You may within wide limits select the contents and organize the final report as you like, and doing so is also an aspect of developing your skills. However, here are some hints.
It can be helpful to think of writing for some particular reader. It could be somebody with a mathematical background who has never heard about this course, and would like to understand the essential aspects of it. Or, you may choose to write a course summary for yourself that you can use at a later stage to refresh your memory. Or, you can decide to turn directly to us as teachers and explain your view.
In either case, it will become clearer what you learned if you describe your own understanding of the course and what you learned, rather than just copying parts of the course material or your own solutions. As part of your report, you may try to summarize your general insights in the purpose and practice of mathematical thinking, across the boundaries of specific model types or areas of application. Also, keep in mind that an important part of the course has been to learn the different skills of mathematical thinking in general. If you feel that you have good insights that would fit in the final report, which you already wrote in the weekly modules, feel free to summarize or reuse them. But be aware that are also many other things you can write about the course and its contents.
As with anything you write, write in your own words - you may of course use specific quotes or figures from the course in a normal way. If you feel that you have some things that would fit in the final report, which you already wrote in the weekly modules, feel free to summarize or reuse them to a reasonable extent. However be aware that there is a lot you can write about the course and its contents.
It is fine if you want to give some general comments about what you think about the course in the report, but don't turn the entire report into a course evaluation. Also, avoid turning it into a detailed diary over exactly what you did at different times.
Finally, I encourage you to write a report that you think is good and meaningful, and that you would like to save to a later time. If you think it is good, others will surely think so too. You can see this as a exercise consistent with the course philosophy of making you more independent, by practising your own sense of judgement,
I have compiled a short document with general writing hints that may be useful for the final report. Also see the quality criteria further down on this page.
I. Explain any significant differences in the contributions of the group members for the report and/or for the entire course. Otherwise write that there have been no significant differences.
II. Make a motivated self-assessment for the course as a whole, based on the information you have at this time. Use the same scale as for the other self-assessments - suggested grading criteria provided below in this document.
And as always - do a self-check! If you do not pass your self-check, do not submit and contact a teacher as soon as possible!
You need to submit your report in two ways!
1. Submit the final report in FIRE just as with the weekly modules. Write the file name e.g. as "group34final.pdf", where the number is your group number (or individually as "group34GretaKarlsson.pdf"). The following information is required on the titlepage:2. ON MONDAY MORNING, send your report also to the other groups which will be in the same meeting, i.e. you will normally send to four other persons. We will schedule the meetings, and you will receive the email addresses in advance.
You will receive a time for the final meeting. The meeting will take place in the examination week mainly on Thursday and Friday. Normally, three groups and a teacher will participate in the meeting.
The purpose of the meeting is to:
During the meeting we will begin by discussing each report in turn, and you will provide your feedback. We expect the length of the meeting to be about 40-50 minutes.
Before the meeting you need to read the other two reports, and prepare to give some feedback on the other reports during the meeting. Also think if there is anything else you would like to discuss at the end of the course.
You are really quite free to formulate your feedback as you like. You can comment both on the content and on the presentation itself. Try to make note of aspects that stand out, whether positive or negative. We are not asking for a lot of detailed comments, just a couple of brief but relevant comments of the kind that you would appreciate yourself.
In addition to other points, you may want to end by summarizing your feedback according to the model "two stars and a wish". So two things that you think of as especially positive with the report, and one area of possible improvement (or that you simply would have liked to read more about!).
Please note that feedback is not the same as opposition. We are not asking you to be overly critical, but rather to give a balanced and constructive view of your impressions in a way that you would like to receive yourself.
If you wish, you may also comment on the self-assessment. (optional)
In my view, I think that some reasonable basic quality criteria are:
You can see that this is rather similar to how I wrote about the modules, so the basic ideas are already familiar to you.
Since we encourage you to write as you wish, different reports can focus on different themes in very different ways. We therefore have an open notion of quality, rather than on some predetermined idea of what a report in this course is supposed to look like. I know from previous years that reports can be very different both in content and style, and they can all be high quality reports.
The overall course grade will be based on the weekly modules combined with the final report. For the highest grade the quality criteria should be satisfied to the highest level that can reasonably be obtained within the scope of the course. For an intermediate high grade, these qualities should be clearly demonstrated to some extent. Note that there is a very large variation in how this can be achieved, and where the emphasis is.
So how much weight should be given to the modules versus the final report? On one hand, most of the work has been spent in the modules, and a good and consistent problem solving performance is clearly important. On the other hand, in a course you are expected to learn along the way, and the final report summarizes your insights at the end of the course. So it seems reasonable that even if the modules together should have more weight than the final report, the final report should be given more weight than an ordinary module. At least the report should be able to swing the grade if the outcome from the modules is not obvious, and maybe more in exceptional cases. I do however find it difficult to give a numerical ratio, since a strict rule could for good reason be overruled by sensible judgement in a particular case.
Another trade-off is excellence versus hard work - this was already discussed for the modules. If someone has seemingly without much effort performed very well in the modules, or has written a short but unusually insightful or original report, this should be just fine. However, it can also be very useful to be able to put in a lot of good effort e.g. by writing a less original but more comprehensive report of good quality. I am personally happy to think that for the grade "good", a reasonably good performance can be strengthened by a very good effort. However, for the highest grade "very good", we see very good performance as the primary determining factor.
As with the modules, the final grade will be set by the main teacher(s), using the grading system of the university (Chalmers or GU). However, your self-assessment will be a valuable complementary input to our assessment.
Should you not be satisfied with your final grade, you can have a separate discussion with one of the main teachers. If we think you are reasonably close to a higher grade we can suggest how you can improve your modules or your report.
Final report