Contents

• Introduction
• Course Directors and Supplementary Regulations
• Module Components
• Deliverables & Dates
• Staff Presentations
• Dissertation Requirements
• Choosing a Topic
• Supervisors
• Finding a Supervisor
• Project Equipment
• Project Plan
• Dissertation Overview
• Assessment Criteria & Grades
• Your Dissertation
  • Your dissertation is important!
  • Writing your dissertation
  • Dissertation size
  • Copying - quoting or plagiarism?
• The Presentation

Introduction

Course Director and Supplementary Regulations

The table below provides links to the supplementary regulations for each MSc degree and the name of the course coordinator. If in doubt about the requirements for the degree you are enrolled on, please direct your enquiries to the course coordinator.

Degree	Course Director
G507: MSc in Information Technology	Gail Hopkins (email: gtr)
G565: MSc in the Management of Information Technology	Ender Ozcan (email: exo)
G403: MSc in Advanced Computing Science	Roland Backhouse (email: rcb)

Module Components

1. Question and Answer Sessions
   There is a timetable slot for the module on FRIDAYS at 1pm.  The module convenor will be available to answer questions at this time during the Spring semester. Occasionally a lecture may be organised; if so, the lecture will be announced in advance by e-mail and will take place in Exchange LT2. The schedule can be found here.  
2. Selecting a Topic / Arranging a Supervisor
   You should choose a topic for your research, find a supervisor and have an initial meeting before the Easter vacation.  Advice on choosing a topic and finding a supervisor is provided below.  Your supervisor will be able to officially sign you up using the marks server. If you do not arrange a supervisor before Easter you will be automatically assigned to a member of staff who has space left. (Making us do this is definitely NOT a recommended option and is frowned upon).
    
3. Writing a Project Plan: (10% of Final Mark)
   In consultation with your supervisor you will decide on a project topic. By the end of the Spring Semester you must have written a project plan and submitted it, for approval by your supervisor. The document will use a standard template (to be provided) and will be up to four (A4) pages long. Once the plan is submitted it will be marked by your supervisor feedback will be provided. More information about the Project Plan is provided below.
    
4. Supervision Meetings
   You should have regular meetings with your supervisor during the summer period.  You should arrange with your supervisor convenient times for these meetings. Attendance at these meetings is mandatory, and non-attendance (at scheduled meetings) is liable to be penalized. Be sure to check with your supervisor if they will be away over the summer for any extended periods. Many members do take a holiday during the summer so be aware that they may not be available for some periods. During these times you must continue with your independant research.
    
5. Presentations: (10% of Final Mark)
   You will give a formal presentation about your work at the end of the summer period.  More information about presentations is provided below.
    
6. Dissertation: (80% of Final Mark)
   Your research and development work should result in the production of a dissertation. This comprises the major assessed component of this module. Information on the dissertation is provided below. Maximum length is 20,000 words.
    
7. Electronic Submissions
   You are required to submit an electronic version of your dissertation (as well as the hard copies), on the appropriate submission deadline.  This should be in PDF format, and submitted using the School's online submission system.

Deliverables &Dates

• Friday 1st April, 2011 (5pm).

• Friday 17th June, 2011. (4pm)
  You must prepare and submit a Project Plan. You have roughly two weeks between the last day of summer exams and the end of the Spring semester. Use this time (if you haven't done it over the Easter vacation) to complete your project plan. This is an assessed piece of work. Submission should be in hard copy to the school office.
   
• Monday 5th September OR Tuesday 6th September, 2010.
  You will be required to give a 15 minute presentation of your research. The exact presentation schedule will be posted here in August. You must make yourself available in Nottingham for this. This is an assessed component of your project. Your presentation will be marked by a panel of staff members. Punctuality on the day of your presentation will be crucial and will affect your mark.
   
• Wednesday 7th September, 2011. (4pm)
  You must submit two copies of your dissertation to the School Office.

  (If you meet this deadline, the School will bind the copies for you without charge. If you do not meet this deadline, for whatever reason, you must get two copies of your dissertation bound at your own expense and submit them to the School Office by the deadline you have agreed).

  A PDF of your dissertation must also be submitted using the School's CW system.

  NB, If you fail to submit either your dissertation or project plan on time, you will begin to accrue a penalty, as per university regulations, of 5% of your dissertation and/or project plan mark, per working day that it is late (unless you submit a suitable ECF).

Staff Presentations

We have a lecture slot available 1pm Fridays, JC-Exchange-B LT2. Scheduled lectures below will happen in this venue and at this time.

Dissertation Requirements

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the degree is a science degree, and therefore all dissertations must be subject to scientific rigour.  The writing must be objective, and any claims that you make must be backed up by hard evidence (i.e. it must not be subjective "opinions").
 

Choosing a Topic For Your Dissertation

Ideally, we would like you to come up with the basic idea, though it is likely to be modified after discussion with a member of staff.  Once you have done so, you should approach a potential supervisor to discuss the details and ask them if they would be willing to supervise it.   Many students find it hard to identify suitable projects, but the following thoughts might help you.

