1.

Timeline for seminar preparation

The timeline of seminar preparation is according to department schedule.
Students are expected to go through the department’s list of seminars suggested areas and select
an area. When one area is selected and advisor is assigned, the student and advisor will work
according to the required schedule (follow department schedule).
Reading selections may sometime be directed in part by the seminar advisor. During this period
the student should have periodic meetings with the seminar advisor to discuss the readings.
Abstract and Slide Draft shall be submitted to the advisor. The final version of the abstract must
be approved by the advisor before submitting it to the coordinator of the department. This will
ensure that the department will have sufficient time to duplicate and distribute it among other
students.
Final Slides shall be submitted prior to the seminar date. The student must provide the advisor
with the final version of the presentation slides for approval. Students should not request a
postponement of their seminar for other than serious reasons (sickness, etc.). The purpose of the
firm guidelines and dates is to ensure that the student is given adequate time to prepare the
seminar by the required date.
1. Format of the paper

The seminar paper should not exceed 15 pages (1.5 spaced, 3 cm margin on both sides and 12pt
font, references and appendices excluded). If your paper is longer than this, it must be clear
from the content why this is necessary. Also, contact your supervisor in this case. The page limit
actually helps you! It forces you to focus on the essential parts of your paper’s topic. The longer
your paper, the less clear the focus and the worse you seem to have understood the subject.
Ideally, you first write a paper of around 20 pages and then try carefully to shorten it to the
essential 15 pages.
 4. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the unauthorized use of another person’s ideas or words resulting from improper
citation of one’s sources. It is considered a very serious academic infraction that can lead to
failure in a university course. Examples of plagiarism in the context of the seminar include:
1. using another person’s phrase or sentence word-for-word without quotation marks in
your abstraction, even if the phrase or sentence is followed by the appropriate reference
number from your reference list; and
2. showing a figure from a journal article in your PowerPoint presentation without
including the appropriate bibliographic information at the bottom of the referenced work
or figure.
Please consult with the Seminar Advisor or any other faculty member if you have questions
about plagiarism.

5. Content of the Seminar paper

5.1. Abstract

The abstract usually contains a short summary of what this article is about. That is, in not more
than 250 words. The content of the abstract should explain motivation, research question,
research method, the main results and the most important conclusion. The main issues
discussed,
i.e. the achievements of the discussed approach in context of its area of interest. From this, the
reader should be able to estimate whether it is worth to read on.
5.2. Introduction

The first section of the seminar paper is the introduction. The purpose of the introduction is to
motivate why the topic and the research question of the seminar paper is interesting and
important. The good introduction is based on scientific publications. The introductory section
should establish the importance/motivation of the topic, issues or drawbacks with existing
solutions of a problem at hand, define a meaningful research gap, and explain how the present
paper attempts to fill the gap. The introduction should also explicitly outline the contributions of
the paper. An introduction ends with explaining the organization of the rest of the paper. The
key purpose of the introduction is to motivate the reader to read the rest of the paper. Examples
of good introductions can be found in good journal articles.
In the motivation you should explain why a given topic is interesting at all, and also, why
solutions are important from a scientific point of view. There already may be a lot of existing
solutions. Thus, it is important for the reader to understand the issues with these solutions, and
why they are not enough for e.g. a specific scenario. Often, concrete examples are quite useful
in providing a motivation, as well as providing a running example, that can be picked up later
on in the main part. After the motivational example, you should explain the basic idea of your
new contribution to solve the problem at hand, and give a short overview (only a slight hint) of
how this works.
5.2.1. Writing an Introduction

Provide a little bit (or a lot) of motivation for the reader to read your entire paper. Failing that,
your reader should know what the paper is going to be about by reading your introduction.

The first paragraphs: Get some attention.

1. Provide a context by citing a recent text in the field — the point that is cited may or may not
be the main point of the text — it is what jumped out at you.

2. Set-up broader context of what you’re going to do

The Next paragraphs: Define issue and the gap.

