Complete Project Topics and Materials Ideas for Final Year Students

Final Year Project Ideas For Students

Introduction

Students taking degrees in Nigeria carry out a substantial individual project in their final year. Each project is supervised by a member of faculty, and assessed via written reports and presentations.

Complete Project Topics and Materials Ideas for Final Year Students
PROJECT TOPICS

Project Topics Selection

An important part of your final year is your individual project. There are two tasks you must accomplish straightaway (though not necessarily in this order):

The first of these tasks is certainly the easier of the two; more information about project supervision is provided below.

Selecting a suitable project topic can seem quite daunting at first. To assist you there is a projects database that contains a number of project suggestions made by members of faculty. Note that these are just suggestions for suitable topics and there is no requirement that you select one of them. In fact, we would encourage you to formulate your own ideas for a project. The suggestions are provided as a guide and to help you understand the scale of the project you should be attempting.

You should use the projects database to view the list of potential Technical Supervisors, request a particular project or suggest your own project to a supervisor of your choice.

Ideally, you should have selected your Technical Supervisor and project topic by the middle of the first week of the Autumn Term. If you haven’t managed to do so by this point, then we will assign a Technical Supervisor for you who can help you develop a project idea.

Project Research Supervision

Project research supervision is provided by both an Academic Supervisor and a Technical Supervisor. Your Technical Supervisor will advise on any technical aspects of completing your chosen project. The expectation is that your Technical Supervisor will meet with you at least every four weeks to discuss project progress. Initially, they will assess whether your project ideas are suitable, and can help you improve them where needed. Another crucial role that supervisors fulfil is to read and comment on draft versions of the reports you intend to submit. Given that your supervisor also examines these reports, it is in your interests to take advantage of this.

Normally, your Technical Supervisor will lecture in the area you have selected for your project. However, because there is a limit on how many projects each member of faculty is expected to supervise, there is no guarantee that you will get the Technical Supervisor of your choice. Do not be disheartened if this happens. All faculty are capable of offering you good advice on your project, no matter what the topic.

The way in which supervisions are organised will vary depending on your supervisor. Meetings will be organised by email. Email is the primary means for supervisors to contact supervisees so it is important that you check your email regularly.

In addition to technical supervision, you are also offered academic supervision and Project Management support. You will find that you are timetabled to attend Project Management Sessions. These offer advice and support on various important, but non-technical topics such as constructing a good project proposal, project planning and time management, writing your assessed reports, and so on.

The Project Management Sessions are delivered by the Academic Supervisors. In contrast to Technical Supervisors, you don’t need to do anything to select an Academic Supervisor. Further information and resources about project supervision and management can be obtained on the Informatics Project Management Canvas site.

It is not possible to produce a successful project based solely on a period of intense activity immediately before the final deadline, as you may be tempted (ill-advisedly) to do for other modules. You should work consistently and effectively throughout the duration of the project. It is often worthwhile writing drafts of the final report while carrying out the work — it is easier to write up the system design just after you have finished it than to write about it months later.

To keep within the deadlines you will have to make regular progress and remember where your time has gone. To help you to do this you should record your project-related activity in a log. The log is a weekly record of work you have engaged in to meet your objectives. You should start the log right at the beginning of the year, and include records of meetings with your supervisor. You should meet with your supervisor regularly taking your log along to review progress. The complete log should be submitted as an appendix to your final report.

School Project Research Timescale

You should submit a number of written documents throughout the project. The deadlines for these and timings of other project activities are listed below:

  • Browse our projects database and consider possible project topics:
  • Register with supervisor
  • Accepted by supervisor on the projects
  • Project proposal
  • Interim report
  • Application for ethical review (if required)
  • Project presentation poster
  • Draft report: 3 weeks before the final report submission deadline (sent to supervisor).
  • Final report
  • Project presentation short talk

Project proposal

At the start of your project you will be expected to read any relevant background references and to prepare a short (approximately two A4 sheets) note describing the objectives of your project and how you plan to meet those objectives. The proposal should provide the following information:

  • Your candidate number
  • Your supervisor’s name
  • Working title — the working title should be a good indication of what your project is about. The working title will be used in choosing examiners for your project. You can change the title for your final report. If you change the topic, you should change the working title to reflect this and inform the project coordinator of the change. You should only change the topic by agreement with your supervisor.
  • Aims and objectives — aims describe purpose and intention and include a description of your motivations for undertaking this particular topic. Objectives relate to the expected outcomes of the project. You should break these down into ‘primary objectives’ which you guarantee to achieve and ‘extensions’ which will only be implemented if time allows. The primary objectives should be clearly specified, but the extensions may be vaguer. Do not be afraid to specify more extensions than you will be able to implement.
  • Relevance — write a short paragraph to explain how this project relates to your degree course.
  • Resources required — it is your responsibility to make sure that the resources you need are available. Do not expect the department to buy things you need. (If you are going to use something not normally supported by the department you will need to obtain approval from your supervisor.)
  • Copy of your personal weekly timetable indicating lectures, tutorials and periods of the week you intend to devote to your project.
  • Detailed bibliography of background reading.
  • List of other students doing related projects (if applicable).
  • Interim log, indicating meetings with supervisor and material consulted so far.

This proposal is not formally assessed and should be sent directly to your supervisor.

Project Topic And Material Draft Report Pdf & Doc

This document is a working version of the final report. You should send it to your supervisor at least 3 weeks before the final report submission deadline, in order to allow your supervisor sufficient time to read it and suggest improvements. Bear in mind that your supervisor is only expected to read one draft of your report.

In your own interests, the draft report should be as complete as possible so that your supervisor can give you useful feedback. Your supervisor will be the examiner on other projects, and will tell you what they are looking for from the projects they examine. If your report does not conform to their expectations you will be able to rectify it in time.

