Project Selection Lecture Notes

• Project selection from autumn week 5 until end of autumn week 11 (PATS knows and shows your specific deadlines, including approved extensions; extensions for selection are not possible).
  • Hard deadline - you will be assigned a random supervisor if you do not have a project selected.
• You can propose your own project or select a staff project.
  • No guarantee you can do your own project - must be agreed with a supervisor.
• Everything is managed via PATS - read the CM3203 wiki entries.
  • Check your PATS profile and report any mistakes (degree scheme).

The project allows you to demonstrate your skills and explore a topic in-depth: Project Proposals.

The work must be the student's own, supported by cited material and consequently its copyright is owned by the student. Sometimes, e.g. for industry projects, separate agreements and conditions may apply; discuss with the supervisor as needed.

See the PATS archive for examples of good (not perfect) past projects students have allowed us to publish.

• Anything that is related to your degree scheme (specialisms).
• Something that you can do with the material learned in the course.
• Specialised in some area; necessarily means you need to learn more and may not know everything yet.

• Background and context of the problem with a detailed problem specification.
• Methodology or approach of how the problem is solved.
• Evaluation of the solution.

A complete solution is often not required, and positive and negative evaluations are both useful, depending on your problem. Discuss the expectations for a particular proposal with your supervisor.

• CM3203 Initial Plan
• CM3203 Final Report

• Project Proposal Writing

• Special resources, e.g. non-standard hardware, special software.
• Ethical approval, affecting any project involving human participants, human material or human data (Human Research).
• Legal issues, especially intellectual property and licensing.

See Feasibility - this is the student's and supervisor's responsibility and part of the risk management.

• The student is responsible to manage and execute the project.
• The supervisor supports and advises as needed, provides feed-forward, and is one the examiners.
• Regular meetings with supervisor during spring term weeks (about 30 minutes on average per term week).

Supervisor and moderator mark your deliverables independently and then agree on a mark for the exam board, to be checked by an external examiner.

• High 1st: solution completed to high standards and explored deeply; often evaluation, but also your own ideas/methodologies/code; usually goes beyond expectations.
• 1st: solution explored deeper; completed to high-level standards; fulfilling all expectations completely.
• 2.1: standard solution, well within expectations, executed well.
• 2.2: some problems, but solid core of a solution within expectations.
• 3rd: major problems with the solution, not meeting expectations, but it still demonstrates good skills and knowledge in the degree scheme area.
• Fail: solution has severe problems; inappropriate approach; hardly any suitable work or results.

See marking criteria of the deliverables.

Discuss details and expectations of specific proposals with supervisor.

• Express interest in staff proposals / find a supervisor for your proposal via PATS.
• Arrange meeting with supervisor to discuss.
  • Can meet with more supervisors and agree later on, but meeting is essential.
  • Agreement is on first come, first served basis and exactly the same project can only be executed once.
• Clearly agree supervision with a supervisor; they will set up your project on PATS.
  • This is final and can only be changed in exceptional circumstances.