MSc by Research Thesis (Pervasive Parallelism)
Course Descriptor for formal details.
Overview
The MSc by Research Thesis describes the results of a project undertaken throughout the MSc year by students of the CDT in Pervasive Parallelism, under the guidance of the supervision team. The project should address an area of relevance to the Pervasive Parallelism remit. It will typically be based on the plan developed during the Pervasive Parallelism course, but can be adapted or indeed radically changed from this as circumstances dictate, in collaboration with the supervision team. Students should be working on the project from their arrival in the school, initially outlining a topic and planning the work, before moving on to execution and reporting.
As discussed below, assessment is on the basis of the submitted thesis. Additionally, supervisors will conduct an intermediate progress review and report to students as described below.
Timetable
- During May 2019, by arrangement, Intermediate Progress Review.
- 12 noon, Friday 16th August 2019, submission of thesis.
Good Scholarly Practice. Please remember the University requirement as regards all assessed work. Details about this can be found under academic misconduct. Furthermore, you are required to take reasonable measures to protect your assessed work from unauthorised access. For example, if you put any such work on a public repository then you must set access permissions appropriately (generally permitting access only to yourself, or your group in the case of group practicals).
The Intermediate Progress Review
The intermediate progress review should be conducted by the principal supervisor, in early to mid May, by arrangement with all concerned.
The review, which can be a regular supervision slot, should be attended by the student, the principal supervisor, and ideally the domain expert co-supervisor and wild-card co-supervisor (who should otherwise contribute electronically). If the co-supervisors are not present then the student should arrange to interact with them separately, so that they can channel feedback to the supervisor. Participants should discuss work completed so far and the plan for the remainder of the MSc phase.
After the review, the supervision team (through the principal supervisor) should provide written feedback to the student. This should comment on progress, note any concerns which arose, and suggest adjustments, improvements or other useful observations as appropriate. The report should note the date of the meeting and attendance. It should be e-mailed to the student and to
ppar-cdt@inf.ed.ac.uk. Of course, ongoing informal feedback and discussion is also strongly recommended.
The Thesis
The project is only assessed on the basis of a final written thesis. Additional material, such as the code you submit, may be taken into account in case of doubt, but you should make sure that all the work you have done is carefully described in the thesis. Theses will typically conform to the following format:
- The length should be 40 -- 70 pages in total and no shorter than 35 pages.
- Title page with abstract.
- Introduction : an introduction to the document, clearing stating the hypothesis or objective of the project, motivation for the work and the results achieved. The structure of the remainder of the document should also be outlined.
- Background : background to the project, previous work, exposition of relevant literature, setting of the work in the proper context. This should contain sufficient information to allow the reader to appreciate the contribution you have made.
- Description of the work undertaken : this may be divided into chapters describing the conceptual design work and the actual implementation separately. Any problems or difficulties and the suggested solutions should be mentioned. Alternative solutions and their evaluation should also be included.
- Analysis or Evaluation : results and their critical analysis should be reported, whether the results conform to expectations or otherwise and how they compare with other related work. Where appropriate evaluation of the work against the original objectives should be presented.
- Conclusion : concluding remarks and observations, unsolved problems, suggestions for further work.
- Bibliography.
In addition, the thesis must be accompanied by a statement declaring that the student has read and understood the University's plagiarism guidelines.
Students should budget at least six weeks for the final thesis writing-up phase. Where appropriate the thesis may additionally contain appendices in which relevant program listings, experimental data, circuit diagrams, formal proofs, etc. may be included. However, students should keep in mind that they are marked on the quality of the thesis, not its length.
The thesis must be word-processed using either LaTeX or a system with similar capabilities. The LaTeX thesis template can be found via the
local packages web page. You don't have to use these packages, but your thesis must match the style (i.e., font size, text width etc) shown in the sample output for an Informatics thesis.
Technical problems during project work are only considered for resources we provide; no technical support, compensation for lost data, extensions for time lost due to technical problems with external hard- and software as provided will be given, except where this is explicitly stated as part of a project specification and adequately resourced at the start of the project.
Submission
Students must submit their project by the deadline above. Students need to submit the thesis electronically and archive software as detailed below, and follow any further information which may be circulated by the Informatics Teaching Office.
Please include the following acknowledgement somewhere prominent (for example on the Declaration or Acknowledgements page).
"This work was supported in part by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Pervasive Parallelism, funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant EP/L01503X/1) and the University of Edinburgh."
Electronic Copy
Students must follow the
instructions for how to submit their project electronically. Please use the online submission form that is linked from there.
Software
Students are required to preserve any software they have generated, source, object and make files, together with any associated data that has been accumulated. When you submit the electronic copy of your thesis you will also be asked to provide an archive file (tar or zip) containing all the project materials. You should create a directory, for example named PROJECT, in your file space specifically for the purpose. Please follow the accepted practice of creating a README file which documents your files and their function. This directory should be compressed and then submitted, together with the electronic version of the thesis, via the
submission webpage.
Assessment and Feedback
In addition to the feedback received on your research proposal during the
Pervasive Parallelism course, you will receive feedback on your Intermediate Progress Review directly from your supervisor.
Your thesis will be assessed independently by two markers, and potentially by a moderator in the event of disagreement between the markers.
Only the thesis itself is used for assessment, and will consider a number of basic and other criteria.
Knowledge of these criteria will help you to plan your project and also when writing up. They include:
- Basic Criteria
- Understanding of the problem
- Completion of the work
- Quality of the work
- Quality of the dissertation
- Additional Criteria
- Knowledge of the literature
- Critical evaluation of previous work
- Critical evaluation of own work
- Justification of design decisions
- Solution of conceptual problems
- Amount of work
- Exceptional Criteria
- Evidence of outstanding merit e.g. originality
- Inclusion of material worthy of publication
The
full marking guidelines are also available.
Miscellaneous Resources
Here are some documents
Murray Cole, Informatics Forum room 1.18, ext. 505154
