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Research and writing is an integrated part of the graduate study at any good quality graduate programs. A term paper is one of the best ways to document and present your conducted research. It may also be very useful and helpful towards your final master project and paper. Many high quality final master research projects actually consist of a series term projects and consequently their term papers may contribute greatly into their final master documentation and papers to be submitted and published.

1. Structure and format of your term paper (follow the standard IEEE template http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html )

a. Common size of a term paper is 4~5 pages following the standard IEEE template.

b. Title – the title should concisely describe your research findings and outcomes

c. Authors – You are the first (main) author, and commonly your professor is the last author. In the case the paper has potential for publication, your professor will help edit and improve the quality of your paper.

d. Abstract – one paragraph highlighting why the research is worth doing, what you have done, and what research outcome you have obtained, as well as the contribution to the literature.

e. Keywords – normally 3~5 keywords should be listed for search purpose.

f. Introduction – one or two paragraphs describing the need of this research, e.g. what are the problems/issues/limitations of current solutions.

g. Literature Study and Background – up to 2 pages of your studies of existing research works; this is the place where most of your previous paper summaries should go in. Use smooth transitions in between your literature studies.

h. Proposed research and contributions – further discuss your own thoughts, proposed ideas, and possible solutions, and why yours are better. This section shows the originality and creativity of the research and is the most important section when judging the contribution of the paper.

i. Experiments and results – this is where you describe the details of experiences and results, e.g. using figures and tables. This helps convince the reviewers that your research is solid and trustworthy.

j. Conclusions and future work – draw conclusion and propose future work.

k. References – all used references must be listed using the correct format. They must all be cited within the text in previous sections.