EE 361L Lab Report Format

EE 361L is a writing intensive (WI) course which has substantial writing assignments. The purpose of the WI requirement is to have EE students practice writing technical documents. Proper communication of technical ideas is essential in the working world. For many practicing engineers, a significant fraction of their time, if not most of their time, is spent on writing reports, participating in conferences/meetings, and giving presentations. As one would expect, the success and effectiveness of an engineer depends on his/her communication skills.

This document explains what is expected of a lab report. The report should clearly and concisely describe a technical task, which is the lab assignment, and what has been accomplished. The report should be written so that it is clear to an EE student, who may have taken EE 361 but not the EE 361L lab. It should be self-contained so that the student can follow it without extensive knowledge of the lab manual. Thus, it should be user friendly. The report should detail the contribution of the team and contributions of the individual team members.

Each lab report should include the following Items:

A description of what this report is about
Motivation (optional)
The objectives of the assignment
The accomplishments
The contributions of the team and individual members to the success of the project
Backgound material, such as modeling information, previous work, etc.
Organization of report, explaining what's in each section.
The lab experiments and results
Any problems or surprising results, and how you dealt with them.
Conclusions, summaries, and interpretations of the results wherever appropriate.
Concluding statements including summary of task, and any suggestions for future work.
References (bibliography), e.g., reference to the lab handout. The IEEE style for referencing should be followed (see below for a link to a description of the style). Include the reference to the lab assignment manual.

The report should be formatted as follows:

Margins and Spacing: The document should be prepared for 8.5x11 inch paper and maintain the following margins: 1.00 inch margins on all four sides. Fonts should be Times-Roman or comparable style. Font size should be 12 points, except for the title which can be between 12 and 18 point. Text should be double spaced, except the abstract which is single spaced.
Cover Page: The document should have a cover page that includes the following

Title. It should be at the top and left justified. This should be 5 lines from the top. An example title would be "Report for Fall 2008 EE 361L Lab Assignment X".
Author. It should be 5 lines below the title. The author's name should be prefixed by "Author: ".
List of Lab Partners: This should be on the line below the author. The list should be prefixed by "Lab Partners:", and the names should be separated by commas.
Date: The date when the document was prepared. This should be 5 lines below the list of lab partners.
Abstract: Short summary of your work which includes purpose of the assignment, key findings, significance, and major conclusions and results. This should be 5 lines below the date. Keep the length to no more than 150 words. Prefix it with "Abstract:"

Sections: The rest of the report should be organized into sections with possible subsections. Note that any technical document should be composed of an Introduction, followed by the Body, and then the Conclusions. The Introduction and Conclusions should have their own section. The Body is one or more sections. Each section and subsection should have a number and title. The Introduction and Conclusions sections are typically titled "Introduction" and "Conclusions," respectively. The numbers for sections are 1, 2, ... Thus, the Introduction is section 1 and its title should be "1 Introduction". Subsections have numbers too so that the numbers of the subsections of Section X should be X.1, X.2, ....
References: After the Conclusions section, there should be a list of references. The list should have a title "References". Properly reference everything (you may also reference the lab handout). Use the IEEE Style of referencing.
Figures and Tables: Have figures and tables centered and within the margins of the document. They should be clear and labeled. They should be numbered and have captions. They should be placed after their first reference in the text.
Technical Terms. Italicize and define unfamiliar technical terms. This helps to make the document user-friendly.

A possible organization, although not the only one, is (here, "Item" refers to the items above):

Introduction: includes Items 1-6, although background material could be in its own section
Experimental Results: includes Items 7-10.
Conclusions: include Items 11.
References: include Item 12.