How to Term Papers

Writing a "how to" term paper involves clearly outlining several objectives. In a "how to" paper, be certain to think through the following elements:

• Does your introduction tell the reader immediately what your report is about?
• Does the introduction include any background information the reader will
  or want at the beginning of your report?
• What procedure or activity are your instructions for?
• Who is you target audience?
• What are the objectives or your instruction?
• What are your instructions suppose to enable readers to do?
• How are your instructions intended to affect the readers' attitudes?
• What are those attitudes likely to be before using instructions?
• What do you want them be afterwards?

Objectives
You should have 2 objectives: test and attitudinal.

• What are the objectives of your test
• What particular features of your instructions did you especially want to
  gather information about?

Method
Goal: to persuade the reader of your memo that you designed a test that would provide you with valid insights into the ways your instructions would(and would not) achieve their objectives.

• When did you conduct your test?
• How was your draft like your planned final draft?
• Who was your test users?
• Why are these people appropiate representatives of your target audience?
  • If there are any important ways in which these people are unlikely your
    target audience, what are they?
  • How did you gather information from your test users?
  • What did you do to gather additional information after the person used your
    draft?

Results and Discussion
Goal: To report your findings and to persuade your that you have interpreted those finding in a reasonable way.

• What results did your test produce concerning the enabling component of your
  instruction's objective?
• What results did your test produce concerning the persuasive components of
  your instructions objective?
• What did you learn about the specific features of your instructions that you
  particularly wanted to test? Tie this section back to all of the objective
  you set before your test. Most important, have you organized your results in
  some way that will help your readers gain the most information from it? That
  is,have you organized around objectives, of section of your document, of
  around issues of accuracy, understandability,accessibility, attractiveness
  and correctness?

Conclusion/Recommendation
Goal: to persuade your reader that you have used what you learned in order to make or recomment improvements that will increase the effectiveness of your instructions.

• In light of your test results, what is your overall assessment of your of your draft?
• What specific changes will/would you make in your instructions as a result
  of what you learned from your test?
• Have you ranked your recommended changes so that the reader of your report can determine which ones are most important?

Appendixes
- Consent form
- Pre-test questionnaire
- During the test materials that users comment on
- Post-test questionnaire

General "How to" Instructions
Remember that your report should be in memo format. It should look professional, should be easy to read, and should be carefully proofread.