It's true that each student clearly knows how far he is (or isn't) with the paper, but the fact is that professors have a hard time remembering the exact status of each student's work. Enter, our workflow for today:
Each research team has its own style. Today's sample promotes visualization of each student's progress, with the goal being a monthly "research presentation." The idea is that the instructor/professor sets a monthly theme for each student, and the student repeats a cycle of working, reporting and consulting older students, until they are ready for the presentation. The comments and discussions made during this cycle are stored as past records, so students will be able to refer back to related work done by previous graduate or undergraduate students.
If your research team demands high-quality presentations, here is a workflow that has the instructor do a final check on the presentation materials. (But we suspect most professors won't agree to this much work...)
