School of Mathematical & Computer Sciences School of Engineering & Physical Sciences

MSc. Dissertation Preparation Guidance

Judith Bell and Alison Cawsey April 2006

1. Introduction
This document gives basic information about the preparation and submission of MSc dissertations in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology. Further information and advice is provided in the Research Methods and Project Planning module. We focus here on the final written dissertation, not the conduct of the project, and cover format and length, typical content and structure, and submission procedures. Note that slightly different guidelines apply to IT(business) projects and are available online.

2. Format and Length

As a general rule, the body of the dissertation should be between 15,000-20,000 words - this will normally correspond to about 45-60 pages if you include some diagrams. Dissertations which are significantly outside this range may be penalised. The length will depend on the subject area. However, long dissertations often include too much insignificant background material. Although background information is required, it is the work which you have undertaken which is most important and should take up the majority of the dissertation. Dissertations which are too short often indicate that insufficient work has been undertaken or that it has not been documented fully. There is no prescriptive style/format, but you should choose a font that is easy to read (normally 10 or 12 point) and are encouraged to use one-and-a-half line spacing. You are encouraged to include appendices for additional material not central to the report (e.g., questionnaires, screenshots) and these will be in addition to the 45-60 pages for the main body. You may choose to include some code listings as appendices when they are central to the dissertation. However, excessively long listings of code should not be included as listings and can be attached on a CD.

3. Content and Structure

Your project will be assessed primarily from the dissertation and it is therefore essential that it is a full account of your work and clearly presented. The detailed structure will depend on the type of project, and you should obtain advice from your supervisor. Your supervisor may also be prepared to comment on outlines and drafts, and you should discuss this in advance to agree timescales to facilitate this. When writing your dissertation make sure to "pitch" it at the right level. You should not assume that your reader is an expert in the specialist topic that you are reporting, but should assume they have a good knowledge of the general discipline (Computer Science/ Electrical and Electronic Engineering/IT). If you think a good fellow student would understand it, then that is about right. All dissertations will normally have the following elements: Title Page A declaration that the dissertation is your own work (see discussion in section on submission) Abstract: A summary of the dissertation highlighting major points and describing the dissertations scope and conclusions. Acknowledgements: Anyone you wish to thank. Table of Contents: Detailed breakdown with chapter headings, section headings, and maybe subsection headings, each with page numbers. Table of Figures: Location, number and legend of all figures in document (optional)

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The Chapters (see later) References (see later) Bibliography (optional - sources that you have used but not cited) Appendices (optional)

4 The Chapters
The exact structure and content will vary significantly with the type of project. Your supervisor will be able to provide guidance. A possible structure is described below, with 4.3 covering some variations for different types of project. 4.1. Chapter 1 The Introduction Chapter 1 will normally start with a short introduction to the problem you are addressing and your objectives, give a short review of the context, and describe what follows in the main body of the report. It should essentially briefly summarise the answers to the following questions, which will be detailed more fully in the remainder of the dissertation: What were you trying to achieve/solve in the project? Why is this a problem that requires to be addressed? A brief introduction to the how you went about it.

4.2 Chapter 2 Literature Review or Background Material Chapter 2 will normally include a critical review of relevant literature, so the reader understands what you are building on. You may also describe techniques, guidelines and even existing products if relevant to what you will be presenting later. It is important that this review: is written in your own words throughout; reads as a coherent and connected piece of writing; shows the relevance of the material presented to the problem being addressed, and provides some critique/analysis of the material and its applicability to the problem. In essence it is your analysis and understanding that we are interested in, how you build on existing work, understand its limitations, select from available methods/tools, and present that coherently. It is important to select your references carefully in your review. It is not sufficient to find 15 web sites which seem to have something relevant to say. Sources should be authoritative, accurate, and preferably should still be around in 5 years time. Academic papers and books usually meet these criteria, but also some web site sources are acceptable - sometimes a web site is indeed the most appropriate and authoritative source on a subject. See later for how to cite your references. For some projects where there is little literature to refer to, this chapter will be presenting the background information necessary to understand the actual work which was undertaken by you. 4.3 The Middle Chapters The structure of the middle section of your dissertation will vary according to the type of project. Many possible structures are possible but broadly speaking, there are three basic types of project: experimental, theoretical and design and build. Some projects may combine features from more than one of these types. 4.3.1. Design and Build Project. The goal is to develop some software/hardware to solve some problem or carry out a specific task. The chapters may cover: requirements; design; prototyping and redesign; evaluation, conclusion. This structure is appropriate where you have a customer (external or supervisor) who wants some software or hardware for a real (or imagined!) problem. A successful project is one where you elicit the customers needs, develop a reliable and functional solution, and test/evaluate the system to demonstrate that it does indeed meet the customers needs. It should also of course be technically non-trivial. A simple web page might satisfy some customers but would not result in you getting an MSc. 4.3.2. Experimental/Research Project

