CM3203 One Semester Individual Project

This is the main page for information about the 40 credit one-semester individual project module CM3203 for third year BSc Computer Science undergraduate students, including all specialisms. Everything related to this module is managed via PATS. Deadlines and general tasks to complete are visible when you log into PATS (once you are set up).

• CM3203 Guide: The complete guide for CM3203 on a single page for printing/saving as PDF.

Project Coordinator: Frank C Langbein at LangbeinFC@cardiff.ac.uk

The setup of the module and project selection takes place in autumn term. This includes setting you up on PATS, creating proposals and selecting a project.

• Project Selection Lecture Notes (autumn week 5)
  • 2025-26 CM3203 Project Selection Lecture

Further video recordings from the lectures are available on learning central/panopto for this module.

Before project selection starts, you will get an account on PATS linked to your Cardiff University account. You will receive a notification to your university e-mail address when this is done. Once setup:

• Check your PATS profile. You can edit some fields yourself. Change of e-mail address must be confirmed (check the confirmation e-mail to the new address). You can use the profile field to provide general information about the projects you are interested in and your background. Potential supervisors can view this during project selection with your proposals.
• If any information you cannot edit is wrong, contact the project coordinator; in particular, check your course/specialism.

You can select a staff proposal or propose your own project:

• You can submit project proposals on PATS as soon as you have been set up. The proposals are only visible to potential supervisors if you make them available and project selection has been opened (you will get a notification by e-mail when this happens; you are also not able to see staff proposals before then).
• If you propose your own project, you must find a supervisor for it. There is no guarantee that this will be possible, even if we try to support all feasible projects. It depends on the expertise and availability of supervisors, the required resources and the suitability of your proposal. Discussing your proposal with some supervisors and the project coordinator may help.
• Supervisors may add more proposals during the selection period, and you can also add your own proposals later, edit them, etc., until selection deadline.

See Project Proposals for further details.

Project selection usually takes place from autumn week 5 to 11. Details will be sent to your e-mail registered in PATS, and there will be a lecture introducing the module, including project selection and suitable project topics at the start of the selection period. You will only be able to see proposals and available supervisors and agree on supervision once selection has been opened, which usually happens during or right after the introduction lecture. You will also receive a notification once this has happened.

• Project selection runs via PATS, and you must agree on a proposal with a supervisor before deadline (usually by the end of autumn week 11). The selection deadline cannot be extended due to limited supervision slots. Once this has been completed, you will see your project on PATS and cannot select another project anymore. If you do not select a project, you will get a random supervisor and must agree on a project with them.
• Once you have selected a project with a supervisor, the selection is final. This can only be changed in exceptional circumstances with the help of the project coordinator.
• Your project must be related to your degree, particularly if you are on one of the specialisms. You only see staff project proposals that they marked as relevant to your specific degree, but if you propose your own project, you have to make sure it is suitable. If you are unsure about the suitability of your own project or a staff project, please discuss this with potential supervisors. If queries remain, get in touch with the project coordinator.

Projects Involving Human Participants/User Surveys: Please be aware that projects requiring user participation, surveys, or human evaluation are challenging to execute. The School will not distribute student research surveys via mass e-mails to the student body. Projects that rely on widespread user participation are considered infeasible unless you have your own independent method of distribution or an established group of participants. See CM3203 Ethics and Other Issues for more details.

See Project Supervision for further details.

Your project may require ethics approval. All projects involving human participants, human material or human data (Human Research), including surveys and user tests, must be subject to ethical review before the work commences. If you are unsure, discuss this with your supervisor and potentially a School Research Ethics Committee member. You cannot proceed with the work on your project without this. Sometimes it may only be an optional part of the work, but some projects crucially depend on it. You must clarify this as early as possible to ensure the project can be done. So this is an issue already to consider during project selection, even if approval may only be possible to obtain later on. The student and supervisor are responsible for ensuring the project can be done under the School's ethics regulations, including alternative project directions, should it not be possible to ensure this during selection.

Please watch the “Ethics for Dissertations” video in the panopto/learning central CM3203 folder [PDF Slides] with further details. If you need ethical approval there are two options:

• Simplified ethics, i.e. approval by a supervisor:
  • You can use this if you are running one of the approved study types: anonymous survey (to gather requirements for the system you are developing); usability evaluation (questionnaire, interview, think aloud).
  • And you are not meeting the full review criteria (i.e. you are not working with vulnerable participants and your project does not focus on a potentially sensitive topic).
• Regular ethics application:
  • Details on the ethics policies and procedures are available at https://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/ethics.

The CM3203 ethics framework with the dissertation project ethics form for simplified ethics:

• CM3203 Ethics Framework (approved until 29/11/2026); supervisors should send the approved form by e-mail back to the student and the module leader.

with the following templates/exemplars for adoption by the students:

• Recruitment Letter Template;
• Participant Information Sheet Template;
• Consent Form Template.