1. Define issue and any key terms

2. Limit scope as necessary
3. Establish significance of issue
4. State problem by defining the gap
5. Explain how present research attempts to fill the gap
6. Outline contributions (readers will see literature review for more detail.)
5.3. Research (Body of text with main and subheadings)
The seminar paper must be based on scientific publications (journal, conference and workshop
articles). It is also possible to select and analyses other material such as books and white papers,
but the main focus must be on scientific papers.
Give some credit where credit is due.
1. Indicate the current state of the issue/problem/topic
2. Define or qualify terms
3. Engage sources in conversation with each other (don’t just copy in annotated bibliography)
The purpose of this section is to describe how systematically the literature review was done:
how scientific publications were searched, selected and analyzed.
Here, you elaborate on how this approach differs from other existing solutions, if not in general,
then illustrate the scenario, in which the approach is beneficial. This subsection also offers room
for introducing related or alternative approaches, and establishes a kind of state of the art. This
might even incorporate solution approaches in other fields, if the setting is comparable to this
work.
In review literature section should:
• Summarize pertinent information

• Describe contribution of research

• Indicate how the current study moves beyond

• Point out technical flaws

• Select only relevant literature

• Mention current research

• Discuss theoretical basis

• Avoid “no research on problem” and too many references

5.4. Results
This section describes the results of the analysis of the selected scientific publications.
• Structure of this section must be clear.
• The analysis of the papers is based on the research question(s).
• Good tables and figures are typically signing of good analysis.
• At the beginning of the section, you may give an overview of your research topic and
describe the key concepts based on the existing literature.

5.5. Discussion
In this section, the author should describe clearly the main results i.e. answers to the research
question(s). In addition, the author analyses critically how well it was possible to answer the
research question(s). The critical analysis means that the author describes what the limitations
and weaknesses of the literature review are.
1. Examine issue
2. Argue how issue can be mitigated, mediated, or mashed
3. Provide evidence and support
4. Make some lively commentary along the way

5.6. Prospects (Future line of work)

The future work section is a place for you to explain to your readers where you think the results
can lead you. What do you think are the next steps to take? What other questions do your results
raise? Do you think certain paths seem to be more promising than others?

Another way to look at the future work section, is a way to sort of “claim” an area of work. This
is not to say that others can’t research the same things, but if your paper gets published, it’s out
there that you had the idea. This lets people know what you’re thinking of doing next and they
may ask to collaborate if your future work area crosses over theirs.

If you do include a future work section, it should be pretty short. The goal should not be to go
into a bunch of details, but instead just a sentence or two explaining each idea. It should just
provide enough information as to a possible research path and why the path may be important.
Motivation is always key in research. I stressed earlier that you need to motivate your work.
This also applies to future work. If you can’t motivate a good reason to continue research down
some path, then why should/would you?
5.7. Conclusions
This section states sharply conclusions based on the results. In other words, what can be said
about the research question based on the main results.
• Future research i.e. based on the seminar paper, what could be interesting topics to be
investigated
in the future.
We’re almost done. Don’t quit now.
1. Summarize research question
2. Qualify argument/discussion if you need to
3. Explain where we go now
4. End well
5.7.1. Things to not do in your conclusion:
1. Introduce new information. The conclusion is for wrapping up everything you’ve done.
It’s not a place to say “oh yeah, and we also got result y.” All results should be first
presented and detailed in the result section. Think of the conclusion as a place to reflect
on what you’ve already said earlier in the paper.
2. Directly re-quote anything you’ve already written. I’ve seen conclusions that are almost
identical to the abstract or a collection of sentences from throughout the paper. As a
reader, it makes me think the author was lazy and couldn’t be bothered to actually
summarize their results for the paper. Take the time to write a proper conclusion so that
the reader walks away with good thoughts about your work.
3. Write a conclusion longer than your introduction. A conclusion should be short, and to
the point. You’ll rarely see them over 3 paragraphs, and three is often long. A lot of the
time they are usually only one or two. Think about a conclusion as a chance to see how
concisely you can summarize your entire research project.

Summary of the seminar elements

 Fig 1: Summery of the seminar elements

5.6. Writing References

Use Haramaya University research writing guideline
 GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWING A SEMINAR PAPER

Title

Is the title compact and descriptive?

Does the title relate well to the content of the paper?

Research questions

Are the research questions clear?

Is the question/problem/goal the same throughout the paper?

Results

Are the results described clearly and in an understandable way?

Are the results interesting and useful?

Is the argumentation and/or data presented clearly?

Structure of the paper

Is the structure of the paper clear?

Is the link between sections

logical?

Are the titles of the sections compact and descriptive?

Language

Are the key terms defined and used

systematically? Is the language of the paper clear

and simple?

Figures and tables

Are the main results summarized in tables or figures?

Do the figures and tables relate to the text?

Are the figures and tables clear?

Are the content of the figures and tables described in the text?
References