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These projects involve the investigation and evaluation of a new piece of technology (e.g., an AI search algorithm or a statistical model for image processing). The goal is often to further understanding by carrying out an investigation which may include prototyping a system. This may involve a substantial amount of (software or hardware) implementation and the application of scientific measurements and investigations to ascertain its properties and usefulness. Such a project will necessarily have a report which will describe the theoretical foundations of the technology, a description of the research undertaken, including design of any experiments, implementation and the experimental procedures used and an analysis of the results, together with an assessment of the relationship between the project work and other published work. There may be a discussion of the problems of existing methods and how the new ideas overcome any of these problems. This structure is appropriate for open-ended investigations inspired by either a novel idea or a plausible principle or hypothesis. The aim is to investigate something, about which not enough is already known or understood, and hence make a modest contribution to knowledge. Where a program is developed it is not an end in itself rather it is an instrument for experimentation and discovery. The interest, significance and quality of the results are the primary criterion of success (bearing in mind that negative results of a well-conducted investigation are just as valuable as positive.) 4.3.3 Theoretical Project Project dissertations in this category tend to concentrate on introducing the relevant concepts with suitable examples, investigating further examples, making and testing conjectures, developing theorems and proofs, where appropriate, and assessing the results, with attention given in suitable cases to possible applications. Many variants of these structures are possible. For example, some projects will centre on the evaluation of an existing system, and the structure will reflect that. Some projects may involve surveys of user or organisation opinion, and it may be the design of these surveys that forms a central element. Don't feel constrained to structure your document in a particular way, but ensure that the structure is discussed with your supervisor. 4.4 Concluding Chapters Note that in any style of dissertation the final chapter will normally present conclusions and discuss further work. It should be clear just what has been achieved against the original objectives/problem description set out in chapter 1. It is important to make clear what has been learned/achieved and what further work could be undertaken by you or others to further the objectives of the project.

5. General Guidelines on Content

The advice below consists of a set of suggestions of material that you might include in your report. A particular report should only include those parts that are relevant. 5.1. Write about the interesting parts of your project No-one wants to read about every detail of how you implemented your project. First and foremost, you should write about the most interesting or important parts of your project. Devote most space and time to this. 5.2. Write about the context in which your work fits. You should provide enough background to the reader for them to understand what the project is all about. For example: What problem are you solving/investigating? Why are you investigating it? How does this relate to other work in this area? What work does it build on?

Your reader is technically literate, but may not understand in detail the area of your project or any tools or building blocks you've used, so help them understand.

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5.3. Give an overview of your work If your project involved designing a system, give a good high-level overview of your design. In many projects, the initial design and the final design differ somewhat. If the differences are interesting, write about them, and why the changes were made. If your design was not implemented fully, describe which parts you did implement, and which you didn't. If the reason you didn't implement everything is interesting (eg it turned out to be difficult for unexpected reasons), write about it. 5.4. Describe any preparatory work you needed to do. Some projects involve detailed requirements capture, and some the requirements are essentially handed to you. If you had to do detailed requirements capture (eg a survey of potential users, etc), then this might be described in some detail. If you didn't do detailed requirements capture, then just summarise the requirements. 5.5. Describe how you evaluated your work Most projects involve building a system (either software, hardware or a combination). Building a system that works well is difficult, and you should have spent a significant amount of time on testing. In most cases your reader does not want to know about all the detailed tests you ran, but they will be interested in your testing strategy and philosophy. Some systems are particularly hard to test, and in such cases you might need to go into quite some detail on why it's hard to test, and how you overcame this obstacle. Some projects involve designing systems whose final correct behaviour is not known in advance usually such projects would be classed as "research" projects. Typically such a project report will devote a lot of time to evaluation of how the final system behaved, and where it worked well and where it didn't. No system behaves well in all circumstances, so your reader will be interested in both how well it works, and in the circumstances in which it works less well. 5.6. Provide a critical evaluation of your work Your reader wants to know that you understand the advantages, disadvantages, strengths and limitations of your work. No project is perfect - there's never enough time for that. Provide a critique of your work. For example - did the design do the job you intended, or were there problems?

6. References
Your dissertation may cite a wide range of sources (e.g., papers or web sites that you have used) as background and context for the work. Sources are cited at the relevant point in the text and full source information is given in the references section. There are a variety of acceptable citation and referencing styles, but the most commonly used styles in Computer Science are the Harvard style and the IEEE style. These are briefly discussed below. 6.1 Harvard (author-date) style The author's name and the date of publication are used in the body of the text when citing sources e.g., (Jones, 2003). Variations are possible, for example we can say that Jones (2003) has developed a new technique. The bibliography is given alphabetically by author. Journal and book names are italicised, e.g.,. Annas, G.J. (1997), 'New drugs for acute respiratory distress syndrome', New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 337, no. 6, pp. 435-439. Grinspoon, L. & Bakalar, J.B. (1993), Marijuana: the forbidden medicine, Yale University Press, London. Notice that there is a lot of information about the articles cited, not just the title and author. This ensures that the reader can find the article in question. Find out what is expected for different types of article (e.g., books, conference papers) and aim to give as complete information as possible. 6.2 IEEE style Here references are listed alphabetically but given a number. The citation number is used when citing the document in the body of the text (e.g., [2]). Differences in how the references are listed are otherwise minor. [2] W. Chen, R. Yeung, and P.P. Wainwright, "Linear networks - assessing their feasability", Phys. Rev., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. A105-A119, Apr. 1994.

