IT and Web Essay Writing: Practical Tips for College Students

Writing guide
Posted on January 21, 2019

Nowadays, people extensively use information technology for nearly every aspect of their lives. Everything in today’s world is based on high-end technology advancement. These advancements provide a lens through which people can see the importance of information technology. IT studies are gaining a significant tract in educational institutions. More students are enrolling for IT courses, and even those who specialize in other studies encounter one or two information technology units in their course of study. Students pursuing courses in IT face similar problems as learners pursuing other studies. A significant problem that students among all courses face is the essays writing assignment within their area of specialization. Now that you are taking IT and web courses, you are likely to be dealing with a wide range of assignments.

This guide aims at seizing college hardships by providing you with recommendations you can use to draft and present A-grade essays. Professors use essays to allow you to practice and develop transferable skills that are valuable not only in college but when the postgraduate era begins as well. The transferable skills that you will learn through completing your essays include reading and note-making, critical thinking and analysis, idea organization, and effective communication. Whether you are writing about data management, analytics or IT entrepreneurship, it will encourage you to develop a formal, disciplined approach to writing that communicates clearly and with authority. When tutors assign you essays, they expect you to develop and organize your thinking about the key concepts and issues in the IT course you are taking. The type of the essay you present to your lecturers allows them to assess your knowledge in the field. This guide will provide you with the necessary information that will enable you to write essays that communicate your ability to transform information into knowledge.

Pre-Writing Tips for Your IT & Web Essay Our Writers Use

The important stages of the essay writing process include prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. In various ways, prewriting is the most essential of these phases. It constitutes the writing phase that entails idea generation and requires you to determine the topic and the point-of-view for a target audience. During your writing, you should provide enough time to create a plan and develop an outline to organize materials for the final draft. Several strategies can be used to tackle the prewriting stage. A few of the most common pre wring strategies are indicated below.

Brainstorming. This strategy involves coming up with as many ideas as possible about a particular topic. You do not need to worry about the feasibility of the idea or whether the idea is realistic or not. While brainstorming, you can create a list of your thoughts to help you make connections later on when writing your essay. Brainstorming can be done individually, or it can be shared with peers in your class.

Freewriting. The strategy occurs when you write whatever comes to your mind about the IT topic for a specific amount of time. You should not worry about grammar, punctuation, or spelling. Instead, try to come up with as many ideas as possible to make your essay writing process easy.

Mind maps. During pre-writing, mind mapping is an essential strategy that provides an opportunity to use visual ways to outline information. Varieties of mind maps are available for students to use and are essential at the prewriting stage. For instance, you can use webbing and write a word in the middle of a piece of paper. Then use lines to interconnect related words and phrases to the original word in the center. Thus, in the end, you have a wealth of ideas that are connected to the central IT idea.

Doodling. Students have different learning styles and respond differently to various ways of knowledge delivery. For some, it is easier to respond well to being able to combine words with drawings as they think about what they want to write in the prewriting stage. The doodling strategy can open up creative lines of thought that will produce credible essays.

Asking questions. Questioning is an appropriate prewriting element that allows students to come up with creative ideas. For instance, if the student has to write about management information systems, they might begin by asking themselves questions about information systems, their use, and application. These questions help to develop a deeper understanding of the IT topic before you begin to write.

Outlining. Outlining is a traditional step in preparing for the writing process. It helps students organize their thoughts logically since it is typical to begin with a more general issue and then list more specific ideas related to a particular IT concept with supporting details. The more detailed an outline is from the beginning, the easier it will be for you to write your essay.

Choosing an Appropriate Topic for Your IT Essay

Topic selection is an important aspect of the essay writing process. Three scenarios may arise at this stage. First, your lecture may assign a specific topic in the IT field. Second, you may be provided with a set of IT essay topics to pick from. Third, you may be required to formulate a topic as long as it is within the chosen area of study. If your instructor doesn’t provide you with the topic, conduct preliminary research on various topics in the area before settling on one. Moreover, select a variety of topics you are familiar with and the ones with readily available information. Here are some tips to help you choose an essay topic for your IT essay.