This document draft is not formally assessed and should be sent directly to your supervisor.

Project Research Final Report Pdf & Doc

The final report should contain the following sections in the order indicated:

  • A cover sheet. This should contain your name, candidate number, your degree course and department, the title of the project, the name of your project supervisor and the calendar year of submission.
  • A signed statement of originality together with an overview of any intellectual property rights agreements that you have made. The statement of originality should be worded as follows. ‘This report is submitted as part requirement for the degree .It is the product of my own labour except where indicated in the text. The report may be freely copied and distributed provided the source is acknowledged. I hereby give / withhold permission for a copy of this report to be loaned out to students in future years (delete as necessary).’
  • Acknowledgements (optional) — this might include your supervisor(s), other students if part of a related project and any other person or organisation that has assisted in any way in the conduct of the project and its documentation.
  • Summary — a one page resumé of your report.
  • Table of contents (with page numbers).
  • Introduction — this should give the motivation for the project. The aims of the project should at least be stated in the first paragraph, but preferably in the first sentence. The first chapter should also explain the structure of the report.
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  • Body of report — this should include a requirements analysis and specification of the problem you have tackled. It should also include a description of how you designed, built and evaluated your system. The exact form of this will vary from project to project but it will usually occupy several chapters and will often include sections on implementation and testing (which kinds of testing?). Any software projects should include a discussion of the principles which underlie the program that has been written: the significance of its data structures, the way that its procedures and modules interact etc. A line-by-line description of your code is not the best way of achieving this and is not encouraged. You should evaluate your finished product using appropriate methods, backing up your claims with evidence. If reporting user feedback, this will be more convincing if it comes from a wider audience than just a small group of your peers (for example it could be gathered online via forums etc). Evaluation results should be related back to the original requirements. A summary of the evaluation should appear in the Conclusion section.
  • Conclusion — this should include an assessment of the success of the finished product. Have you achieved your objectives? If not, why not? It should also contain suggestions for future extensions, or alternative methodologies that, with hindsight, might have led to a better system.
  • References — these must be given correctly. Full references with page numbers are required. If you consulted a similar project done in previous years you must reference it (using the Name (or Candidate Number) of the author, Title and Year). The references should be cited in the body of your report where appropriate. Webpages you consulted need to be listed as well. You need to add the title/topic of the Webpage and the last time you accessed it, not just the URL.
  • Appendices — you should include your project logs and any additional relevant system or test data as appendices. You may also include any technical material which you estimate as too detailed for the main body of the report. You should make sure that any technical material is appropriately annotated and consistently presented. The source code of your project (including documentation) must be submitted separately and should not be included in the Appendix. Also, any material that does not fit in the report’s Appendix that you nevertheless deem important can be included in the source code submission. Note, however, that it is left to the markers’ discretion whether they look at such extra material in the source code submission.

Project presentation

In addition to writing the report, you will be assessed on your ability to present your project. The project presentation takes the form of: (1) a poster which you show at a School-wide poster event; and (2) a short talk to the two markers of your project.

The poster event takes place in the Spring term. Details of the required poster format, submission procedure, and assessment criteria are on the project presentation page.

The short talk is scheduled to take place early in the Semester 2 assessment period. The date will be announced via email by the end of the Spring term (it will not appear on your Sussex Direct timetable). Your talk should last 20 minutes. In the talk, you should give an overview of your project and describe what you achieved. If you have written software you should demonstrate it. Your task is to convince your listeners that your project work is interesting and of high quality. It is an excellent idea to prepare your talk in advance and practice it on a friend or fellow student.

The poster and the short talk are integral parts of the assessment of the project. If you do not submit a poster by the deadline or fail to attend the poster event in your assigned time slot you will forfeit the associated marks. If you do not turn up to your short talk at the scheduled time you will be marked as absent and forfeit the associated marks.

Assessment

Your project work will be examined by your supervisor and a second faculty member, called a second examiner. Marks are divided into the following components, with the weights indicated:

  • Interim report: contributes 10% to the overall mark
  • Presentation: contributes 10% to the overall mark
  • Final report: contributes 80% to the overall mark

The short talk is conducted as an examination and the normal arrangements for such will apply. Please consult your degree course specification (available online) for the overall weighting of the project within your degree. University rules governing collusion, plagiarism and other forms of misconduct are strictly applied.

See the examination and assessment regulations for details and definitions.

The standard University regulations concerning late submission of coursework apply. Therefore, managing your time so as to keep to deadlines is vital. You must allow for adverse, unpredictable events such as computer faults and corrupted disks. Make sure you back up your work regularly. Personal computer problems, theft, or data loss are not accepted as grounds for an exceptional circumstances claim.

The project and your employment prospects

Undertaking a project can be challenging and exciting. It is challenging because a tremendous amount of self-discipline, time and effort needs to be put into it. It is exciting because a successful project rewards with great satisfaction and experiential learning. The project requires the amalgamation of different kinds of skills: problem solving, studying and communication, both written and spoken. It stretches your ability to limits you never thought possible. It gives you something you can talk about knowledgeably and enthusiastically to prospective employers. Projects are a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your creative abilities and independence. The project is an excellent indicator of a student’s overall ability to carry out a serious piece of work, and therefore employers are impressed by a well executed project.

Acknowledgements

This document was originally written by Chris Thornton, and subsequently modified by Alan Jeffrey, Phil Husbands, and Julian Rathke. It is now maintained by Bernhard Reus. Some of the material was adapted from notes produced for the University of London Computer Science project assessment.

Background reading

The majority of your background reading and references will be specific to your chosen topic. For general guidance on writing your reports and preparing your presentation talk, please consult the online reading list.

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