Updated: 2003-09-23 11:43

DAT2330 - Research Project

Due Date - 10:00AM Monday, June 4, 2001

Weight in Final Grade - 5%

Objectives

1. To become familiar with another operating system not covered so far in the academic programme. The following O/S are excluded from consideration for this project: DOS, Win 3.1, Win95, Win98, Linux and MVS. Other variants of Windows and Unix are accepted (e.g. AIX or SCO Unix).
2. To showcase report-writing skills incorporating technical material in a summary presentation format.

Summary of Requirements

1. Form a team of three, four, or five students.
2. Each team will pick a different operating system.  (Pick an operating system not excluded in the above list.)
3. Reserve the operating system for your team.  (See below for how to do this.)
4. Research the O/S using a variety of sources (not just the Internet!)
5. Create an HTML Web page (or pages) with your report.  You may put the finished report on NETSRV, the College web server, or on ACADAIX, or on any other site that will be available through end-of-term.
6. Send the URL of the Web page to your instructor before the due date and time.
7. Submit your peer evaluation forms.

Team Work

The reports are to be team efforts.  You select your own team.  A team may contain three, four, or five students.  A team may not contain one, two, or more than five students.

How to reserve your O/S:

Have one team member go to the DAT2330 discussion news group for this term:

news://news.idallen.com/algonquinc.academic.courses.dat.2330.01s.discussion

Look for and read the thread (subject topic) entitled: "Teams: Research Project Choices ".  Read any already posted articles to ensure that no one else has picked the same OS as your team. If your choice is already taken, choose another OS. If not, use the Follow-Up feature of your news reader to post a follow-up article stating the OS your team has chosen in the subject line of the follow-up news article:

List the names of all team members in the follow-up news article body.  Do not reply by E-mail.

 The first valid team to post and select a particular operating system has priority. Post only when your team is assembled - postings containing less than three student names will not reserve an O/S choice!

Research Method

Research your O/S and briefly describe it using the following four headings, in the following order:

1. History and Present Market
   (where did it come from? who uses it now?)
2. Strengths and Weaknesses 
   (relate these to O/S selection criteria discussed in class) 
3. Future 
   (your forecast for the future of this O/S)
4. Research Sources
   (where did you find your information? for web content, use current, click-able links)

This report is only worth 5% of your overall grade; don't submit a hundred pages of small print copied blindly from the results of a Web search. Marks are awarded for being selective as well as being comprehensive! (Your future boss won't have time to read huge, rambling reports either.)  Summarize the material you find; don't just copy it.

Reports incorporating a variety of information sources will be valued more than reports generated solely from online searches.

Attribute, with source, author, and date, your use of copied material and ideas that are not your own.

Report Submission Format

The resulting brief report is to be formatted in HTML. To do this, you may use Netscape Composer, write your own HTML, or use any other HTML tool you wish.

Save one copy of your report in a safe place and upload one copy to any public web server. You can choose to upload to NETSRV, the College web server, or to ACADAIX. If you upload to a non-Algonquin web server, make sure the server is reliable and available until the end of the term.  Project URLs will be posted on the course web page for our mutual edification (which is why all links to web sources must be live and click-able).

Send the URL of the public web site in a plain-text E-mail message to your instructor before the deadline. (Do not send HTML or word-processor email.  Plain text only.) Team member full names and Algonquin E-mail addresses (not Hotmail!) must be listed in the body of the E-mail submitting the report URL. The names of the authors should also appear on the Web page itself.

Each team member must also print and submit a written, confidential peer evaluation form (on paper) to the instructor on or before 10AM Friday, June 8.

Resources

Research consisting of only Internet sources may be considered suspect and incomplete unless the sources are of high-quality.  Periodicals, books, and libraries existed long before Internet; find them and use them!

Research consisting of only cut-and-paste excerpts from web pages, with no document structure or lacking flow or readability, will not be acceptable.  Treat this paper as if you were submitting it to an employer and showcasing both your technical knowledge and presentation skills.  (You may be doing exactly that some time soon!)  Remember: Summarize your findings; don't expect me (or your employer) to read dozens of pages!

Web Author: Ian! D. Allen idallen@idallen.ca      Updated: 2003-09-23 11:43

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