  • Select interesting issues. You are likely to be more enthusiastic about your writing when the chosen topic is interesting to you. If you lack a choice in selecting the topic, you can find an angle of the topic that is interesting to you. If your lecturer is bored and finds nothing interesting in your essay, you are likely to earn an average grade. However, if your paper fails in any other ways, there is no guarantee you will receive a good grade.
  • Choose topics you know something about. Rather than trying to tackle unfamiliar essay topics, pick a subject you are familiar with. Writing on familiar topics is likely to make the essay writing process easier because you already have numerous ideas in your head. Besides, good knowledge of a subject area makes the essay project less demanding.
  • Narrow the topic down to a manageable size. By now you probably have an idea of what to write about in your IT essay. Whatever the topic is, ask yourself if you can explore it and be clear on every page you need to fill. A manageable topic should neither be too broad nor too narrow.
  • Approach the topic from an interesting angle. Approaching your topic from an interesting perspective will help keep your writing controlled, give it solid structure, and help you define your thesis. For example, instead of writing about information system management, refine the topic to a particular element of information system management or focus on a single organization then refine it further. For instance, focus on design development and documentation in the organization.
  • Brainstorm. Write a list of ideas that you have. Note down anything that pops up in your head and keep writing until you have a long list of viable ideas that can be explored. Take a short break and then go back and see if any idea is born as these will help guide the direction of your essay.
  • Research. If you have a vague idea of what to write about but you don’t know where to go with it, or you need to clarify it, find some books from the library, explore information technology journals and magazines, and engage your peers and tutors to help you come up with an appropriate topic.
  • Re-use the topic. If you’ve already worked on a particular topic in the field of IT, you could re-use it for your current essay. However, you need to do that from a different perspective by adding new information or expounding on one aspect from your previous work.

Here are potential IT essay topics you can use:

  • Possible Ways Individuals Take Advantage of Loopholes in Technology to Cause Damage by Hacking Info from Companies;
  • The Importance of Artificial Intelligence;
  • The Evolution of AI and Its Current Use;
  • How Utilization of Computer Programming Languages Combined with Game Theory Helps Develop 3-D Algorithms;
  • The Latest Achievements in Technology: The Use of Robotics to Achieve Success in Medical Surgery.

Writing an Effective Title for Your IT Essay

A common issue among students and seasoned writers is omitting or underusing an essay title. The title of an essay helps prepare your target audience to understand the paper that is to follow. The first aspect in drafting an essay title should involve outlining its functions. A good essay title:

  • Predicts the contents of the essay;
  • Catches the reader’s interest;
  • Reflects the tone of your writing;
  • Presents keywords that define the essay and make it easily identifiable in online searches.

Coming up with the right title is an integral part of crafting the essay. It should have an interesting hook that attracts the readers to your essay. It can be a quote that introduces the overall tone of your essay or a collection of keywords from it. Besides, the title should have one or two key terms that provide the reader with a sense of the content and the angle of your essay. In this case, the title you choose for your IT essay should provide the reader with an overall overview of the essay even before the essay is read in depth. The title should summarize the entire essay into a few words.

Appropriate Structure for Your Information Technology Essay

An appropriate outline should have at least the introduction, the main body, and the conclusion. The outline should appear as indicated below:
Introduction. The introduction should occupy approximately 10% of the entire essay and explain how your essay interprets the title, the issues it explores, and the conclusion that you draw from the essay discussion. In this case, ensure your essay provides:

  • An overview of the essay;
  • The goals of the essay;
  • The essays significance;
  • The purpose statement;
  • The thesis statement.

Body. The body should take up to 80% of the essay content because it forms the main part of it. The content of the essay is presented in paragraphs where each paragraph provides a unique theme or element of the paper. Each paragraph should develop and explore the major arguments debated in the assignment and must have a topic sentence that presents your claims. Integrate the following into your essay paragraphs:

  • A major discussion point in each paragraph;
  • Major arguments and evidence that support the topic sentence of each paragraph;
  • An explanation of the practicality of the topic sentence;
  • A description of the paragraphs’ ability to link the thesis statement, essay topic and essay title.

If the body has four main paragraphs, the first paragraph should focus on the strongest argument of the essay. The topic for this paragraph should be stated within the first several sentences (the topic sentence), and appropriate content should be used to support it. The ideas you choose to discuss in each paragraph should follow in order of importance.

Conclusion. The last part of your IT essay should slightly mirror the introduction and summarize the arguments you made in your previous paragraphs. It must also echo your thesis statement and describe how you proved your thesis. You should not introduce new ideas and concepts at this stage.

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