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Honours Project (INF-4-PROJ)

This web page describes those aspects of the Honours Project that are largely unchanged from year to year. It is designed to supplement rather than replace the formal Course Descriptor. For information specific to projects done during a specific academic year - list of project proposals, allocation of students to projects and supervisors, project group meetings, project calendar, etc. - please select one of the following:

• Academic year 2011-2012
• Academic year 2012-2013
• Academic year 2013-2014

Most of the following also applies to MInf students: they choose projects from the same pool and participate in the same group meetings, but have different deliverables and the project extends over two years. The MInf project is split into a planning component (MPP) followed by Phase 1 (MPP1) in the first year, finishing with Phase 2 (MPP2) in the final year. (The structure of the MInf project will be different for students beginning projects in 2013-2014; details to follow. MInf students who began their projects in 2012-2013 are not affected by this change.)

There is additional information for supervisors here:

• Staff-only pages
• Information for external supervisors (This information may also be of use to new members of staff.)

Any questions or comments should be emailed to the Honours Project Coordinator, Don Sannella, at dtsinf.ed.ac.uk.

Contents

• Introduction
• Report
• Assessment
• Project materials
• Progress documents
• Project group meetings
• Project presentations
• Producing a project report
• Intellectual Property and confidentiality

Introduction

The project involves both the application of skills learnt in the past and the acquisition of new skills, on a substantial piece of independent work. The types of skill required vary from project to project, but six main areas of work are required:

• gathering and understanding background information;
• solving conceptual problems;
• design;
• implementation;
• experimentation and evaluation;
• writing up.

Students choose project topics in Semester 2 of the third year from a list of proposals produced by staff and external organisations. Alternatively, student may choose to do a project on a self-proposed topic, on condition that a member of staff can be convinced to act as supervisor.

Projects are intended to allow students to demonstrate their ability to organise and carry out a major piece of work. The relative amounts of time spent on the above areas will obviously vary. No project consists of just implementation or experimentation: much careful thought and planning is required in advance. Project topics span the range of Informatics, so that students can choose projects that they find useful and interesting, and goals are usually flexible so that students can work to the best of their ability.

Spreading project work over both semesters is more important than adhering to a detailed distribution of hours. The fourth year structure has three blocks of concentrated effort for the project: in Weeks 1-5 of Semester 1; in Weeks 11-13 of Semester 1; and in Weeks 1-5 of Semester 2. During these periods you should be spending much (for the Weeks 1-5 blocks in both semesters) or all (Weeks 11-13 of Semester 1) of your time on the project. There may be some coursework deadlines in these periods, with few or none in Weeks 11-13. However, you should make sure to keep your project going at a quieter level during the other periods of the semester, as steady progress is far more likely to result in a satisfactory project than erratic jumps. Students are encouraged to keep a log-book in which they record all work done on their project and the time spent.

Each student is assigned one (or occasionally two) supervisors, who not only provide technical advice, but also assist in planning the project. Students and supervisors should meet frequently and regularly, preferably each week during semester time.

Report

The project is assessed on the basis of a written project report submitted in Week 11 of Semester 2. (See the project calendar for the exact date.) You will also be required to submit your entire project directory, to provide background information.

The report

The report should usually be between 30 and 60 pages long (and no shorter than 20 pages) and contain:

• Title page with abstract (i.e., a one or two paragraph summary of the contents).
• Introduction and synopsis, in which the project topic is described and set in the context of published literature, and the main results are briefly summarized (about five pages).
• Discussion of the work undertaken, in which the various sub-problems, solutions and difficulties are examined. Discussion of any implementation should concentrate on overall principles and aspects of particular interest, rather than minute details.
  However, you should always make it clear what was completed, and what was left as future work. If in doubt spell it out: tell us which bits of code you could find already written, which bits you had to do from scratch, which bits were routine, which bits were challenging (and why).
• If appropriate, a description of experiments undertaken, a presentation of the data gleaned from them, and an interpretation of that data.
• Conclusion, in which the main achievements are reviewed, and unsolved problems and directions for further work are presented.
• Bibliography.

In addition, the report sometimes contains appendices in which relevant program listings, circuit diagrams, check plots, formal proofs etc. are included. Such appendices do not contribute to the page count but they should not be excessively long.

Some more detailed, but informal, guidelines on report-writing, are here.

It is perfectly acceptable, and indeed recommended, that you arrange for your supervisor to read and comment on a draft of the project report in advance of the deadline.

Submitting the Project report

Two comb-bound hard copies of the report, with front and back covers, are to be submitted to the ITO office by the deadline (see the project calendar). Please submit them directly to a member of ITO staff rather than posting them in the submission box. The submitted report must be accompanied by a signed "Own Work Declaration" and a signed "Project Copyright Permission Letter".

