| User Name | |
| Password | |
Informatics Final Year Projects
Most students taking degrees run by Informatics carry out a large individual project in their final year. The nature of these projects will depend on the student's degree program. For Computer Science and Artificical Intelligence based programmes it is expected that the student will undertake a substantial programming project. For Information Technology and Multimedia based programmes the remit is wider and may include the development of multimedia and digital content systems using facilities in the Media Technology laboratory. These projects are supervised and assessed via a dissertation and an oral presentation.
If you are convened as a supervisor of final-year projects then you will need to interact with the sign-up database. The database will allow you to:
Please list your interests and suggest at least two projects before the beginning of the Autumn term. This is important as the project suggestions that us faculty make will help to set the standard and inform the students' own suggestions. A strong show of project ideas from us will ultimately encourage a better pool of projects. It is immensely beneficial for students to have examples of project ideas to look at.
Some students may ask you advice on suitable projects before they complete their second year of study. Even if you are not yet convened to supervise, please try to be as encouraging and helpful as possible. It is in your interests to do so if you do end up being convened.
The information for students tab gives detailed information on how to conduct theproject and you should recommend that they read it.
Supervisors make their own arrangements for supervision meetings. Our current guideline is that you should see your students approx 30 mins per student per fortnight but obviously actual meeting times will vary depending on the current state of the project. Some supervisors prefer to see 3 to 4 students at a time for one hour meetings. You should not feel that it is your responsibility to `nanny' the student along, as you might do with a research student. If the student cannot be bothered to access you as a resource then that is their problem rather than yours. However, in keeping with the policy of monitoring attendance, if any of your students fail to respond to your emails and do not attend then please report this to the Senior Tutor. For this reason, I would recommend that you keep your own personal record of whatever arrangements for meetings with students have been made and what has passed at these meetings. As meetings are arranged in a variety of ways we will not be recording them in Sussex Direct.
Initially, as a supervisor, you should be advising your students on the project topic. The specific topics undertaken come from a variety of sources, including students' own suggestions. The major concern at this point is whether the project is appropriate and sufficiently ambitious in nature. The latter of these is a nebulous concept and must be treated to a large extent with your own judgement. Do encourage students to be as ambitious as possible as well as to formulate contigency plans in case of difficulties. The former of these is slightly easier to determine: the final year projects are intended to showcase a range of skills which the students have acquired during their degree. Be aware of what degree programme your students are following and make sure that their project suggestion relates to their own degrees. If you are unsure about a particular project's suitability then please contact the Final Year Project coordinator before, or soon after the project proposal is made. For instance, Computer Science based students ought to be demonstrating programming ability and we would expect a final year project with a large programming component in them. On the other hand, for MDS students the emphasis is on creation of innovative multimedia systems using state-of-the-art technologies and programming need not play a large role.
Most supervisees will want you to comment on a draft, possibly of their interim report, but certainly of their dissertation. The guideline here is that supervisors must read at least one complete draft of the Final Report provided that it is submitted in good time. For the Interim Report this is at your discretion and you should negotiate with your students whether, and at what point, they should submit a draft to you. For the Final Report the students have been told that providing they submit a draft before the end of the Spring term then their supervisor is obliged to read it. This deadline is very early in the project timescale and is typically not easy to meet. The deadline is very soft however and may be readily extended at your own discretion. Do try leave at least a week between your comments on the draft being returned to the student and their submission date of Thursday Week 2 of the Summer term.
The information for students page indicates to students what information they ought to include in each report. You may wish to refer to this when reading draft reports to ensure that their reports contain everything that is being asked for.
The students will submit their Interim Reports to the departmental office. These will then be distributed to the students' supervisors to be marked. The supervisor will, initially, act as the sole marker for these reports. The report, with qualitative feedback on the cover page, must be returned to the Departmental Office (so that it can take a record of the mark and feedback) which returns it to the student. Please inform your students that, as all coursework, the mark awarded is only a provisional mark and is subject to change when the project is examined at the end of the year. Since students submit two copies from 2008 onwards, students can retain their marked interim reports and do not need to resubmit them for the final examination.
The supervisor does not need to enter marks on Sussex Direct for the Interim report. The Departmental staff will do that once the report marks has been checked by the second marker.
Please remind students to include their proposal document as appendix.
Supervisors should read the information regarding Interim Report marking criteria before marking their students' reports.
All final-year project dissertations are blind double marked. The first examiner of any project is that project's supervisor. The second examiner is a supervisor of another project. After the submission date the projects will be distributed along with official marking instructions to the first examiners as soon as they are available. Final Reports should be given a percentage mark using the guidelines given in the Final Report marking criteria. A short report summarising the strengths and weaknesses of the project is also required. Remind students that they need to hand in two identical copies of their final report.
The first examiner will get one copy of the final report to mark. The second examiner will get the (retained copy of the) interim report and the second copy of the final report. The second examiner should first inspect the Interim Report to assess whether they agree with the mark proposed for it by the first examiner. Then, the second examiner should mark the Final Report itself. At this point both examiners should meet and agree marks for (1) the Interim Report and (2) the Final Report. The first examiner should add a joint report to his or her form incases where there is any significant disagreement in marks.
Once marks have been agreed, the first examiners should return the marksheets and the reports to the departmental office.
The schedule for oral presentations will be circulated at the beginning of the Summer term. However, presentations are expected to be held in the third and fourth weeks of this term. If you are convened to supervise final year projects you may find that you have presentations to assess in Weeks 3 and 4 of the Summer term. Please bear this in mind when scheduling absences.
Rather than a conference style seminar on their project, we will encourage students to demonstrate their software or system as a part of their presentations. Both examiners will have to attend and assess the student's presentation session which will be held in a laboratory in groups. The students will be expected to present their work verbally, with the aid of a demonstration or multimedia presentation and then take questions from the examiners. A percentage mark should be awarded. As far as possible this should follow the general grade guidelines for examination and should primarily reflect the quality of the presentation rather than the quality of the project. This will incorporate aspects of how effective the media used (including software demonstrations) to present the project were and how well the student responded to questioning on the project topic.
* This document was first written by Chris Thornton, and has subsequently been maintained by Alan Jeffrey, Phil Husbands, and Julian Rathke. It is now maintained by Bernhard Reus. Some of the material in this file was adapated from notes produced for the Univ. of London CS project assessment.