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You can propose your own project for your final year project or take on a project proposed by staff as soon as you are setup on PATS. They will not be visible to anyone else until project selection started (see Project Supervision for how to select a project). Only proposals marked as available can be viewed by others once this started. Student proposals will only be visible to members of staff; staff proposals are visible to students on the relevant degree programmes. Here we discuss how to write and submit your own project proposal. The process is the same for students and members of staff, and both kinds of proposal should provide the information outlined here.
You can submit more than one project proposal, but please keep the number of proposals reasonable and rather make sure you write one or two really good proposals. This will make it much more likely that you find a supervisor for your project. You can still choose a staff project later on, even if you proposed your own project. If you propose your own project, there is no guarantee that there will be a member of staff who will supervise it. This will depend on the quality of your proposal and staff's interest, availability and expertise.
To a lesser degree this equally applies to staff proposals - there is no guarantee to find a student who can or wants to do a staff project, nor do members of staff have to supervise all their own proposals. However, members of staff are expected to do a certain number of projects (PATS indicates this in the supervisor list if that feature is used by the project coordinator) and a student who does not select a proposal will be assigned a random member of staff as supervisor who has project slots left.
Deadlines for proposal submission (and selection) are announced via e-mail and are also visible in the PATS Tasks section.
The purpose of the project is, in the context of the degree you are studying, to integrate various aspects of the taught material and to demonstrate your (academic) research skills and your (professional) analysis, design and implementation skills. It gives you the opportunity to conduct in-depth work on a substantial problem to show individual creativity and originality, to apply where appropriate knowledge, skills and techniques taught throughout the degree programme to further oral and written communication skills, and to practise investigative, problem-solving, management and other transferable skills. The management and execution of the project is your responsibility, but you should seek and take advantage of advice from your supervisor.
As general guideline, a good project aims to solve a problem related to your field of study. You can pick a general area you are interested in and try to find a specific problem you could be working on. Instead of solving a complete problem you can also work on a partial solution or some specific aspect of a larger problem, possibly simplified to make it feasible for the duration of your project and the level you are at. If you are not sure on the specifics you can also discuss a rough initial idea for a project with a member of staff to find something suitable, that can be executed in the context of the module. Out of such discussions often very interesting project ideas can arise.
When you choose a project, you should do so carefully, to reflect the focus of the degree programme you are enrolled in, your personal interests (the project needs to keep you interested for its duration) and the ability of the academic staff to support you throughout your project. Projects vary widely in the problem they address and the products they deliver at the end. While the main product of some projects is a piece of software or hardware, other projects produce a systems model or design, and yet others may address some research hypothesis using a theoretical, computational or experimental approach. This means not every project produces a piece of software. In brief, the better defined the problem that your project addresses, the further through the systems lifecycle you should expect to progress in the course of your project. If instead you are addressing a research hypothesis, your main product may be the evaluation of some experiments or a theoretical result.
So, for example, a project that seeks to develop a logistics planning system for a small business or voluntary organisation would be expected to provide a fully operational, fully tested program that meets all the identified needs of the client. However, a project that aims to validate a government policy in a particular area might only achieve the development of a model to confidently simulate the main factors influencing that policy, and identify the research agenda in terms of specifying precisely the data requirements to allow a full investigation of the relevant factors. A scientifically oriented project may focus on the practical or theoretical evaluation of a new algorithmic approach and compare it with existing approaches, which may involve some implementation, but does not require fully functional software. Importantly, your project must produce a solution to a problem. That means it cannot simply produce a literature review, discuss existing solutions of some form, etc. You should demonstrate you are aware of the background and context of the problem, clearly specify the problem you are aiming to solve, work and report on how you solve the problem and evaluate your solution. Note that you may not necessarily have to achieve a positive result. E.g. if it is not clear at the start that your approach will be successful, but based on the background it is appears to be a suitable direction to explore, then your evaluation producing a negative result is still useful (of course this is different if you are trying something that is known not to work). For a specific proposal it can be useful to discuss with the supervisor what you are expected to achieve and how to deal with any risks.
To submit a new project proposal, go to “My proposals” in PATS' naviatgion bar (when you are logged in) which takes you to a section listing your own proposals. There you can add new proposals, edit or delete existing proposals and make them available for selection.
To create a new proposal go to the “New Proposal” tab and enter a proposal title and description. If you are a student the proposal will automatically be assigned your degree scheme (check in your profile that your degree scheme there is correct and contact the project coordinator if this needs to be amended). Staff should select the degree schemes for which their proposal is suitable from the list provided. This is important as the project work must be related to the specific degree studied (in particular any specialisms). Staff and students are advised to check this carefully.
When choosing a title for your proposal make sure it refers to the core topic of your project. Do not make the title too general (like “A Computer Game”, instead of the specific type of game you wish to write) or provide too much details (“A System to Manage the Selection, Allocation, Deliverable Submission and Marking of Final Year Projects”, instead of “Final Year Project Management”).
Provide the following information in the description of your project. Note that it is expected to be plain text and any other formatting may not be preserved or even make it hard to read; there is a 4,000 character limit. The idea is to provide a concise description akin to an abstract.
Take this is a suggestion for what to include in what order. Of course other formats can be suitable as well, but the problem and approach to address it should be clear.
In addition the following project specific issues may have to be addressed:
Student and supervisor are responsible to ensure that the project can be executed. Make sure you check this with suitable risk management before you agree to do a project.
Staff may also wish to discuss the skills needed to execute the project and the skills that must be acquired during the project. Similarly students may want to indicate that they have or are willing to acquire any specific skills for their proposed project that would usually not have been covered by the course.
PATS' project archive contains some example projects that may also help you to write your proposal. Note that you can do similar projects than those there, but not exactly the same.
The project proposal, obviously, must be your own, in your own words, even if of course there are overlaps between problems and topics. This includes project proposals from other students and supervisors as well as other project proposal sources. Sometimes it is possible that you can do a proposal with a different supervisor, but you should ask the proposer for permission (and acknowledge them suitably unless they don't require this). Generally, if there is a source for the proposal, parts of it or maybe just a useful related resource, you should cite it (author/location or URL in a compact citation format is usually sufficient).