A "Project Submission Pack" that includes everything you need to submit your project, including this information sheet, will be provided by the ITO in the period before submission.

Printers are a heavily utilised resource near the submission deadline, so you should plan to use a photocopier, for instance in the Main Library, to create one of the copies. The colour printers are a particular bottleneck. Please try to avoid printing large numbers of monochrome pages on the colour printer. The binder is another bottleneck: expect a queue throughout the day of project submission, and don't wait until the last minute!

Submitting Project Directories

At or before the submission deadline for your project you will also be required to submit your project via the project submission web form. This requires you to nominate a "project directory" that contains appropriate supporting evidence for the project examiners, and to provide the location of a pdf file containing your project report. The project directory should contain sufficient additional material to allow the project examiners to come to a decision on matters such as: level of completion of the project, the quality of the project and the amount of work required to complete the project.

The marking guidelines and form used to grade projects are based entirely on the content of the report. The additional material will be used to assess the accuracy of claims in the report.

Projects often build on work previously carried out, in some cases re-using code and data from earlier projects. We would like your project materials to be available for further use in research, private study or education, if requested. However, if you decide that you do not want your project materials re-used, please tick the relevant box.

Once you graduate, your Informatics computing account will be retained for a period of up to one year. You will be guaranteed access to the account for a period of at least three months after graduation; after that period access may be withdrawn without notice. You should make any personal backup before you leave or before the three months grace period as after that time all the files in your home directory will be deleted and will not be recoverable.

Penalties for late submission

In general, coursework in Informatics will not be accepted late without good reason (where "good reason" is to be judged by the year organiser).

This rule does not apply to the project, for the simple reason that only the Board of Examiners is allowed to judge "good reason" for a significant piece of work such as the project. If you do submit late (which is not recommended, as the penalty for this is high), we use the University's "penalty" scheme. In certain cases, where evidence of special circumstances is presented to the Board of Examiners, the penalty might be waived.

• It is an essential feature of the project that the submission deadline be met. It is your responsibility to allow an adequate margin for problems which might delay your submission of a report. This includes, but is not limited to, such things as computer failure (whether your own or a University facility), printer failure or queue congestion, loss or destruction of data.
• The mark for the project (out of 100) will be reduced in the event of late submission according to the usual University scale. That is to say, 5 marks will be deducted for each working day (Monday to Friday) up to a maximum of five working days. No submissions are allowed beyond the five working day limit.
• Any case of mitigating circumstances (e.g., illness) must be explained to your Personal Tutor, at the earliest opportunity.
• In no circumstance will any extension of deadline, or other a priori allowance, be made for late submission. Where there are mitigating circumstances, your Personal Tutor will present the case to the Board of Examiners, who have sole discretion to rescind any penalty.

Assessment

The report is read independently by the project supervisor and a second member of staff (and, in some cases, by others). It must be self-contained and include all information relevant to the project since, in general, the readers will be unaware of the work undertaken, the difficulties encountered and the results obtained. The readers allocate a numerical mark after assessing the project work in terms of the following criteria:

BASIC CRITERIA

• Understanding of the problem
• Completion of the project ("Completion" covers achievement of the original objectives, achievement of modified objectives, or providing convincing evidence that the objectives are unachievable.)
• Quality of the work
• Quality of the report

ADDITIONAL CRITERIA

• Knowledge of the literature
• Critical evaluation of previous work
• Critical evaluation of own work
• Justification of the design decisions
• Solution of any conceptual problems
• Amount of work

EXCEPTIONAL CRITERIA

• Evidence of originality
• Inclusion of publishable material

Projects are marked according to the following classifications.

0-19: Bad Fail

The project is inadequate in all of the basic criteria. The student is deemed not to have duly performed the work of fourth year and cannot normally receive an Honours degree.

20-29: Clear Fail

The project is inadequate in more than one of the basic criteria, but not all. The student is deemed not to have duly performed the work of fourth year, and will not receive an Honours degree unless there are circumstances mitigating the failure in the project.

30-39: Marginal Fail

The project is inadequate in one of the basic criteria. The student will fail the project, but may yet pass overall.

40-49: III

The project is adequate on the basic criteria.

50-59: II.2

The project is at least average on all the basic criteria and is average on most of the additional criteria.

60-69: II.1

The project is at least good on the basic criteria and is at least average and sometimes good or excellent on the additional criteria.

70-79: Low I

The project is good or excellent on all the basic and additional criteria.

80-89: High I

The project is good or excellent on all the basic and additional criteria and also has elements of the exceptional criteria.

