LaTeX

LaTeX is a "coding" language that you can use to write your reports which makes it look more professional and makes formatting easier than MS Word. It's relatively simple to use and anything you don't know how to do something such as including a figure can typically be found quickly with a Google search. You can then just copy and paste the code from Stack Overflow or a similar site and modify it to fit your case.

Getting Started

The easiest way to get started is by using a website such as Overleaf which includes everything you will need to write a report for 3001 (and beyond) and allows for you to collaborate much like Google Docs with your partners on the same document. All that you need to do is to create a free account and it will allow you to have a free 100 MB of storage for files and projects can include up to 60 supporting files (images, code files, etc.) and you can pay for more if you want but it is not unless you plan on writing a lot of papers in the future. An alternative is ShareLaTeX but I have not tested it personally.

If you want to install it on your own computer you can install MiKTeX (MacTeX for Mac users) which will install LaTeX and you can then get an editor if you want or use Notepad or whatever editor you like. Personally I use WinEdt which is a paid program but many other alternatives exist.

To get you started an example project has been created here that you can download and look at the resulting PDF file and upload it to Overleaf if you want to play with and see how it affects the output (NOTE: you must upload the supporting files in the folders as well as the .bib and .tex file). It is a compilation of the most common things that you will want to do in your reports that you can then just copy out of the .tex file and paste into your own document and modify to fit your needs. There are comments within the .tex file that explains how it all works. Make sure you look at the PDF side-by-side so that you can see what is produced by LaTeX otherwise it will not make sense.