Site Tools


submission_guide

This is an old revision of the document!


This is to describe how to submit any deliverables for your final year project. All deliverables have to be submitted via PATS, except for physical artefacts (for details see below). For details on what needs to be included, please see the following topics:

  • Initial Plan: Usually a single PDF file containing the tile, project description, aims and objectives and a work plan.
  • Interim Report: At least one PDF document for the written interim report about the deliverables, but more files may be required, as agreed upon in the initial plan.
  • Final Report:: At least one PDF document for the written final report about your project findings, etc., but usually more files providing additional deliverables, as agreed upon in the initial plan.

Online Submission

The PATS online submission system allows you to submit a range of different files for each submission. Note that, of course, not all file types need to be included for each submission. Each submission consists of a collection of files under the following sections:

  • Document files: These must be PDF files and each submission must have at least one of these files - this section for the normal written report.
  • Appendix files: These are additional PDF files, not part of the main document files, that form an extended appendix of your report. Including these here is optional and you can instead add a normal appendix to the document files.
  • Archive files: These are file archives to provide the sources or any other content collections for your project, that are relevant to your report. The archives can contain any file type and can have any arbitrary hierarchy. You can upload zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2 or tar.xz archives only. But for compatibility any non-zip file will be converted to a zip file. Providing files here is optional, but at least final report submissions are likely to require an archive as well.
  • Other files: Here you can upload any other files to support your submission. This is provided to enable you to submit any special files for your project in special formats, etc. as an alternative to submitting these in an archive.

To add files to these sections, press the related [Upload] link which opens a separate upload dialog. You can select more than one file at once to upload into a section. Once you have uploaded a file you can view its type, file size, MD5 and SHA1 checksum via the provided link. You can use the M5 or SHA1 checksum to verify the integrity of the file (also see MD5 checksums below). You can further rename, delete and move the file up or down in the list for each section. You cannot exchange files between sections.

After you have uploaded at least one document file you can complete the submission. This will generate a zip file containing all the files you've uploaded in all sections, sorted by these sections. Only after you have done this, your files count as submitted. You can resubmit at any time before the deadline (all deadlines are by midnight on the day shown).

A resubmission will completely replace the previously submitted files and not extend the previous submission, so always submit all files. However, the system will keep the current and the previous submission. You can delete these archives at any time before the deadline and also download the archives to verify their contents. If you wish to check the archive before submission, select the “Preview Submission” button.

Your supervisor and moderator will be able to see any of the files you have in the submission area and your current and previous submission archive (unless you delete them).

Physical Artefacts

Some projects may also produce physical artefacts without any digital versions of them. Hardware or similar physical objects do not need to be submitted, but should be available for demonstration at the oral examination and your report should contain sufficient information to rebuild these. Any manually created documentation necessary for your project should, however, be included in the archive in a digitised format.

Anything that fits on an A4 page or smaller can be scanned and directly included in the report as a figure. For documents larger than A4 we recommend taking photos of these and including the image files in the archive. If a single photo is insufficient due to resolution limitations you can take multiple overlapping photos of the document and combine these into a single image. This applies in particular to large soft system models drawn manually.

In addition to the digitised version, the documents larger than A4 should also be handed in by the submission deadline to the COMSC office in an envelope. On the envelope clearly write your name, the title of your project and the names of your supervisor and moderator. The document will not be archived, but used by your supervisor and moderator to decide your mark and will be available at the oral examination. It will be returned to you after the oral examination.

Assistance is available to create digital versions of such large documents from Frank Langbein. If you cannot take any suitable images of the document, contact him for assistance (to take one or multiple photos and merge them, etc.). If you can take the images, but cannot merge them, please send the images to him by e-mail indicating how they are spatially related. He will merge these images for you.

Submission Problems and Peace of Mind

After you submitted your files on PATS as an archive (not just uploaded them into the submission area) your project counts as submitted and you do not have to do anything else. We do not expect any problems with the network connection, the server or the integrity of your submitted file. However, to avoid any problems with the integrity of your submission and to deal with any problems arising from the server, the Internet connection or anything else that prevents you from submitting the project in time (i.e. on the day of the submission deadline), please follow these instructions:

  • Put all the files you wish to submit into some archive file.
  • Compute an MD5 checksum of this archive file and store it in a separate file.
  • Carefully preserve the archive you have submitted or intend to submit in its original form and the MD5 checksum file. For this you may for instance burn it on a CD or DVD.
  • E-mail the MD5 checksum to LangbeinFC@cf.ac.uk in an e-mail with the title “Final Year Project MD5 Checksum” from your university e-mail account. The e-mail must be sent before the submission deadline and all e-mails will be acknowledged. If you do not have e-mail access, print out the MD5 checksum and hand it in at the COMSC office with your name and project title.

While the procedure is optional it avoids any problems arising from the online submission. If you provide an MD5 checksum, then the following applies:

  • If you have submitted your project online, then you will receive an e-mail after the submission deadline with the MD5 checksum of the archive (often this e-mail will arrive earlier, but we cannot guarantee this for projects submitted shortly before the deadline). If this checksum does not match the checksum you send by e-mail you will be contacted. In this case the submitted archive may be replaced by the archive with that checksum. This is to ensure the integrity of the archive.
  • If for whatever reason you did not manage to submit the project online by the deadline, the MD5 checksum (submitted before the deadline) can be used to verify that the archive has been generated before the submission deadline. In this case you can hand-in the archive (e.g. on a CD or DVD) or upload the archive later. Obviously the late submitted archive must produce the same MD5 checksum. You will automatically be contacted if you have send an MD5 checksum and no archive has been submitted. This is to avoid problems that may arise from server problems, network connection problems, etc.

Creating MD5 Checksums

An MD5 checksum looks something like this:

  5be5e4773e92dfb5b2add9b8d562c352

Please make sure you submit the hexadecimal MD5 sum. In order to generate such a checksum you may use the following MD5 checksum generators:

  • Linux: md5sum command in shell;
  • Mac OS: md5 command in terminal;
  • Windows:]three options, among many others:
    • MD5sums, http://www.pc-tools.net/win32/md5sums/ installed on COMSC computers as G:\md5sums, call as
      G:\md5sums -u FILE

      from the command prompt to display the MD5 checksum

    • FCIV–File Checksum Integrity Verifier http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841290 installed on COMSC computers as G:\\civ, call as
       G:\\fciv FILE

      from the command prompt to display the MD5 checksum or

    • FastSum, http://www. fastsum.com/ (not installed on COSMC systems).

In exceptional circumstances alternative checksums that are at least as reliable as an MD5 checksum may be acceptable (e.g. SHA1 or GNU-PG/PGP file signatures). But please contact Frank Langbein early if generating an MD5 checksum is a problem for you.

submission_guide.1317572894.txt.gz · Last modified: 2011/10/02 17:28 by scmfcl