Table of Contents TOC o "1-3" h z u

Table of Contents TOC o "1-3" h z u

3.The Written Dissertation PAGEREF _Toc141253970 h 23.1 Recommended Structure of Dissertation PAGEREF _Toc141253971 h 33.2 Dissertation Layout PAGEREF _Toc141253972 h 43.3 Important - using references in your dissertation PAGEREF _Toc141253973 h 44. Oral Presentation PAGEREF _Toc141253976 h 6

Recommended Structure of Dissertation

Some of the important sections of the dissertation are discussed below in the order in which they appear in the finished document. Note that this is usually not the best order in which to write them, for example, the Introduction is best written late when you have a clear overview of all the material you are introducing.

Abstract

The dissertation should begin with an abstract of not more than 200 words in which the objectives and achievements are briefly described. This should be included as the first page in each copy of your dissertation (after the title page).

Table of Contents

The contents section displays the structure of your dissertation and contains the chapter and major subsection headings with corresponding page numbers. Do not be tempted to make the contents too detailed - it is not an index - two pages should be sufficient. Begin the contents at an early stage and keep it under continuous development. Finish it at a late stage to make sure references to page numbers are accurate.

Introduction

The introduction prepares the ground for the more detailed discussion in the following chapters; it should set out briefly but clearly the domain, motivation and goals of the project. Your introduction will be read thoroughly by your assessors to obtain an overview of your work. This is an opportunity to create a good initial impression of the entire dissertation.

Main Body

The chapters in the main body of the dissertation will depend upon the technical details of the project. It should include the details on the applied methodology, design and implementation of the project, as well as project valuation methods, experiments results and reflection of results.

Determine how many chapters are appropriate and what should be included in each. As always discuss it with your supervisor.

Project and Risk Management

This section presents how the project is managed and with the use of the Jira/GitLab tools. In addition, it presents the risk management process used to identify, evaluate and mitigate the potential risks associated with the project. The coverage of the project context for proposed solutions is also to be presented, which evidence some originality and meet a combination of societal, user, business and customer needs as appropriate. The project context will involve consideration of applicable health and safety, diversity, inclusion, cultural, societal, environmental and commercial matters, codes of practice and industry standards.

Conclusions / Further work

In this section you should state the technical achievements of your project. Suggest how you might have improved the results if you tackled the project in the light of your experience with it. Suggest how your work might be extended.

Appendices

All additional information, and relevant tables and diagrams must be included in the dissertation or in a separate file. Tables and figures should be included within the text; they should be numbered and given an explanatory title. Rather than include your program code as an appendix, you can link to your project on the GitLab repository and share this with your supervisor and second assessor.

3.2 Dissertation LayoutDissertations should be presented using 11-point Times New Roman font with line spacing of 1.2 lines. Margins should be at least 2 cm, on all four sides. The pages of text, including inserted equations and diagrams, must be numbered consecutively at the bottom centre of each page. Equations and diagrams should be generated by you. You should avoid copying and pasting these from other sources unless the diagram is highly complicated.

3.3 Important - using references in your dissertationReference to relevant published work is an important part of your dissertation. If you are summarising or discussing the work of others, it must be acknowledged in the text and the work referenced in your Bibliography. This includes work of others you have obtained from the Internet including any code you have used. It is plagiarism not to make such acknowledgements, accidentally or deliberately. You need to be careful; otherwise you may be in breach of University Examination Regulations. The section Cheating (Plagiarism) in the Academic Offences section of this Handbook applies particularly to project dissertations. This may require careful discussion with your supervisor.

The following information should be included in a Bibliography: author(s); article title; publication title; place of publication; publication date and page numbers. There are a number of accepted styles for a Bibliography such as Harvard, Vancouver etc. One such style (Harvard) is described here.

Within the text you should refer to a published paper or book by the authors surname followed by the year of publication, for example, Palaniappan (2008).

Where you refer to two or more papers published by the same author(s) in the same year you should add an identifying letter, e.g. Wilson and Palaniappan (2009a).

Where there are two authors they should be written as, for example, Balli and Palaniappan (2009); three or more authors need only be specified by giving the first authors surname followed by et al e.g. Palaniappan et al (2002).

For journal articles you should specify the journal title, date, volume and page numbers; for books you should specify the title, publisher, date and place of publication.

References to material obtained from the WWW, including code incorporated in your implementation, should be checked that they are still available due to their transient nature. The date the material was accessed should be given.

The general principle is to provide sufficient information for the interested reader to identify and obtain the paper, book or report you have cited. If in doubt, as always, discuss in supervision.

A typical example of a bibliography is:

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Palaniappan, R., Raveendran, P., Nishida, S., and Saiwaki, N. (2002) A new brain-computer interface design using fuzzy ARTMAP, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 140-148.

Balli, T. and Palaniappan, R. (2009) Nonlinear approach to brain signal modelling, published in Khosrow-Pour, M. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 2nd ed., IGI Global, Hershey, USA, vol. 6, pp. 2834-2839.

4 Oral Presentation

The oral presentation allows you to show that you understand the project and your contribution to it and to demonstrate that the deliverables, as described in the dissertation, exist.

The demonstration must be carried out within the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering and your attention is drawn to the use of computing facilities outside the School (see Laboratories and Equipment). You will be required to present your work to your supervisor and an independent internal assessor. Your presentation should last approximately 20-30 minutes and, using whatever visual aids are appropriate, you should:

Explain the main points of your work, stating clearly your objectives and achievements:

demonstrate any software/hardware deliverables;

be prepared to answer questions.