How to write Essay?Essays and their references and citations
These notes describe the structure and formal requirements for the longer
essays written on the MA Design for Interactive Media.
The target length for these essays is 4,500 words in Semester Two, and 6,500
words in Semester Three (15,000 for those taking the theory-only module.
Submissions over 50% longer than the target are frowned on, since such length
would imply a lack of selectivity! The criteria for assessment can be found in the
programme handbook on the intranet. All work is assessed separately by at
least two markers. All essays must be submitted in triplicate on paper. Selected
students will also be asked to provide a digital archive of their essay for use by
future students.
Essays
Essays must comprise the following elements
1 Title page
2 Abstract (approx 150 words)
3 Declarations
4 Acknowledgements (if any)
5 List of Contents
6 List of Appendices (if any)
7 Main body of text
8 Bibliography
9 Appendices (if any)
These are now described in more detail.
1 Title page
The words ‘Middlesex University’
Your name
The title
The words ‘submitted in partial fulfilment of module ELAxxxx of the MA Design
for Interactive Media.’ The module number will be 4120, 4130 or 4131 as
appropriate. Note that there is only one l in the middle of ‘fulfilment’.
The date
2 Abstract
This gives a brief summary of what the essay is about. You may want to
write this first, in order to clarify to yourself what the key issues are. Papers
for academic journals are usually also expected to carry up to 10 keywords
which indicate the essential themes, for example:
user interface management systems, concurrency, event-based
integration, artists, GUI construction, design
While keywords are not a requirement for your essay, you may still want to
list some, again in order to help you work out which themes are most
CEA : Essays and their references and citations {general}
Middlesex University Friday, June 15, 2001 Essays & references: 1 of 6
important.
This is an example abstract from a volume of conference proceedings:
The aim of this paper is to explore some ways of linking ethnographic
studies of work in context with the design of CSCW systems. It uses
examples from an interdisciplinary collaborative project on air traffic
control. Ethnographic methods are introduced, and applied to identifying
the social organisation of this cooperative work, and the use of
instruments within it. On this basis some metaphors for the electronic
representation of current manual practices are presented, and their
possibilities and limitations discussed.
3 Declaration
Comprises the words:
I declare that all the work in this essay is my own and all sources have |
