Project selection

At the start of your final year there are two important tasks you must accomplish, not necessarily in this order:

• Find a project supervisor
• Select a project topic

The first of these is certainly the easier of the two and you can read about what support to expect from a supervisor.

Selecting a suitable project topic can seem quite daunting at first. To assist you in this we have a projects database. This will contain a number of project suggestions made by the supervisors. These are only suggestions of suitable topics and there is no requirement that you must select one of these. In fact, we strongly encourage you to formulate your own ideas for a project. They are provided as a guide to give you ideas and help you understand the scale of the project you should be attempting.

You should log in to view the list of potential supervisors, request a particular project that they have suggested, or to suggest your own project to a supervisor of your choice. To Log in to the database you need to use your Informatics username and password.

Ideally, you should have selected your supervisor and project topic by Tuesday of Week 1 of the Autumn term. If you haven't managed to do so by this point then we will assign a supervisor for you who can help you develop a project idea.

Your Supervisor

Your supervisor is a colleague to whom you can turn for strategic advice and guidance. In general, supervisors will meet with you every other week to discuss your progress throughout the year. Initially, they will be an invaluable means of assessing whether your project ideas are suitable and can help you improve them where needed. Another crucial role that supervisors fulfil is to read draft copies and comment on the reports you intend to submit. Given that your supervisor also examines these reports, it is of enormous benefit for you to take advantage of this.

Normally, your supervisor will have some interest in the area you have selected for your project. Because of great competition in some subject areas there can be no guarantee that you get the supervisor of your choice. Do not be disheartened if this happens in your case. All supervisors are capable of offering you strategic advice and valuable opinions on your report, no matter what the topic.

The way in which supervision times are allocated will vary depending on your supervisor. Supervisors are instructed to allow for meetings of approximately 30 minutes per fortnight per student. The timetabling of meetings will be done by email. This is the primary mechanism for supervisors to contact their students so it is important that you check your email regularly.

It is not possible to produce a successful project with a period of massive activity immediately before the deadline as you may be tempted (but ill-advised) to do for other courses. You must work consistently and enthusiastically throughout the duration of the project. It is often worthwhile writing drafts of the dissertation whilst carrying out the work - it is easier to write up the requirements analysis just after you have finished it than to write about it months later.

To keep within the deadlines you will have to make regular progress and remember where your time has gone. To help you to do this we ask you to record your activity in a weekly log. The log is a weekly record of work you have engaged in to meet your objectives. You should start the log straight away and include records of meetings with your supervisor. You should meet with your supervisor regularly taking your log along to review progress. The complete log can form part of an appendix to your final report.

Project Timescale

You will be asked to submit a number of written reports throughout the project. The deadlines for these and timings of other project events are listed below:

• Register with supervisor in Project Database: Tuesday Week 1.
• Project proposal: Thursday Week 3, Autumn term (submitted to supervisor).
• Interim report: 4pm, Thursday Week 10, Autumn term (submitted to the Informatics department office).
• Draft report: Thursday Week 10, Spring term (submitted to supervisor).
• Final report: 4pm, Thursday, Week 2, Summer term (submitted to Informatics department office).
• Project presentation: Weeks 3-4, Summer term.

Please note that two copies of the final report are required.

You will be formally assessed on the Interim report, the Final report, and the Project Presentation

The deadlines shown apply to all Informatics projects, including AI majors. AI projects are subject to the Science area regulations, not to the Arts area regulations. The dates of the presentations will be announced by the end of Week 2 of the Summer term by email.

You can find a detailed description of each of the reports on the other tabs

Project Proposal

At the start of your project you will be expected to read any relevant background references and to prepare a short (approximately two A4 sheets) note describing the objectives of your project and how you plan to meet those objectives. The report should provide the following information:

• Your name
• Your supervisor's name
• Working title - the working title should be a good indication of what your project is about. The working title will be used in choosing examiners for your project. You can change the title for your final report. If you change the topic, you should change the working title to reflect this and inform the project coordinator of the change. You should only change the topic by agreement with your supervisor.
• Aims and objectives - aims describe purpose and intention and include a description of your motivations for undertaking this particular topic. Objectives relate to the expected outcomes of the project. You should break these down into `primary objectives' which you guarantee to achieve and `extensions' which will only be implemented if time allows. The primary objectives should be clearly specified, but the extensions may be vaguer. Do not be afraid to specify more extensions than you will be able to implement.
• Relevance - write a short paragraph to explain how this project relates to your degree programme.
• Resources required - it is your responsibility to make sure that the resources you need are available. Do not expect the department to buy things you need. (If you are going to use something not normally supported by the department you will need to obtain approval from your supervisor.)
• Copy of your personal weekly timetable indicating lectures, tutorials and periods of the week you intend to devote to your project.
• Detailed bibliography of background reading.
• List of other students doing related projects (if applicable)
• Interim log, indicating meetings with supervisor and material consulted so far.

This report is not formally assessed and should be submitted directly to your supervisor.

