Purpose: Organization of experimental tasks is something that requires an active effort. Many students find it difficult to maintain focus on their experimental objectives. As a result their work does not progress in a rapid or effective manner. Before you begin work on any project you should have a very clear and specific plan regarding your work today, tomorrow, next week and next month.
Benefits of this methodology:
Identifying potential problem areas and areas for collaboration
Facilitates the communication of your experimental plan and ideas with your colleagues, as pertinent information is included in a standard format.
Forms the basis of a paper outline. You can begin to write your paper using your project page and add ideas or text as you progress
Template Structure
1) You will notice that there are 2 sections that come before the paper itself. ACTION PLAN and PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED.
These are located at the top of the page b/c it makes it fast for people reviewing (and familiar with) your work to get quickly to the information that is important to move your project forward. You should update these sections after each meeting.
2) Sections. You should complete each section of the template.
A) Background
B) Hypothesis
B) Specific Aims
C) General Experimental Approach (Design etc)
D) Pitfalls and alternatives
E) Potential Figures
F) Future Direction
You may also find it helpful to add the sections below to keep a record of points that you would like to have handy when writing your paper.
Materials and Methods
Results
Discussion
Literature cited / read
While these pages are shared with the group, they should be kept confidential and not distributed to anyone outside the lab unless explicit permission is provided. These pages are not publicly available but can be reviewed by other lab group members.
Please copy and paste this template below into a new page as required. Instructions can be found below.
If you like, you can also upload your subgroup presentations to the page by clicking on attachments at the bottom of the page. Finally please feel free to share comments or tips with the group.
To add a new Paper Summary page to your home page
1) Copy the template below, by highlighting and depressing the 'CTRL' key and holding down while pressing the 'C' key.
2) Go to your member page and click 'EDIT' on above your Member Page.
3) Add a title for your project under the Project Pages heading.
4) Click 'SAVE' to save the changes to your page.
5) Click on '+ CREATE NEW PAGE' which is located near the top of the web page.
6) Enter a short version of the project title - in the text box where it says PAGE NAME and select WEB PAGE (default) and select PUT PAGE UNDER [YOUR NAME] then click 'CREATE PAGE'
7) Place the cursor in the new page and depress the 'CTRL' key and hold down while pressing the 'v' key. The template should be pasted into your new project page.
8) Fill out your project details and click 'SAVE'. You must press SAVE after any changes you want to keep.
Begin Paper Summary Template
=============================================
DATE CREATED:
ACTION PLAN
PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED (PI) / OUTSIDE SKILL REQUIRED (OSR) / RESOLVED (R)
PAPER TITLE
A) Background
B) Hypothesis
B) Specific Aims
C) General Experimental Approach (Design etc)
D) Pitfalls and alternatives
E) Potential Figures
F) Future Directions
A) BACKGROUND:
B) HYPOTHESIS
C) SPECIFIC AIMS
AIM 1 -
AIM 2 -
D) GENERAL EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH
E) PITFALLS AND ALTERNATIVES
F) ANTICIPATED FIGURES FOR PAPER or when you have data, FIGURES FOR PAPER
G) FUTURE DIRECTIONS
H) MATERIALS AND METHODS
I) RESULTS
J) DISCUSSION
K) LITERATURE