Memorandum: Progress Report

To: Dr. Erika Paterson, ENGL 301 Instructor

From: Jake Moh, ENGL 301 Student

Date: February 28, 2022

Subject: ENGL 301 Progress Report – Proposal for Improving the Recruitment of Volunteer Programmers at Visual Cognition Lab

Audience

This report is intended for professor Dr. Ronald Rensink and lab managers of the Visual Cognition Lab at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Ronald Rensink is the principal investigator of the lab who manages the research, the lab members, and the finance. The lab managers are focused on human resources and organizing meetings.

Report Purpose

The purpose of this report is to recruit volunteer programmers in the coding team of Visual Cognition Lab at the University of British Columbia.

Report Significance

Researchers of Visual Cognition Lab are have many responsibilities from reading latest research papers, having a meeting with other researchers, conducting research, analyzing research, to presenting the work to other professionals. Since the experiment is required to be coded, researchers spend significant time programming the experiments. Therefore, researchers can greatly reduce the time programming the experiment and focus on other aspects of research by recruiting programmers to implement the experiments instead.

Methods

The primary sources of data to be collected for this report are interviews with current programmers of Visual Cognition Lab at University of British Columbia. The surveys can be found at:

https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dccrDiptqPIvORw

Secondary information sources will include interviews with members of the Visual Cognition Lab.

Formal Report Outline

The outline for the proposed report can be found at: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99c-2021wc/2022/02/28/formal-report-outline-improving-the-recruitment-of-volunteers-at-visual-cognition-lab-available-to-ubc-students/

Research Plan

• Notify the programmers of the lab of the survey and collect data
• Interview programmers and lab managers of best recruitment strategies
• Organize and analyze the data
• Generate graphs and tables from the data
• Create a proposal based on the data

Writing Schedule

• Mar 6: Complete primary data gathering through surveys
• Mar 10: Complete secondary data gathering through interviews
• Mar 17: Complete rough draft of the formal report
• Mar 19: Revise formal report and submit for peer review
• Mar 21: Submit peer review of formal report
• Mar 24: Complete formal report based on the edits
• Mar 26: Submit final formal report

Thank you for your time. I look forward for constructive feedback and suggestions.