Interim Report

By the end of the first term of your project, you are required to submit an interim report on your project. This report is formally assessed and two identical copies must be submitted to the Informatics department office (This is a change in procedures for 2008/9). Interim reports are usually 3000-5000 words in length. But the word count would depend on a number of factors including the number of diagrams, amount of detailed design work required, etc, so please check with your supervisor what would be appropriate in your case. The report is effectively an expansion of the project proposal and should include:

• Introduction - This is to provide you with a sense of direction. It specifies the objectives of the project and the needs of your intended users that are achievable in terms of time available and your experience. It should introduce both the problem area (remember your reader may not know anything about the particular problem you have chosen) and give an overview of the rest of the report.
• Professional considerations - The ethical standards governing the computing profession in Britain are defined by the Code of Conduct and Code of Practice published by the British Computer Society (www.bcs.org), and all students are expected to familiarize themselves with these. A project on a purely abstract, scientific topic may be little affected by ethical issues, though even in those cases Section 15 of the Code of Conduct, for instance, is likely to be relevant. Topics with potential practical application will normally have wider ethical implications. You should include in your Interim report a description of any ethical issues which need to be considered in your final project report.
• Requirements analysis - Your aim is to design a system that will meet the needs of or be directed towards some target group of users. This document will describe the needs of those users, to what extent they are met by existing solutions and how an ideal system might meet them more exactly. In this section, you should feel free to describe the solutions that you do not expect to have time to completely develop or implement. You should expect to include this section with only minor modifications in the final report.
• Project plan - This consists of a breakdown of the work to be done into phases, tasks and other activities with estimates of time to complete the work. It will specify interdependencies of tasks, critical work elements and schedule. You should indicate the work you have done so far and that you intend to do in the second term. One of the tasks should be writing the draft report.
• Log - Interim log, indicating meetings with your supervisor and reflecting the phases of the plan completed so far. The complete log may be given as an appendix to your final report.
• Proposal Document - Include this document as appendix. It is not assessed but necessary for audit purposes.

Note that the Interim report can be regarded as the first version of the first chapters of your Final report. You will not have the Interim report attached as separate document in your Final report. Instead, the sections of the Interim report will appear - most likely in an updated form - in the Final report (see detailed guidelines for Final report below).

Normally, your supervisor will have some interest in the area you have selected for your project. Because of great competition in some subject areas there can be no guarantee that you get the supervisor of your choice. Do not be disheartened if this happens in your case. All supervisors are capable of offering you strategic advice and valuable opinions on your report, no matter what the topic.

The way in which supervision times are allocated will vary depending on your supervisor. Supervisors are instructed to allow for meetings of approximately 30 minutes per fortnight per student. The timetabling of meetings will be done by email. This is the primary mechanism for supervisors to contact their students so it is important that you check your email regularly.

It is not possible to produce a successful project with a period of massive activity immediately before the deadline as you may be tempted (but ill-advised) to do for other courses. You must work consistently and enthusiastically throughout the duration of the project. It is often worthwhile writing drafts of the dissertation whilst carrying out the work - it is easier to write up the requirements analysis just after you have finished it than to write about it months later.

To keep within the deadlines you will have to make regular progress and remember where your time has gone. To help you to do this we ask you to record your activity in a weekly log. The log is a weekly record of work you have engaged in to meet your objectives. You should start the log straight away and include records of meetings with your supervisor. You should meet withyour supervisor regularly taking your log along to review progress. The complete log can form part of an appendix to your final report.

Draft Report

This document is a working version of the final report. It should be submitted to your supervisor by the end of the second term of your project in order to allow your supervisor sufficient time to read it and suggest improvements before you need to submit the final report.

Do not expect your supervisor to be available over the Easter break but, as long as your supervisor agrees the deadline for submitting the draft report may be extended. Bear in mind that your supervisor is only expected to read one draft of your report.

In your own interests, the draft report should be as complete as possible so that your supervisor can give you valuable feedback. Your supervisor will be the examiner on other projects. They will tell you what they are looking for from the projects they examine. If your report does not conform to their expectations you will be able to rectify it in time.

This report is not formally assessed and should be submitted directly to your supervisor.

Final Report

Preferably, dissertations should be submitted using A4 paper and comb or soft binding (binding facilities are available in the Informatics library and in the main university library). Double sided printing is encouraged, but not compulsory. You must submit two identical copies of your report.

The word limit for the dissertation (excluding appendices) is 12000 words. The expectation is that most dissertations should contain approximately 10000 words.

The submitted dissertation should include a listing of any program code that has been written. 2-up or 4-up printing for the code may well be appropriate. There is no need to include code or technical documents which have not been written by you -- but you must acknowledge any such material which has been used to complete the project. It may be necessary to include other appendices but there is an expectation that these will cover in total no more than 20 pages.

