BIO 220 final report Part 4: writing the report guide

The instruction is to use the work you completed in Parts 1 to 3 and write your final research report, and the word write is doing the work. This is not an assembly task. A report produced by pasting three earlier submissions together will read as three earlier submissions pasted together, with three introductions, three descriptions of the same issue and an argument that restarts twice. What the final part asks for is one continuous argument that happens to contain the material you have already gathered. Start by rereading all three parts in one sitting, with the feedback on each, and write down in one sentence what you now think about the issue. That sentence is the thesis, and everything you keep from the earlier parts should serve it. Anything that does not serve it belongs in the material you gathered rather than in the report you are submitting.

The most useful question to ask yourself before drafting is whether your position moved. Over Task 1 you stated an initial position, in Task 2 you stated the strongest opposing case and answered it, and in the parts between you gathered more evidence. If none of that changed anything, either the opposing case was weak or you did not engage with it. Both are worth being honest about. A report that says the initial position held, and explains which opposing argument came closest to unsettling it and why it did not, is stronger than one that presents the same view three times with more citations. A report that says the position narrowed, and states the narrower version, is stronger still. Either way, the movement or its absence is the intellectual content of a research report and should be visible.

The length and source requirements are floors that shape the structure. A minimum of 1,000 to 1,250 words, and a minimum of six references. Across an introduction, the issue, your position, the opposing case, your rebuttal and a conclusion, that gives you roughly 150 to 200 words per section, which is enough for a claim with evidence and no more. Six references across those sections means roughly one per substantive section, so check the distribution rather than the count: a report with five sources in the supporting section and one in the opposing section is unbalanced in a way a marker will see immediately. If you have been keeping notes since Task 1 you will have more than six, which is comfortable rather than excessive, and the extra ones give you something to cut when a section runs long. If you have exactly six, every one of them has to earn its place.

Structure the report so a reader who has not seen the earlier parts can follow it. Open with the issue and why it matters, including the personal connection that made you choose it, since that is what makes the report yours. State your position early rather than building to it, because this is a research report rather than an essay of discovery. Then present the supporting evidence, then the opposing case, then your rebuttal, then a conclusion that states where you have arrived. That order matters: putting the opposing case after your evidence rather than before it means the reader already knows what is being opposed, and putting the rebuttal immediately after keeps the two adjacent so the reader does not have to hold an unanswered objection in mind while reading something else. A rebuttal separated from its objection by two pages reads as a new argument rather than as an answer.

The rewriting is the part people underestimate. Material written for Task 1 was written for a marker who had read no earlier work; material written for Task 2 assumed Task 1 was fresh in mind. Neither assumption holds in a single continuous report. So expect to rewrite transitions, delete repeated descriptions of the issue, and unify the tense and voice, which usually drift across submissions written weeks apart. Read the whole thing aloud once at the end, which is the fastest way to catch a paragraph that was written for a different document. Also unify the reference list into one alphabetical list in the required style rather than three concatenated ones, and check for duplicates, because a source cited in two earlier parts will otherwise appear twice.

On mechanics, review the Final Report Guidelines that the brief names, since they carry directions specific to Part 4 that the earlier parts did not. Use the GCU Style Guide, submit to Turnitin, and note that only Word documents can be submitted there, which catches people who have drafted somewhere else. The brief also repeats that this assignment uses a grading rubric and that you should review it before beginning; at this stage that is genuinely worth doing, because the rubric for the finished report is the one your three earlier parts have been leading toward, and it will tell you which sections are worth the most of the words you have left. With a floor of a thousand words and six sections to fill, knowing which two carry the most marks is the difference between a balanced report and an even one.