Advanced Programming Reflective Report Guidance

Remember to ONLY include you student ID in the header or footer of the essay.
This document provides guidance on the essay structure so that you meet each of the criteria, and
then provides an outline for you, and concludes with the marking criteria so that you know what
you need to include for the essay.
There are a few rules to remember when writing a report. Mastering each of them can take a
while, but the basic principles are simple enough. However, before you start writing the report
you need to ensure that you’ve already worked out the ‘correct’ report topic and idea. With this
sorted, the report writing becomes easier. If you want help with your academic writing, then look
at the materials provided by the Student Learning Service
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sls/academicwriting/index.shtml
Layout for the Report
There is a template which you can download to help you complete the report in the best possible
way. The headings and sections will guide you to formulate your report with a good structure so
that you cover each of the marking criteria. What follows is a guide to help you make sure you
meet the marking criteria, which are listed further below.
This is a ‘reflective’ report, which explores your thoughts on ‘how’ you developed, and how you
worked on the application. Do provide small examples to illustrate points, but mostly focus on
‘how’ you worked, and more importantly ‘why’ you worked as you did. This report is a look at
your mindset and beliefs about how advanced programming and software development should
work. This should NOT be about ‘what’ happened week by week.
You can find out more about ‘reflective writing’ in the ‘Academic Writing’ subsection of
ACHIEVE in MyAberdeen.
Most of you will have developed similar applications. Therefore, focus on HOW you did what
you did, and WHY you made your decisions. This will help to keep the marking anonymous.
First, you need to have a single 'thesis' statement, which becomes the point that you are making
in your report. Write this down on a separate piece of paper, or put it at the top of your report
when you start. Make sure that you can always see this sentence as you write the report. Every
sentence and every paragraph in the report should relate to this. Every other sentence should
support this position, refute it as a counterpoint, or offer evidence of one or another position. The
thesis statement provides unity for the whole.
The thesis statement is ‘what’ your report says. The thesis statement should clearly align with
Criteria 2 to show how your report relates to your application development experience this term.
This will be something like ‘working on this application is something that I found challenging,
but fun’, or ‘this is something I now realise I would prefer to do with others’. Everything in your
report should be clearly tied back to this statement.
Second, place the thesis statement in the first paragraph of the report. Don't provide a lengthy
introduction that leads up to the statement. Put your thesis statement somewhere in the first
paragraph, and then your reader knows what the report is about. Longer introductions usually
lead to doubt as to what the report is about, and the reader loses interest. Longer introductions
also waste valuable words that you need to make your case and stay within the word limit.
Third, you need to explain your application development guideline. You should explain HOW
you developed the idea in order to meet Criteria 5. What guided your work: Did you use small