The final report should contain the following sections in the order indicated:

• A cover sheet. This should contain your name, your degree programme and department, your candidate number, the title of the project, the name of your project supervisor and the calendar year of submission.
• A signed statement of originality together with an overview of an intellectual property rights agreements that you have made. The statement of originality should be worded as follows. `This report is submitted as part requirement for the degree of ... at the University of Sussex. It is the product of my own labour except where indicated in the text. The report may be freely copied and distributed provided the source is acknowledged.'
• Acknowledgements (optional) - this might include your supervisor(s), other students if part of a related project and any other person or organisation that has assisted in any way in the conduct of the project and its documentation.
• Summary - a one page resume of your report.
• Table of contents (with page numbers).
• Introduction - this should give motivation for the project. The aims of the project should at the least be stated in the first paragraph, but preferably in the first sentence. The first chapter should also explain the structure of the report.
• Professional considerations - this should outline any professional ethical issues which impinge upon your project. The ethical standards governing the computing profession in Britain are defined by the Code of Conduct and Code of Practice published by the British Computer Society (www.bcs.org). You should consult these for guidance on ethical issues, no matter how abstract or scientific your project is. For project topics which are affected only slightly by ethical issues, it is sufficient to discuss them in the project introduction.
• Body of report - this should include a requirement analysis and specification of the problem you have tackled. It should also include a description of how you have designed, built and evaluated your system. The exact form of this will vary from project to project but it will usually occupy several chapters and will often include sections on implementation and testing. Any software projects should included a discussion of the principles which underlie the program which has been written: the significance of its data structures, the way that its procedures and modules interact etc. A line by line description of your code is not necessarily the best way of achieving this and is not encouraged.
• Conclusion - this should include an assessment of the success of the finished product. Have you achieved your objectives (Terms of Reference)? If not, why not? It should also contain suggestions for future extensions, or alternative methodologies that, with hindsight, might have led to an improvement of the system.
• References - these must be given correctly. Full references in alphabetical order, with page numbers, are required as in the references to this document. If you consult a similar project done in previous years you must reference it.
• Appendices - you should include your project logs and any source code or system data as appendices. You may also include any technical material which you felt was too detailed for the main body of the report. You should make sure that any technical material, such as source code,is appropriately commented, and is consistently presented.

The project presentation

In addition to writing a dissertation, you will be asked to give some form of public presentation of your work (the format for these presentations differs from year to year and details will be given nearer the time). This is primarily intended for the two markers of your project (particularly the second marker) but other students and interested parties may attend.

The aim of the presentation is to give a broad introductory overview of your system and to demonstrate its effectiveness. For instance, if you have written software you could demonstrate your software during the presentation.

Note that your presentations last just 20 minutes. Remember that spoken communication and demonstration is initially much more powerful than the written word. You have to convey that your work is interesting, novel and generally persuade the listener that it is worth their while reading your written report.

The presentation is an integral part of the assessment. If you fail to show up for the presentation at the appointed time you will be marked as absent for the assessment and forfeit the marks associated with it.

Note that it is an excellent idea to prepare your presentation in advance, and practice it with a friend or colleague.

Assessment

Your project work will be examined by your supervisor and a second faculty member, called a second examiner. Marks will be divided into the following components, with the weights indicated:

• Interim Report: contributes 10% to the overall mark,
• Presentation: contributes 10% to the overall mark
• Dissertation: contributes 80% to the overall mark

You will not be penalised if the dissertation is not bound. The presentation will be conducted as an examination and the normal arrangements for such will apply. Please consult your courses handbook if you wish to know the overall weighting of the project within your degree. We will be employing strict University rules governing collusion, plagiarism and other forms of misconduct. Please consult your examination handbook for details and definitions.

The standard University regulations concerning late submission of coursework will apply. Therefore, managing your time so as to keep to deadlines is vital. You must anticipate technical problems such as printer breakdowns and corrupted hard disks. Make sure you back your work up regularly. You must anticipate that everyone else may be careless enough to leave their printing and binding until the last moment. This could cause large queues for these services at the University facilities and could cause you to lose valuable marks.

The project and your employment prospects

Undertaking a project can be challenging and exciting. It is challenging because a tremendous amount of self-discipline, time and effort needs to be put into it. It is exciting because a successful project rewards with great satisfaction and experiential learning. The project requires the amalgamation of different kinds of skills: problem solving, studying and communication, both written and spoken. It stretches your ability to limits you never thought possible. It gives you something you can talk about knowledgeably and enthusiastically to prospective employers. Projects are a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your creative abilities and independence.

The project is seen as an excellent indicator of a student's overall ability to carry out a serious piece of work, and consequently employers are impressed by such competence.

Reading

The majority of your reading will be specialised according to your chosen topic. For general guidance for writing your reports and preparing your presentation you could look at the following books recommended by Blay Whitby in his Technical Communication Skills course:

• Effective Writing, Turk C. and Kirkman J. QZ 2060 Tur
• Effective Speaking, Turk C. PN 4121 Tur
• How to write and present technical information, Sides, C. T11 Sid