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You should select which style to use and use it consistently. Look up how to reference different kinds of sources, taking particular care with electronic sources. Give as much information about these as possible (title, author, date if possible) and consider just using footnotes for non-authoritative electronic sources. If you want to use another style apart from IEEE and Harvard then you should discuss it with your supervisor. With the increase use of Web sources you should take particular care how you cite these. You should make sure to put more than simply the URL, as URLs often change. The guiding principle is that you should maximise someones chances of finding the document. You should also state when the web page was accessed, as web sources often change. One format that you can use is the following: Author's name, date of document (if available), title of document, <web address>, (date accessed) For example, using the Harvard style we might have: Cawsey, A., (2006), MSc Dissertation Preparation Guidance, <http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~alison/diss_prep.html (accessed 1/3/ 2006) Whatever style you use the references section should come between the main text and the appendices. Normally references should start on a new page, and should not have a chapter or section number, just the heading "References". Some word processing tools may provide help with referencing - consider using these. However, the main thing is to give proper thought to how and what you cite.

7. Style
Style in technical writing is discussed in more detail elsewhere. The main point to make is to present material clearly and concisely, and in an as objective fashion as possible. Your personal impressions and feelings should rarely come into it. You should normally avoid using expressions like "I did this" and instead report the work in a passive voice ("it was done"). However, where you are genuinely voicing an individual opinion you can use the first person. Also, while the passive voice is normal for scientific writing it is not used universally, so don't feel forced into a style that you find awkward. The main thing is clarity and objectivity. While considering style we should re-iterate what has been said elsewhere about plagiarism. If you copy more than half a line directly from a source without quoting and citing it then it is considered plagiarism. If something is so good you want to include it literally word-for-word then do it like this: 'Cawsey provides a concise discussion of how we can quote material: "While considering style we should re-iterate what has been said elsewhere about plagiarism. If you copy more than half a line directly from a source without quoting and citing it then it is considered plagiarism. If something is so good you want to include it literally word-for-word then do it like this." [2]' Note that the copied material is in quotation marks AND the source is cited. When presenting background material about the project, students frequently plagiarise sections from books and the web, reasoning that the person who wrote it had better language skills. Remember, that person wrote the information for another reason and not to justify/explain the work you have undertaken. If you simply cut and paste the material it is easy to detect and also does not provide the information in the correct context for your dissertation. You may fail your dissertation if you do this.

8. Document Preparation Tools

There are many tools to support document preparation, from LaTeX to tools built into Microsoft Word. Find out about them and use them. Spelling errors will not be acceptable if there are spelling checkers you could have used. Grammar can also be checked. Errors in referencing and poorly laid out graphics may be penalised where you could have used a simple tool to insert them for you. It is your responsibility to ensure that the English language and grammar is acceptable and that the dissertation is written in clear and appropriate language. Remember that the main assessment is

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from the report, so you should ensure that comprehension of what you have achieved is not hindered by poor presentation.

9. Assessment
Your dissertation will be marked by your supervisor and by a second reader. If it is borderline it may also be assessed by the external examiner for the course. So what are the assessors of your dissertation looking for? You will be given the assessment form that we use, but to summarise some of the elements looked for we may be looking for some or all of: Clear and concise presentation of work. Demonstration of depth of technical understanding. Coverage of related work; knowledge of the field. Quality of any product. Demonstration of ability to critically analyse other work and come up with original analyses and ideas. Any contribution to knowledge. Evidence of initiative and perseverance. Demonstration of professional conduct, considering ethical issues where appropriate, and of course no evidence of plagiarism.

10. Submission Procedures

You will be expected to submit three copies of your dissertation, one electronic copy burned onto a CD together with code listings, software demonstration, appendices, etc., and two spiral bound hard copies of the dissertation document and appendices. Covers for the two copies of the dissertation can be obtained from the Student Offices and spiral bound at the University Print/Copy Facility. The covers are provided free of charge, but you will be expected to provide your own CD and to pay for the spiral binding of your dissertation. Your document should include a signed and dated declaration that the work is your own. The following form of words should be used: "I <name> confirm that this work submitted for assessment is my own and is expressed in my own words. Any uses made within it of the words of other authors in any form e.g., ideas, equations, figures, text, tables, programs etc are properly acknowledged. A list of references employed is included." This is a serious declaration and examiners may refer any dissertations with suspected plagiarism to the University disciplinary committee. Properly acknowledging sources means quoting as well as citing the source of any copied material. A standard page for inclusion which contains this text is available from the student offices and will be provided along with the covers for your dissertation. A poster presentation of your dissertation work will be required about a week after the submission deadline. This provides an opportunity for your supervisor, second reader, external sponsors and other staff to see the tangible outcome of the year's work and provides you with the opportunity to present your work and provide a demonstration of any outcomes from your project. The poster will be independently marked and contributes 10% to your final dissertation mark.

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