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 Advanced Programming Reflective Report Guidance
slices? Put everything to Git every hour? Write test as soon as a page was done? Tell us your
guideline, and provide us with the reasons WHY you did it this way. Help us understand how
you validated your assumptions to provide information for the decisions you made during the
term. Again, you should be able to do this without saying ‘what’ the app did.
In addition, you need to tell us your impression of Flask development in order to meet Criteria 6.
This means you have to tell us a bit about this in a general manner. What were the challenges,
what went easier than expected?
You need to highlight what you gained from the app development this term to meet Criteria 7,
and discuss what you gained from the experience. Maybe you found this to be great fun, or
maybe, you sadly found this a huge challenge, or you were somewhere in between these two
extremes.
You also need to explain how your work this term changed your perception of advanced
programming in order to meet Criteria 9. That means you have to explain what you knew of the
topic beforehand, and what you’ll take away from these topics for other courses, or work in the
future.
A key part of ‘reflective’ reports is to have something about “what I’d do differently if I did this
again” area for Criteria 3. Tell the readers what you’d change if you started over. More
importantly, also explain ‘why’ you think this ‘different approach’ would be ‘better’. Do say
what ‘better’ means too.
You need to structure these arguments in a clear manner to meet the ‘does the order of the topics
make sense’ in Criteria 10. You can do this by setting out the main points of what you learned by
working in your team this term against each of ‘attributes’ mentioned above: team dynamics,
idea development, human centered design/service design, ‘if I did it again’.
You also need to make the argument persuasive to meet Criteria 10. Make sure the assertions
follow a logical order, and that your examples to illustrate your points are good ones that leave
no confusion. Review it to see if you forgot something from your notes about the topic.
Fourth, you need to provide evidence to support the assertions of your argument, in order to meet
the ‘supporting evidence’ for Criteria 8. This evidence should explain ‘why’ you are arguing this
specific point. It is not enough to say ‘everyone knows’. Tell us instead, ‘as discussed by Beck, I
wrote tests before I coded the next part', and to meet the reference of Criteria 4, provide a full
reference to the book, or article at the end of the essay. Yes, this means you might want to look
up some references cited in the lectures, and practical sessions.
This shows that you're working through the materials. You can find details about referencing at
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/guides/qgcit001.pdf and how to use the Harvard style
at https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/guides/qgcit002.pdf
Then add an example to show ‘how’ this helps to meet the ‘example’ of Criteria 11. For
example, ‘I built everything in small slices as discussed in lecture x’. Give us an example of how
this attribute improves, or is an obstacle to this point you’re making.
Fifth, you need to keep everything short. Focus on conveying the key points with appropriate
examples supported by references back to the literature. If you do this, then you should have
better essays. In particular, do you keep within the word count of Criteria 1 of 1350-1650 words?

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 Advanced Programming Reflective Report Guidance
While keeping statements short, you should also be looking to paraphrase the works of others.
You should be referencing the contributions, or others, and you should be rewording their ideas
in your own words too. You can read more about avoiding plagiarism at
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/guides/qggen027.pdf
You need to keep potential plagiarism to a minimum for two reasons:
a) You need to comply with the university’s code of practice on discipline with respect to
plagiarism https://www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/documents/academic-quality-
handbook/AandF%20-%20Assessment%20Offences%20including%20Plagiarism.pdf
and
b) Your essay will checked for plagiarism through the use of Turnitin, where a lower score
is preferable to a higher one. Higher scored essays are looked at, and where appropriate
marked down accordingly.
Seventh, make sure you have a good range and number of references in order to meet Criteria 8.
You need more than four books, or articles from suitable sites. Wikipedia is a good place to look
to point you to original sources, but don’t reference Wikipedia. Similarly, avoid blog posts where
possible. Instead, look for suitable books, or articles, and maybe the language, or API website as
these will carry more weight.
Eighth, to support Criteria 10 for ‘the arguments presented are logical’ you need to check for
typos, and grammatical errors. Double-check that you also have used the same font, and size of
font throughout the essay. At most you should probably only use two fonts, and the sizes/styles
should be used for titles, and sections, plus the body of the text. If you have figures, or diagrams,
then these should be numbered, and mentioned in the text by name/number. For example, ‘in
figure 4 you can see that …’. This way the reader knows exactly what they should see, and you
know that they see how this contributes to the argument you’re presenting.
In conclusion, the summary is:
Have a thesis that appears in the first paragraph of a report, which provides a point of view that
you’re presenting about your time working with the team in the course. Support your argument
with appropriate evidence is as few words as possible and you should do better than if you didn't
follow these suggestions.
You are not allowed to use appendices in this report.
You can also find a longer discussion of writing essays in the ‘Good Writing Guide’ at
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/documents/TheGoodWritingGuideforSociology.doc
Although this is aimed at sociology, the basics are still the same: have a thesis, support your
argument with evidence, and cite your sources.

