Check List

Here is a checklist of the minimum expectations for your final project. Please be advised that simply providing all items on this list will only reflect that you have a satisfactory grasp of material and/or performance on significant aspects of the class (a “C” grade). Please review the syllabus to determine the level of quality that you are responsible for in order to achieve a specific grade.

Checklist:

1. A defined research problem. While doing science for fun is always encouraged, a scientific research study must have a problem informed by the literature that justifies doing the work.

2. A research objective. Provide one sentence that clearly states the overarching goal of your study. For example, “The objective of this study was to simulate how local interactions between farmers lead to system level patterns of agricultural land use change.”

3. Research relevance. Provide a convincing argument as to why your research is important, and the potential impacts that it will have on the topic or research area that you are investigating.

4. Description of methods: Describe your methods using ODD Protocol. Here is a book chapter by Volker Grimm that does a great job of explaining it.

5. Description of results: Using the narrative approach provided by the Millington et al. (2012) paper, describe how micro-level processes lead to the emergent patterns simulated by your model. Support this description with figures and videos of your model. In addition, your results should include a sensitivity analysis to determine to which parameters your model is most sensitive.

6. A discussion of the implications of the results. In a discussion section, describe (1) what results tell us about the system under study, (2) the broader implications of the results (what do your results mean beyond this study), and (3) what would you do in future research to enhance the methods and potential results. Here you can compare your results against what others have found (using citations) to determine if your findings agree or are in contradiction to the literature.

7. Citations: While there is no magic number, it is assumed that you will need at least 10 scientific articles to adequately develop your research problem and to formulate a discussion section.