Individual Mid-Term Report

The Individual Midterm Report will entail the development of a detailed report related to the topics below. Students are required to complete and submit this report. You may use the course resources for some of your resource material. It is expected that you will do research outside of the content posted in this course.   As such, the Individual Midterm Report must be unique and should not be a restatement of items from the course materials. The use of APA is required for formatting for your report, citing your in-text citations, and providing full references at the end of the report.

Note: All papers will be run through Turn-it-in. Any plagiarized papers or papers with a 20% or greater ‘similarity score’ (indicating that 20% or greater of the paper was copied) will receive a 0.

Individual Midterm Report Topics (pick one for your focus):

1^st Choice – Comparison and contrast between TCP/IP and the OSI model (If too challenging, I’m okay with the second choice below as the topic)

2^nd Choice – Careers in Computer Networking

Requirements for the Individual Midterm Report include:

• Write a 4 to 6-page paper (1400 to 2100 words at 350 words per page/average) on the selected technology topic. The required 4 to 6 pages of your report does not include the page count for the cover page, front matter (Table of Contents), Back matter (appendix items), and reference page.
• A minimum of THREE outside references is required for your work.  Use peer-reviewed work (e.g., journals, conference proceedings, industry papers, etc.).  Peer-reviewed work refers to articles written by experts, which are reviewed by several other experts in the field before the article is published in the journal in order to ensure the article’s quality.  Please DO NOT use popular press items (e.g., Time Magazine, Forbes Magazine, etc.), which are not aligned with academic work.
• Use APA formatting in your paper.
• AVOID direct quotes. Instead, paraphrase and cite (see APA regarding this). Remember, direct quotes are typically done for seminal research, so limit the use of quotes in your submission.
• In addition, provide an introduction and a conclusion in your paper.
• The paper must follow a logical flow, so working from an outline is strongly recommended.

Individual Midterm Report Grading:

The Individual Midterm Report comprises 25% of your final grade. Your paper is graded on the following criteria (and maximum points possible):

Knowledge and Understanding of Information Systems	60 points
Writing Style	20 points
References	10 points
APA format	10 points

Total Maximum Points: 100 points (calculated as 25% of the final course grade)