Computing Degree Projects

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Computing Degree Projects

• An introduction to final year projects
• By
• Chris Casey (ccasey_at_uclan.ac.uk)
• www.uclan.ac.uk/computing/staff/ccasey/projects/in
  dex.htm

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What is a Project?

• A substantial piece of work demonstrating your
  individual ability
• The project aims to allow you to
• tackle a significant problem
• demonstrate independence and initiative
• practise research
• demonstrate communication skills
• apply academic analysis and evaluation
• integrate theory and practice

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Project Size

• Double Project
• Worth 40 credits 2 modules
• Main project of about 180 hours
• Mini-paper (about 60 hours)
• Single Project
• Worth 20 credits
• Main project of about 120 hours

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Types of Project

• C program
• database
• web-database
• multimedia application
• prototype
• network
• teaching materials

• Commercial product
• Budget
• Business plan
• Dragons den

• An investigation
• Answer a research question
• Not just writing a report
• Not an easy route
• because I cant program

• Development Project
• Creation of something
• Commercial Project
• Creation of something detailed planning of
  commercial exploitation
• Research Project
• Design, performance analysis of an experiment

Most projects will be development projects
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Development Projects

• A distributed pool game
• An evaluation of a projected keyboard
• A 3-d graphics editor
• An on-line store generator
• Decision-making software
• A school communication network
• Educational multimedia software

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Research Projects

• An original investigation
• Plan the investigation
• Investigate and gather information
• Analyse the information and present results
• You need to decide
• Purpose
• What questions does the research seek to answer?
• What hypothesis does the research test?
• Approach
• What research methods are appropriate?

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Research Methods 1

• Experiment
• Test an idea or compare possibilities
• Carefully design actions to ensure valid results
• Survey
• Collect and analyse lots of data from a big
  population
• Review
• Discuss relevant literature
• Minipaper part of main project not a project
  by itself

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Research Methods 2

• Case study
• Explore an existing situation in great depth
• Action Research
• Carefully analyse a system you are changing

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Research Project Proposals

• What is being done? (the intervention)
• Will it produce useful, unbiased results
• How are the results being collected?
• What data will there be enough
• Accuracy
• How will the intervention be evaluated?
• Is statistical analysis required?
• Will the conclusions be valid?

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Analysis and Evaluation

• Finding, organising, reviewing information
• Gathering Information
• Internet, books magazines
• Journals (e.g citeseer, UCLan library web site)
• ScienceDirect, ACM Digital Library
• Where are the skills used?
• Literature review / Background in the report
• Evaluation in the report
• Mini-Paper

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Support The Supervisor

• Tasks
• Monitoring progress
• Technical specific presentation advice
• Assessment
• Allocation
• Based on your proposal, staff expertise
  interests, work load
• Staff cant promise to supervise you

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Other staff

• Second Reader
• Independently assessing work
• mini-paper, project report poster session
• Consultants
• Specific technical advice for popular areas

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Finding a Project Idea

• Find an idea
• magazines articles, advertisements
• your studies, members of staff
• project ideas list
• previous projects (to develop further!)
• business contacts, placements
• Internet
• Developers sites, user groups

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Examples 1

• Online Booking System
• Database Website
• What makes it sufficiently complex?
• Linking website database is straightforward
• Is the database complex?
• Will it provide complex facilities?
• Is there a real client to introduce real issues?

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Examples 2

• Online shopping site generator
• Take information about products
• Allow user to select from a template
• Generate an e-commerce site
• Complexity
• Manage by incremental development
• General site
• Convert site to framework
• Introduce templates

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Examples 3

• Teaching package
• Must be interactive
• not simply presenting information
• More than multiple-choice quiz
• If working with children, discuss with relevant
  staff
• Part of complexity may be in evaluation
• Proper experimental design

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Examples 4

• Log Analyser
• Take log files from tool process/present
• Complexity? Depends on
• The type of information
• The type of processing
• The range of facilities
• Can be developed incrementally

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Examples 5

• Adventure game with speech recognition, 3d
  graphics AI
• Complexity
• Too complex from scratch
• May be possible using appropriate components
• E.g. Microsoft Agent provides SR
• Need to focus

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Examples 6

• Evaluation of Projected Keyboard
• Design Experiment
• Develop simple data capture software
• Prototype Experiment
• Full experiment
• Analyse results
• Are they significant?
• Are there other factors?

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Evaluating the idea
?

• Is it appropriately challenging?
• Is there a demonstrable, testable product?
• Does it allow you to demonstrate your ability?
• Does it allow scope for originality?
• Are there alternatives to be evaluated?
• Is it more substantial than an assignment?
• Is it relevant to your Degree?
• Is it large doing lots of similar things?

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Is it achievable?

• Confident of making a workable demo?
• Are the resources available?
• Is there relevant supervisory expertise?
• Is there published serious literature?
• Are your other modules relevant?
• Are big research teams working on it?

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Refining borderline ideas

• Too easy
• Turn an implementation into a comparison
• Add an investigation of a relevant area
• Find a client for real life complexities
• Too Complex
• Identify staged objectives
• Narrow the focus

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The Proposal

• Content
• Background - context relevant literature
• The problem
• Ethical issues
• Your approach
• Commercial issues costs benefits
• Specific objectives
• Resources and availability
• Plan Activity Diagram
• Submit by the deadline

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Technical Plan

• Technical outline of how system will work
• Discussion of alternatives
• Designs
• Tools
• Assessment of risk
• Discussion of ethical and commercial issues
• Schedule

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Mini-paper

• Academic article of around 2500 words
• Discuss literature relevant to your project
• Uses academic material references
• Reasoned conclusions based on published
  literature
• Shows you can think and argue based on academic
  evidence

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Writing a Mini-Paper

• Find a focus
• A question which will help you tackle the project
• Controversy, alternatives, discussion,
  evaluation.
• Not a tutorial.
• Find relevant material
• Several relevant reviewed articles
• Organise (structure) the material
• Write and review the mini-paper
• Plan the words per section
• Make sure each paragraph is relevant

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Assessment

• Mini-paper
• Progress Review
• Project Report
• Poster Session UK, Austria
• Final Interview (if necessary)

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Summary

• The project is big (1 or 2 modules)
• You decide what you want to do
• We are assessing your
• Ability to do
• Ability to think