Bruce Scharlau University of Aberdeen, 2021

 Advanced Programming Reflective Report Guidance

The Advanced Programming Reflective Report Structure

Introduction
A paragraph of a three, or four sentences saying what you learned from building your app. This
should include your thesis statement, and something about how you learned this. Everyone did
something similar so you don’t need to provide specific details about the app anywhere in this
report.
Web App Development
Explain how you developed the app. How did you design and build it? Did you have a
guideline,principle, or rule that you followed?
In a second paragraph on this topic discuss what didn’t work with your approach, and what did
work well. Why was it ‘good’ or ‘challenging’?
Your Changing Perception of Advanced Programming
Write about your initial thoughts of the topic at the start of the course. Then mention what they
are now. Then write about why they changed (or didn’t) during the term. What helped shift your
perception, or reinforced your perspective?
If I Did This Again
Tell us what you’d do differently if you did this application again. What would you change?
Maybe you’d do it all differently, maybe you’d keep it much the same. Explain what you’d keep,
and what you’d do differently.
My Opinion and Conclusion
End your report with a firm conclusion explaining your overall opinion of advanced
programming. This should be a short paragraph of a three, or four sentences, which summarises
and concludes your argument.
References
List all of the referenced works you mention as part of your supporting arguments in essay. You
should have more than four books and/or articles listed here following the Harvard guidelines.
The more you can use references and theory on groupwork to support your ideas about
teamwork, the better your mark should be for this. You need references especially for statements
about ‘why’ one approach works better than another. You cannot just say ‘a leader should decide
who does which work’. You should have a reference for this sort of statement, and something
about ‘why’ this approach is best.
The research for this doesn’t have to be a large effort, but you should read a few appropriate
articles on the topic. There’s lots and lots on this both in blogs and in academic articles.

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 Advanced Programming Reflective Report Guidance

The Marking Criteria for the Advanced Programming Reflective Report

Criteria 1
Does the submission meet the word count recommendation of 1500?
The word count should be listed somewhere on the document. If about right, then 2, if
over/under by 10% (1350-1650) then 1, if outside that range, then this 0.
Criteria 2
The report discusses their app development experience.
This should be about how the person developed the app.
If they do this, then 2 points, if only sort of relevant, 1, if not, then 0.
Criteria 3
The report discusses what the student would do differently if they did this again for 2 points.
How and what would the person change in how they developed the app, or what order they did
the activities to develop their idea, or whatever seems appropriate.
If minor mention of this, then 1, if no mention, then 0.
Criteria 4
The report has suitable references for 2 points.
There should be references to support the ideas being put forward, even if they only talk about
what was mentioned in the lectures, or the practical sessions, but it would be best if they
mentioned at least four authors, and yes these can be links to web sites.
If only one or two references, then 1, if none, then 0.
Criteria 5
The report explains their app development guideline.
The report should clarify their app devilment guideline in a paragraph. Did they build it in small
slices with regular commits to Git, or did they write tests as pages were developed, or something
else?
If the guideline is there, then that is 2 points. If only minor discussion of the idea, then 1, and no
mention of the guiding idea, then 0.
Criteria 6
The report discusses flask applications for 2 points.
This is about flask applications. Was it challenge due to databases, or loading pages, or did this
present some other challenge? If only a minor discussion of flask, then 1, and no mention of
flask development, then 0.
Criteria 7
The student says what they gained from development of the application for 2 points.

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 Advanced Programming Reflective Report Guidance
What did the person learn about themselves during the development of the application? Was this
enjoyable, fun, or a difficult challenge?
If they don’t say much about this, then 1 point, and if they don’t say anything on the topic, then
0.
Criteria 8
The report supports claims made by the author with references for 2 points.
Does each statement have a suitable reference to support their assertion?
If some are supported, then 1 point, or no references to claims for 0.
Criteria 9
The report discusses how their perception of advanced programming changed during the term for
2 points.
We used advanced programming concepts throughout the course. What do they say about their
approach to application development?
If only mentioned briefly, then 1 point, and no mention of these changes means 0 points.
Criteria 10
The arguments presented are logical and make sense for 2 points.
Does everything follow in order, or does it jump around a bit?
If the logic is unclear in parts, then 1 point, and if not logical beyond that, then 0.
Criteria 11
Each argument/opinion should have an example for 2 points.
Each statement should have an example to illustrate the point (just like these criteria have an
example). If only some examples are provided, then 1 point, and no examples, then 0.

Bruce Scharlau University of Aberdeen, 2021