.
In general, APA format should be used. See the 5 th Edition of the Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association for details. (APA style guides are on
sale at the Campus Bookstore.) Your name, the date, and the module title should be
near the top of the first page. Your name and the page number should be in the header
of each page.
Note that I do not want paper copies, but electronic copies. These should be
emailed to me BEFORE the beginning of the class in which they are due.
Content.
The Integrative Review should integrate the readings assigned to the class,
discussions, presentations, projects, plus any outside supplemental readings you might
have done.
All papers should begin with an Introduction section in which you provide an
overview of your topic and the major points you wish to make. The body of the paper
can be divided into subsections where each subsection tackles a major point that you
wish to discuss. In general, subsections should span more than one paper and should
(again in general) not be a summary of the paper you have read. All Integrative
Reviews should end with a Summary and Conclusion section (these may be two
sections or one). Note that a paper this short should NOT have an abstract.
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COGS 6100
The body of the Integrative Review should provide a thoughtful evaluation of the
strong and weak points of the papers discussed in class. Issues you might discuss
include things such as the contributions of the set of papers to theory, cognitive
engineering, and practice (or lack thereof), its relevance (or lack thereof) and
relationship to other research. Of course, you should be sure to emphasize the
strengths and weaknesses of the theories, methodologies, models employed, and the
prospects for advancement in this area both in terms of theory and practice.
Audience. Consider as your audience an intelligent professional who is interested in
your evaluation of the state of the art in this topic. You might imagine the professional is
a military or industrial manager who is trying to decide whether the state-of-the-art in
this area is advanced enough for her needs. Alternatively, you might imagine that the
professional funds research that is likely to result in near-term (3-5 years) advances that
can be applied to real problems. (Such a person might work for ONR, AFOSR, NSF,
NIH, ARDA, DARPA, Microsoft, etc.) In this latter case, you might imagine that the
Scientific Officer has asked you for a short White Paper in which your goal is to confirm
that this is an important area and is one in which the right research could make an
important difference (i.e., you want them to invite you to submit a full grant proposal on
this topic).
Advice. After you finish your first draft, read your introduction, skip the middle part,
and read your summary and conclusions. Points made in the introduction should
reappear in the summary. Major points made in the summary should be foreshadowed
in the introduction. Now read the body of your paper. The structure of the body and the
issues discussed should reflect the points made in the first and last sections.