Dear Students,
I know you all have the assignment instructions for your final report, as well as the grading rubrics, but I will go over a few items students have found helpful in the past since this assignment is worth 20% of your grade.
This report is to be done in Times New Roman or Garamond 12-point font. You may use Ariel for headers if you wish.
The document is to be single-spaced and contain at least 3,500, but not more than 5,000 words.
The report should contain the following in this order:
Letter of Transmittal or Routing Slip to the Decision Maker including any required intermediate approvals
Title Page with Decision Maker’s name and title, the title of your proposal, your name and position and the date
Executive Summary
Table of Contents listing every section and beginning page number
List of Illustrations (minimum 2) with illustration title and page numbers where your illustrations appear
Introduction
A series of text sections separated by headers and including at least 2 integrated and sourced illustrations as well as in-text APA format citations reporting at least 8 external references that are listed alphabetically in the Works Cited page
Conclusion
Recommendations – a series of step-by-step actions for the decision maker to take to implement your proposed solution
APA-style references with at least 8 references listed alphabetically in APA format; at least 3 different types of references are required – web, regulation, newspaper, book, journal, or magazine and no more than 3 of any given type, except no more than 2 personal interviews. All references must be used in-text in the body of the report to be listed on the reference page. References should have a print date within the past 5 years to be current and relevant.
Illustrations must not be on stand-alone pages. They are to be incorporated into the report on the page they are referenced.
Pagination
There is a very specific way the report is to be paginated. This area has been difficult for students in the past because you are to combine Arabic and Roman numerals in a specific manner, which is standard business report pagination. Allow time to do this if you are not familiar with the process because this is a required grading rubric.
Neither the Letter Transmittal or Routing Slip or Title page contain page numbers.
The Executive Summary through the List of Illustrations are lower-case Roman numerals.
The first page of the report itself is not numbered.
Page 2 of the report through the end of the document are labeled with Arabic numbers.
I strongly urge you to review the grading rubrics for this assignment both before you begin and when you complete your report prior to submission. I also urge you to put your completed report aside for a day and come back to proofread it out loud prior to submission the next day. You will pick up many missed words or incorrectly spelled words that spell check misses because they are words.
Many of you have chosen topics that present an opportunity to change lives for the better if your solutions are implemented. It is worth making the effort to produce a grammatically correct document that will be taken seriously by the decision maker.
