Part II Projects

Undergraduate final-year (“Part II”) project supervision goes in fits and starts. After a couple of years of having almost no interest, this year I’ve had several enquiries and it seems I might end supervising 3–4 projects. So herewith a record of the things I’ve found myself repeating!

Project structure

The key thing for the structure of the project is to make sure that there is a core piece that is (essentially) guaranteed to be deliverable. This is the piece that you know you can do, and once done and written up, you know you can get an adequate (if not great) mark. Ensuring this takes the risk out of the project.

On top of this core piece, it’s then usually sensible to build “a few” (2? 3? 4?) extensions which will make the project spicy if done well. You may wish to phrase these extensions as “for example, extensions might include…” or words to that effect, to give some wiggle room in the final dissertation. Getting these done successfully is what should put you in line for a very good mark rather than a simply adequate mark.

Project framing

It is also very helpful, particularly if you are aiming for a high mark, to try to frame the project in terms of a research question you will answer rather than an artefact you will build. Often in systems the appropriate way to answer the research questions we pose will be to build an artefact – but by framing it in terms of the question you seek to answer, it makes it easier to write the dissertation as a piece of research rather than a small matter of programming. Empirically, this seems to have an outsize effect on the chances of the examiners thinking the project difficult and marking accordingly.

It can also be useful to try to be explicit about where your project requires you to go beyond the CST taught material, particularly from Part IA/IB.

Project proposal

To my mind there are two critical pieces of the proposal around which everything else sits.

First, the evaluation plan: if you can write this well, then you understand what you’re going to build, and what it means to have done it well (or badly). Writing the evaluation plan therefore usually means you have, for the most part, got the rest of the project figured out.

Second, the workplan: this divides time until submission into two week (never larger, sometimes smaller) chunks, each of which has attached a calendar date (so there’s no confusion over weeks in term or suchlike) and a milestone/deliverable (so that we can immediately tell whether you’ve completed, or at least are making progress against, that chunk of work in our weekly meeting). Don’t forget to take account of any relevant module assessment deadlines in your plan!

Note that it’s a plan not a contract! You don’t lose marks because you deviate from the plan– but if you can’t tell whether you’re ahead or behind, you might well find yourself in a sticky position at the end of Lent term or start of Easter term when you find you’ve got module assessments to complete, revision to start, two weeks to go until dissertation submission and still four weeks of work to do on your project…

Supervision process

I normally supervise projects by scheduling weekly half-hour meetings with each student. Longer meetings can be arranged on an ad hoc basis as required. The key purpose of the meeting is to check progress against the workplan, and to make sure that any difficulties and roadblocks are aired and dealt with (whether in the meeting or by scheduling a longer discussion).

For an example of a reasonable target timeline, consider trying to get implementation completed by the end of Christmas vacation, evaluation completed by the division of Lent Term, and the dissertation completed by the end of Lent Term. That then gives you flexibility as to whether you do more project work, extensions etc., or focus on exam revision, or whatever.

Hopefully that’s helpful. At the very least, I can now point potential project students at it, so it’s helpful for me :) Some of the above may also be relevant writing research proposals (Part III / MPhil projects, even Ph.D.s) but that’s a topic for another day.