Please refer to the calendar section to see where the assignment due dates fall in the class schedule. These assignments are part of the CI-M aspect of the course.
Literature Review Assignment Guidelines
Description
Over the course of this assignment, you will write and revise a short literature review.
As a stand-alone genre, literature review articles are published to analyze the state of a specialized field, by synthesizing recent research and identifying patterns, trends, and remaining open questions. You can think of them as a public service researchers perform for their community, as it is then easier for the rest of us to digest recent research quickly, and to identify the particular articles that would be most relevant for our own work. Literature reviews are not entirely selfless acts, however, because they are also an opportunity for researchers to shape future research agendas by evaluating and critiquing the current trends. For your review, you’ll focus on objectively summarizing research trends, but you may include any evaluative reflections, if relevant, in your conclusion.
Shorter, more targeted literature reviews are also generally required as a component of most research articles’ Background or Related Works sections.
Your task is to write a 2,000-word literature review that synthesizes recent research on an aspect of the field of thermodynamics (a more focused subtopic within the one you presented on).
When we evaluate your final draft, we will be assessing how effectively you do the following:
- provide your fellow researchers an overview of the current trends, promising approaches, and remaining open questions in the field
- understand and address your audience (considering their knowledge and expectations in your framing of content, structure, and discourse)
- synthesize and integrate evidence from sources
Research Process
To be successful, authors of literature reviews need to keep careful track of the novel contributions, claims, and open questions associated with their different sources, as well as observe and track trends, patterns, and critical responses.
For this assignment, you will need to focus your research, select 7–12 peer-reviewed articles to include in an annotated bibliography, and ultimately engage in close synthesis of 5–10 of these articles in your final draft.
We recommend using tools like a literature review chart, Mendelay or Zotero, as well as your course librarian as you navigate the research.
Drafting the Assignment
Ultimately, your literature review should present the following sections coherently:
1. Introduction
Motivates the reader’s interest by establishing the significance and challenges of your topic, identifies the purpose of providing a summary overview of recent research, and provides a conceptual framework that organizes the material logically, highlighting important concerns and how they relate to each other.
2. Body Paragraphs
Arranged in a logical sequence, body paragraphs should identify the major points of intersection between sources and be structured to closely synthesize information and clearly link specific examples and evidence to the various concepts at play, aiding the reader in understanding their significance. More broadly, body paragraphs must define central concepts clearly (noting how different articles use them, if relevant), provide an accurate representation of the different articles, and give a comprehensive summary of the main issues.
3. Conclusion
This briefly reframes your review’s main points, focusing on key intersections between sources and open questions or directions for the field.
4. Figures + References
Include at least 1–2 figures and/or tables (titled, labeled, captioned, and referenced in the text) to illustrate complex concepts. Cite all source material with an in-text reference and in a full reference page (use Nature’s style guide).
Presentation Assignment Guidelines
Description
Over the course of this assignment, you will prepare a 10-minute presentation on a thermodynamics-related topic of your choice (e.g. phase diagrams for thermal storage materials, the role and importance of computational materials design) for a general audience. The context and motivation for your presentation is a (hypothetical) Museum of Science speaker series showcasing student research topics at MIT. The series is aimed at strengthening public support and understanding of science.
To support your 10-minute talk, you will need to design a short slide deck of approximately 8–15 slides. These slides should contain visuals and text that complement and clarify the key concepts in your talk (as well as provide references) and should be designed to accommodate your target audience.
During conferences in weeks 4 and 5 (to be scheduled in week 3), you will have the opportunity to workshop and practice your presentations in small groups (please bring a rough draft of your slides and talk, or whatever materials you have, to your conference for constructive feedback).
You will give your 10-minute final presentation to a group of peers and instructors, followed by questions and discussion.
When we evaluate your presentation, we will be assessing how effectively you do the following:
- communicate complex ideas clearly in visual and oral form
- design figures to convey and emphasize key concepts
- understand and address your audience (considering their knowledge and expectations in your framing of content, structure, and discourse)
SELECTING A TOPIC
As you consider selecting a course-related presentation topic, keep in mind that the topic you select for this assignment will also carry over to the next CI-M assignment, the literature review. Feel free to select one of the topics listed below, or propose your own topic by sending a short email to your instructors.
Presentation Topics:
- Usefulness of eutectic systems
- Thermodynamics of phase transformations
- Role and importance of computational materials design
- Phase diagrams for materials selection and processing
- Sustainable materials selection
Possible Literature Review Topics:
- Deep eutectic solvents in drug delivery systems
- Phase change energy storage
- Computational microstructure characterization and reconstruction
- Extraction and processing of rare earth metals
- Materials for solar energy capture and conversion
In order to approach and present your chosen topic, you will need to perform independent research. Ideally, the research process for your presentation will become useful background as you focus your research for the literature review.
PREPARING YOUR PRESENTATION
In a rhetorically strategic and coherent structure, your presentation should include the following elements:
- Motivation: Why should the audience care about this research? What are the real-world applications and stakes? What gaps or frontiers in research are scientists trying to fill or extend?
- Context: What does the audience need to know to understand key terms and concepts?
- Methods: How do methods help scientists accomplish goals? How did the field develop these methods?
- Results and Open Questions: What is the current state of the art? What are the open questions in the field?
- Conclusion: What main ideas from the talk do you want to highlight and leave your audience remembering?
- Figures + References: How can visuals and graphics clarify, enhance, or support each of these goals? Remember to cite all references.
