FAQ
The Project
- Can the essay work be done in industry?
- Yes. You may organize the work as you want, as long as the requirements are met. Consider, though, that the essay work is only 6 hp. Many industry projects have a significant implementation part which will in most cases not be suitable.
- Can the essay work be done abroad?
- Yes.
- Can the essay work be done as an extension to the MVK project?
- Yes. Consider, though, that the essay work is finished before the MVK project. Also, you will need to clearly decribe in which way your essay goes beyond what is achieved in the MVK project.
- Are there any special rules for essay projects done pairwise?
- Generally speaking, more is required from pairwise essay projects in terms of extent and quality. Pairwise executed project also get more time for presentation, to give both students an opportunity to present. Pairwise executed projects must include in their essays a statement of collaboration declaring in which way each of the students have contributed to the project.
The Subject
- Which subjects are suitable?
- The essay part of DD143X is 6 hp, corresponding to 4 weeks fulltime studies. Even if it is to be expected (!) that most students will need more time than this for the work, 4 weeks is not a lot. To fulfill the requirements a pure implementation project is not likely to be suitable. It is normally not possible to implement a nontrivial piece of software, beyond examination of "state of the art", background and literature survey, evaluation, and testing, in such a short period of time. A subject which is suitable for an essay project will typically be based on one or several scientific papers published in some recent international conference in computer science, or some quality open source project (which will typically have scientific material associated with it), or some survey paper describing the state of the art in some branch of computer science, or a chapter from some reasonably advanced level textbook. The work will typically involve the following elements:
- Reading and processing of the source material
- Identification and summary of the problem domain
- Presentation of the state of the art in the area, including some form of literature survey. We do not expect any really comprehensive literature survey, as this generally requires much more effort than is feasible within a 6 hp project.
- Presentation of the methods and tools that are applied in the work
- Application of the methods and tools on some case study of suitable (not too big) size
- Critical evaluation of sources regarding scientific quality, method, applicability, conclusions, and contribution.
- The work may also involve an extended example, a prototype implementation, an animation, a user survey (of modest size), or some other scenario of relevance.
- To emphasize the last point a bit more: For a good grade your report should contain some sort of own contribution, even if only a small one. This does not have to be a prototype implementation. It could also be, say, a comparison of two approaches to some problem in the literature, a reconstruction and analysis of some algorithm in some open source project, an evaluation of some application design process on some concrete example, security testing of some application using some interesting tool, just to give a few example.
- Which is not a good subject?
- It is important to not become overambitious. Look at the evaluation criteria below once more. These are the things we look for when grading. So it is no good to produce excellent results if you neglect justifying the problem you are addressing, or if you do not relate your work to the state of the art in some reasonable form. We advise against "homebrew" - solving a problem of your own invention, using own approach or own tools, without any attempt to scientifically back up why the approach is sound, and how it relates to other approaches in the literature.
The Report
- Is it allowed to use wikipedia in writing the essay?
- Plagiarism is under no circumstances allowed. You are meant to process the material yourselves and present it using your own words. Cutting and pasting from external sources is not allowed. It may is exceptional circumstances be acceptable to include small quote, but this needs to be well motivated, and the source must be clearly and correctly indicated. This applies to graphics as well.
- What happens to the report when the final version is handed in?
- It is stored publicly for all eternity here.
Grading
- The kickoff lecture slides here have the details.
Written Reviews
- Each student produces individually a written review of another essay. Check the program for the project conference (exjobbskonferensen) to see which essay you are assigned to. Advice for reviewers can be found here. They are the same as for 30hp exjobb. Many international journals have instructions for reviewers that can be used for inspiration. Here, for instance, is Elseviers.
- You are free to structure the review as you please
- Handing in the review: By mail, in pdf, unless your supervisor tells you otherwise.
- In connection with the project conference you will need to prepare 2-3 questions regarding the essay you are assigned to review. You don't need to present your general evaluation of the work. Think of asking questions that bring out some interesting aspects of the work. It is fine if your questions challenge the presenter(s) work in some way, but always in a constructive and friendly manner. That's a good way to get some discussion going.
Layout
- Are there any constraints regarding layout?
- We follow the regulations concerning 30hp final year projects here. Instructions for the report, including a check list, are available in the right hand menu under "Bilagor". Serafim Dahl has a latex style file on his home page.
Handing in the Final Version
- Create an abstract and "sammanfattning" in html following the instructions here. Name the files (First name1).(Surname1).(Firstname2).(Surname2).abstract.html alt. (First name).(Surname).abstract.html. For the Swedish version use ...sammanfatning.html instead.
- Mail the following items to your group supervisor:
- Abstract
- Sammanfattning
- Final version of the report in pdf. Use the name (First name1).(Surname1).(Firstname2).(Surname2).report.pdf alt. (First name).(Surname).report.pdf
- Include in the mail a brief and clear account of the changes you have made to the final version as compared to the version handed in before easter. Don't worry about minor grammatical corrections.
- When the report is uploaded to the school web it is assigned a serial number, front page and new first page are added, and the report is made ready for archival.
- Each final report must contain a statement of collaboration, preferably in a separate preamble
- Do not submit a brand new report - we don't have resources to mark them properly anyway.
- I will mail you once everything's done with your final marks.
- We do not produce printed copies of the reports. If you would like a printed copy you must do it yourself. There will be coloured report covers for sale for 20 sek (that was the 2010 price anyway) in the student expedition. The expedition can also help with stapling.
|
