CS300 Planning and Executing a Project Helen Treharne (Bogdan Vrusias)

Overview  How to organise yourself?  Make time for your work  What resources are available to you  Are there different kinds of projects?  Development Projects  Research Projects  Assessment of Projects  Deliverables and submission  Plagiarism  Questions

Aims of CS300  To put into practice various concepts and techniques studied in the Computing and IT programme  Apply scientific and software/hardware techniques to solving a problem  Develop skills in information gathering  Analyse the solution to evaluate the associated results  Demonstrate the ability to time manage tasks  Demonstrate the ability to present the project work both orally and written

How much time is it going to take?  CS300 is worth 45 credits, that is, the equivalent of three 15-credit final-year options  Effort expected 450 hours including writing up  20 hours per week over 23 weeks (not including exam periods)  Amount of time required should be taken seriously, and if you do not work hard enough in the first semester you can be sure to run into time pressures later!  Make a block of time in the timetable to work on your project

Resources Available  On-line searching for books/papers  Colin Smith – library information skills sessions (week 3)  Internet – but can’t guarantee quality  Make use of your supervisor  Regular meetings  Keep them informed of progress – be honest

Development Projects  Identify broad area  Identify the problem & client (stake holder)  Select method of solution  Specify the solution  Design the solution  Build the solution  Test the solution  Present the findings

Example  Design and build a Java Peer-Peer file sharing system between a small number of users  Investigate existing peer-peer systems and evaluate what functions they provide, identify a set of features would like to include and ones which are not included but would like to implement  Use advanced features of Java Programming including object serialisation and network programming which will need to be learnt independently  Why student chose this – interested in music sharing systems, e.g. Napster

PDA Information System

Aims of PDA Information System  The aim of this project is to gain an understanding of handheld devices and to develop a software application that can be used to assist gym instructors. The project has five main objectives:  To provide a portable handheld solution to allow gym instructors to design fitness programs for gym members by using a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).  To design and implement a software application for the PDA that will be able to transfer data to a database held on a server.  The user interface of the software application will be designed according to Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and heuristics techniques, to make it user friendly.  The project will demonstrate the functionality of the PDA whilst combining a wireless technology to assist with the transfer of data.  The project will adopt current analysis and design strategies to describe the life cycle of the systems development.

Undertaking a Development Project  You might still need to acquire new skills  Database example  Architecture – what platform, software going to use  Accessing a database – write simple examples  Web front end – CSS, XML  Secure login – use of hash functions  It still has to do something!

Research Projects A process model: Identify broad area; Select Research Topic; Decide the approach; Formulate research plan; Collect data or information; Analyse and interpret data; Present the findings.

Examples of Research Projects  Integrated Solution for Project Management and Risk Assessment  Neural Network for Medical Diagnosis Using Diabetes Dataset  Using Digital Signatures in Electronic forms

Assessment 1.Memorandum of Agreement signed by you & your supervisor (week 5 Autumn) 2.Technical discussion with supervisor & another examiner (10%) (week 1 Spring) 3.Project Report (70%) (week 11 Spring) 4.Viva Examination with supervisor & same examiner (20%) (week 12 Spring) 5.Draft report is expected (week 8 Spring)

Action points from last year’s feedback  60% gave their supervisors a draft report. Clarify expectation about meetings.  A lecture on preparing for a viva.  90% agreed that this lecture gave clear instructions on the deliverables and effort involved.

Writing Up  Write up as you go along  Target audience – one of your peers should be able to understand it  Aim for A4 pages excluding appendices  Need to start early to get used to writing

Contents of Report  Literature Search  Investigation  Specification  Development  Evaluation/Testing  Critique of work  Future work

Reports can vary in format  If your project consists of four quite distinct activities  Choose 4 main chapters, one for each activity  Sections in each chapter address  Design, Implementation and Evaluation.  Consider design of each activity separately but to consider the implementation and evaluation of them together.  Overall aim is to make it easy for the reader to understand the points you are trying to make  ocs/projrpt.htm (accessed 13/09/05) ocs/projrpt.htm (accessed 13/09/05)

Plagiarism  You will have used many sources of information, vital any quote properly acknowledged where used in the text and in bibliography (see Citation guide)see Citation guide  If your program includes any pieces of code which you did not write yourself, then you must identify them and say where they came from. For example, if you copy an implementation of a particular algorithm from a book, you must make it clear that you did not write those lines of code.  Under no circumstances should copyright material be included in a project report without the proper permissions having been obtained, and any such inclusion should be agreed with your supervisor.

General guidance s300