90-100: Outstanding I

The project is good or excellent on all the basic, additional and exceptional criteria, and has strong elements of the exceptional criteria.

Project materials

Students are strongly advised to use only supported software, be it programming languages, editors, graphics packages, windowing systems, etc. Where a project requires the purchase of materials of any form, including software, the necessary purchase should be negotiated in good time with the project supervisor and the project coordinator.

Progress documents

To provide a check on progress, and as preparation for writing the final report, students must submit two further documents during the year. These are:

• a one-page description of the project goals, in advance of the first project group meeting;
• a ten-page interim report on a description of the problem and your approach to its solution, and/or information you have acquired from background reading. You should take the opportunity to write material that is suitable for inclusion in your final report. Two copies of this report should be submitted to the ITO office at the end of Week 2 of Semester 2; see the project calendar for more precise information.
  I'd expect about 4-5 pages on describing the project and its goals, about 3-4 pages on describing your approach, then about 1-2 pages on the timeline (what you have done already, when the rest of the project will be done). This layout will vary depending on the particular project.
  In doing the timeline, remember you must plan to be finished with system building by Week 4 of Semester 2 at the latest, to give time for evaluation and writing up.

The interim reports are scrutinized by the project supervisor, who will give written or verbal individual feedback.

Project group meetings

To further broaden involvement in projects, students are divided into small groups which meet regularly, with supervisors in attendance, to discuss progress. Project groups meet at three times in the year as follows.

• Week 4 of Semester 1;
• Week 11 of Semester 1;
• Week 5 of Semester 2.

One of the supervisors in the group is assigned to act as convener. Group meetings may also be attended by the project coordinator. At each meeting, each student gives a 15-minute talk describing progress on project work and future plans.

More detailed guidelines on the formats of the various talks are circulated in advance of each meeting. Supervisors should assist their students in preparing for the meetings. The group coordinator transmits individual feedback to each student and to the project coordinator, after discussion with the supervisors, following the meeting.

The purpose of this system is fourfold:

• to broaden involvement in the project through feedback from other staff and students;
• to monitor the progress of the project as a whole and identify problems at an early stage;
• to provide students with periodic opportunities to take stock of their progress;
• to develop students' presentational skills.

Any student whose progress gives cause for concern may be asked to give a further presentation to the project coordinator, with the supervisor in attendance. This permits a more thorough discussion of any problems that have arisen.

Project presentations

Finally, students give a 30-minute presentation of their project to the markers and perhaps one additional member of staff, in or around Week 1 of the Examination Period (about 3-4 weeks after Semester 2 ends). Alternatively presentations may be arranged in the week immediately following project submission. See the project calendar for more precise information. The purpose of the presentation is to help the markers gain insight into the project, as input to the marking process. The presentation itself is not assessed but it is obligatory.

The focus of the presentation should be a demonstration of results and not just repetition of sections of the report. You might not require a computer to demonstrate your project but you should have some results to demonstrate your evaluation of your work. The markers may well have already read your report and are likely to raise specific questions.

Producing a project report

This section deals only with the technical aspects of producing a report. Please see above for a description of its expected structure and contents.

While the project report should not be untidy, it is not fruitful to spend a large amount of time on word processing. The report's readers are mainly concerned with the technical quality of the content. Use of a spelling checker program is recommended.

The recommended word processing system is LaTeX; instructions and document class files are here. Printer output must be paid for, as usual. However, your University print and copy account will be credited with a small sum to help compensate for the project printing. The project report should be printed on both sides of the page. You do not need a blank page between chapters but please start each chapter on a right-hand page. See above for details of where to submit the report.

Intellectual property and confidentiality

Intellectual Property in a project is owned by the people or organisations who supply original ideas. Students are not employees of the University and they are marked in part for original input so ipso facto they will own at least some intellectual property of any creative project they are engaged in. This share will depend on who proposed the project and the degree of direction given to the student. If this is an issue, the student and supervisor or external organisation should sign an agreement prior to committing to the project. Where a formal agreement is required, the University can provide a document for this purpose which can be obtained from the project coordinator on request. It may also be necessary to ask the student to sign a non-disclosure agreement if the student is privy to confidential information. Special restrictions or agreements may apply to sponsored students. The University must be informed of any restrictions being imposed on or agreed with the student and would veto any agreement that imposed employment restrictions on students after graduation. Project reports cannot be copied to external organisations without the prior approval of the student in any case and may be restricted by agreement with any other owner of the intellectual property. In normal circumstances students will hold the intellectual property and will be asked to sign a declaration, on submitting their report, which will allow the University to copy the report on request. Although a student may own all or part of the intellectual property, nevertheless neither the student nor the University can publish or otherwise exploit the substance of the project without the permission and cooperation of the other party.