Disseminating Research Surveys: Following best-practice guidance from the Learning and Teaching Academy (LTA), the School will not disseminate student research surveys to the wider student body through official School channels (e.g., mass e-mail lists). This policy is in place to prevent survey fatigue and protect engagement with key institutional surveys like the NSS and Module Enhancements. If your project requires survey data or user testing, you are responsible for your own participant recruitment. Please consider these alternative methods include:

• Viva Engage (Microsoft Feed): You can use the Cardiff University Viva Engage Feed to share your survey with the wider university community.
• Peer Networks: Sharing within your own personal and academic cohorts.
• Student Societies: Reaching out to relevant society committees to ask if they will share your survey with their members.
• Module-Level Opportunities: Requesting permission from individual module leaders, where highly appropriate and relevant to the module content.
• PATS wiki: you can share your survey on the editable Survey wiki page.

Other issues, such as required resources (e.g. special hardware or software) or legal issues (e.g. intellectual property and licensing), must also be considered for the proposal when agreeing to supervision and during execution, with proper risk management in place.

It is the student's and supervisor's responsibility to ensure that the project is, in principle, feasible to execute and suitable for the module/degree scheme.

The use of AI tools is permitted in this module. This includes, for example, large language models, code assistants, generative tools, search/summarisation tools, and other assistive or automated techniques. These tools should be treated in the same way as any other tool, software package, library, service, dataset, or instrument used in the project: if their use is material to the work, it should be appropriate, justified, and acknowledged. You remain responsible for everything you submit, and get the marks for what you have done yourself. This includes the correctness, quality, originality, legality, ethics, and presentation of the work, regardless of which tools were used to help produce it.

Where AI or other tools play a material role in the project, you should:

• explain what was used and for what purpose;
• justify why that use was appropriate for the project;
• describe any important limitations of the tool and how outputs were checked or validated;
• acknowledge and reference the tool appropriately, as you would for any other significant tool or resource.

Do not cite an AI tool instead of the underlying scholarly or technical source where the underlying source is what supports a claim. Do not upload confidential, personal, sensitive, restricted, or otherwise protected material to external tools unless this is permitted by the project's ethics, legal, licensing, and data-protection requirements.

The project runs in the spring term from week 1 to week 12. Regular supervisor meetings will take place during this period and are arranged individually with your supervisor. As the student is responsible for managing their own project, they must also ensure that these meetings occur as agreed. On average, supervision time is about 30 minutes per teaching week, but this can be distributed flexibly across the 12 weeks and may include group sessions where appropriate. If the supervisor has not replied within about one week, or the agreed meeting schedule breaks down, the student must email the project coordinator and include their previous correspondence with the supervisor.

The work on the project is towards the two assessments for the module:

• CM3203 Initial Plan: You must submit an initial plan (by the beginning of spring week 2, worth 5%).
• CM3203 Final Report: A final report must be submitted at the end of the semester (by the end of spring week 12, worth 95%).

You also find the required deliverables with their exact submission deadlines under your PATS project details. The word limits are a maximum for the main body of the report, not a target. Enough information such that a competent computer scientist can understand and reproduce the work should be given in the report, and any appendices or supplementary material (both do not count towards the word limit). More guidance and details about the coursework are in the corresponding sections above.

Supervisors can give formative feedback on an outline or a near-complete report draft, and answer specific questions. They will not suggest likely marks or predict outcomes, and they are not expected to read every line. They may scan for structural or scope problems and comment on whether an outline or table of contents looks suitable.

Ask for written comments once or twice—for example at outline stage and again on a late draft—not on many successive versions. Allow at least about a week for a reply and send requests well before deadlines; see the initial plan and final report pages for related guidance.

We provide an optional skill for formative help with CM3203 project work, the initial plan and the final report. It can help with, for example:

• feedback on a report draft, chapter, outline, evaluation section, figures, tables, or references;
• questions about how to explain your methods, implementation, evaluation, reflection, deliverables, support files, and AI/tool use in the report;
• questions about the CM3203 project and report guide, using the current online guide where possible.

This skill is provided only as an experimental support tool to help you improve your work and understand the guide. It is:

• not authoritative advice;
• not part of the official assessment process;
• not a marking tool;
• not a predictor of marks or degree classifications;
• not something that can be used to argue for or against any official mark, feedback, or academic decision.

Official requirements and decisions come only from the CM3203 guide, PATS, and the relevant module staff. Even when using this skill, you should still check the current guide and PATS yourself, especially for deadlines, submission requirements, and case-specific issues, and you should discuss your work with your supervisor and the project coordinator where appropriate.

Like any other entity, system, or tool, this skill may be useful, but it may also be incomplete, misleading, or wrong. You must therefore not rely on it without checking, testing, and verifying its outputs yourself, just as you should critically evaluate any advice, feedback, or information from any other source — something a good AI would also try to do.

Download: CM3203 Project Help Skill V0.0.2

If you have any extenuating circumstances, Cardiff University's rules for undergraduate coursework apply (do not confuse these with the regulations for postgraduate dissertations). You can either obtain an extension or a deferral to the next possible time (usually in the resit period over the summer or the following academic year). Generally you would submit this in the two weeks before deadline.

If you do the project in the summer resit period (for any reason), you would usually work on the same project with the same supervisor and moderator. This will automatically be set up, and you will get details on deadlines, etc., after the year exam board. If the supervisor is not available, another supervisor will be found.

If you repeat the project (for any reason) during term, this will not be automatic. It will be an internal repeat of the module (external is not possible), taking you through the complete process. You must select a project/supervisor again in the autumn term to execute the project in the spring term. Still, you can agree on the same/adjusted project with the same supervisor if they are available.