“A culminating hands-on experience, the Master’s Project allows students to apply the professional skills and knowledge they’ve acquired in the classroom to projects that tackle real-world environmental challenges, often in service to an industry, government or nonprofit external partner.” – from https://nicholas.duke.edu/academics/masters-programs/masters-projects
For an overview of the MP and MP expectations, see the NSOE MP handbook
Drafting and Writing
Citation Management
See this Duke Library how-to guide for Zotero
Getting Started with Zotero video from Duke Medical Library
Reviewing the Literature
A synthesis matrix can help organize evidence from your sources
Source A | Source B | Source C | ||||||
Main Idea 1 | ||||||||
Main Idea 2 | ||||||||
Main Idea 3 |
Structure and format of MP Reports
Your introduction should follow the funnel shape of a literature review:
Contextualize your topic within wider subject
Review existing theory and relevant research
Highlight conflicting results or gaps
Flows into the need for your research
Additional best practices can be found in a series of presentations by Nicolette Cagle:
- MP Module 1: Report Overview & Methods
- MP Module 2: Results, Discussion, & Introduction
- MP Module 3: Abstract, Executive Summary, & Website
Revising and Editing
Formatting Tips for the cover page, executive summary, and MP report
Employ the following checklists to help with your revision process:
- Document-level checklist
- Paragraph-level checklist
- Sentence-level checklist
- Considering your audience
Pre-writing
Do you need an IRB?
What to know about getting IRB approval for working with human subjects
Duke’s Campus IRB staff can offer one-on-one support
MP Workplan
What to include in your MP Workplan