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From OSSISURB, the group who is responsible for administrating OSS:
The Olin Self Study (OSS) is a required four-credit self-study project in which students identify an area of interest or a question of interest, develop and follow a plan of study in pursuit of understanding important concepts in the proposed area or in pursuit of an answer to the proposed question, and write a report of the knowledge gained, applied, analyzed, synthesized, and/or evaluated through the investigation. The OSS serves to (1) develop students’ skills in working independently to learn challenging material and to tackle challenging problems; (2) develop students’ skills in independent writing; and (3) hone students’ skills and attitudes enabling life-long learning, a competency Olin considers vital for engineers working in an environment of rapidly changing technology.
The OSS advisor and student will decide the form of the final written deliverable. Some possible examples include: (1) a review article (e.g. in-depth report of the state of a field of research); (2) a thesis (e.g. explanation of chosen problem, background on previous work done on problem, description of student work on problem, conclusions); (3) a synthesis/analysis of the important ideas in the area of interest, which another student could theoretically use to learn the important concepts in a particular field; it may include definitions, examples, explanations, worked problems, and other commentary. The OSS advisor and student will decide whether the assessment plan will include any deliverables in addition to the independently written final report. For example, it may be decided to include additional deliverables such as interim papers/drafts, design reviews, laboratory notebooks, physical artifacts, oral presentations, and/or problem sets.
The 4-credits can be split over two semesters, however the credits must be devoted to one cohesive project. The OSS is taken for a letter grade. Seniors always have the option of doing their OSS in conjunction with their SCOPE project.