You should consider all of the modules that you have taken so far, and identify the modules and the specific parts of the modules that you found to be the most interesting.  This should give you some ideas about likely subject areas.  Look at the supervisors' ideas pages that are maintained by members of staff, and see what areas look interesting.  Some staff post specific ideas for projects, others post more general areas that are fertile for research.  You might decide to undertake a project which mirrors your interests or hobbies. For example, a football enthusiast might wish to implement a football pools predictor, or a keen musician could implement software to generate sound effects on input guitar signals.  You might also want to consider whether a given topic will increase your job opportunities.  You might want to make use of past experience in choosing a subject area - some students undertake projects based on specialist knowledge that they acquired whilst studying for their first degree.

It is an extremely good idea to find a project that interests you, because you will be spending a lot of time on it, and ultimately this will be an important item on your CV!

Remember - all good research is answering a research question! What is your research question going to be?

Specific Guidelines for Management of IT

The MIT project largely falls into one of two areas it is either an IT project and directly involves the development of a computational technology (software-based or otherwise) or, the project is more of an information systems project which studies the design and / or application of computational technologies, often within industry.

Ways of choosing a good project:

A student who has good contact with a business or organization may wish to look at ways of improving the company's performance by an analysis of the company's current practice and determining a plan for how this can improved. In general, projects of this nature in the past have been student-driven. It is no good just suggesting generic answers. The project must be well researched and come up with a solution that answers specific needs in a reasonably novel way.

MIT projects should be well researched and focus on the technology rather than the management systems. They do not necessarily involve the development of technology but may do --- for example developing and evaluating a prototype alternative interface. Equally, it is possible to identify quite technical projects that would fit the project model for a Management of IT student - as long as the technology developed looks like it would have applications to solve some kind of specific industrial (or possibly consumer need). For example, students have in the past looked at solutions scheduling problems and other system-modelling tasks.

Dissertations that will not work are proposals to research a current application area (i.e. to conduct a state-of-the-art or literature review). Such proposals are generally a request to write an essay after looking through limited numbers of articles. Research in this area is quite difficult as it requires the sort of critical analysis that would be undertaken in the first year of a PhD in order to achieve a good grade for the MSc.

Specific Guidelines for IT

The IT project must be technology based. However, the idea is not to produce a copy of an existing piece of technology. Students who undertake a piece of technology for its own sake will not obtain a good grade. Writing a new website for a product/company using existing ideas will not work. You need to research what is limiting the effectiveness of current technology and try to produce a prototype of a solution.

Projects done within the School of Computer Science will therefore involve you in programming but this must be supported by background research on how the technology you are developing has been used before and what innovations are needed. An example would be the development of an educational computer game. Just to write a game, however good it was at teaching and as a game would not produce a dissertation that would get a high score. It would be necessary to research the background to computer games, to establish a clear goal that would be investigated. For example one could ask, is it possible to improve the time on task of a student learning basic mathematical concepts using a computer game? You would then have to research how such games had been used in the past, what it is necessary to teach, how the subjects are currently taught, what motivates and de-motivates children and how children differ. You would also need to try out your software so an important part is developing a good plan for assessing its effectiveness.

Specific Guidelines for ACS

The ACS project must engage in a significant piece of research. Inspiration may be drawn from any of the courses that you have taken as a part of your degree. It is an assumption that the research conducted will explore an advanced topic within the computer science syllabus. This may well be determined by looking at the types of research that members of staff are currently engaged in and then choosing to work on similar subjects with suitable guidance from staff. The project may or may not involve a substantial component of programming, but it is anticipated that the project will deal with either complex programming concepts, data structures, algorithms or networking technologies.

Supervisors

Finding a Supervisor

Most people are supervised by one of the lecturers listed in the supervisors section of this document above.  You will notice that the list is split between those who are required to supervise and a smaller list of people who have kindly volunteered to supervise some projects. However, you are not restricted to these people, if they are agreeable, and with the consent of your module convenor (most likely Dr. Dave Kirk) and/or course director, any member of academic staff in the University can supervise your project. 

If you approach a potential supervisor other than one on this list then please remember that they are under no obligation whatsoever to agree to supervise you - so be polite, and accept a no gracefully!  All supervisors on this list have a fixed quota of students - when any individual supervisor has signed up the required number of students to fill their quota they are not required to take on any more. If your first choice of supervisor has signed up their full quota you will have to find a different supervisor.

It is best to find a supervisor whose own interests are similar to the work involved in your dissertation - that way they will be best placed to advise you based on past experience.  Of course this is not always possible, especially when a member of staff already has a full set of projects, but one of the other staff can supervise your project if necessary.  Before you approach any supervisor make sure you are aware of their interests (check out their personal web site) and their list of suggested projects (if they have made one).

When you approach a potential supervisor you should either have a clear idea of what project that you want to do, or else you should be willing to take on a project in their research area that they suggest.   There is little point in going to someone with a vague idea like "I want to look at e-commerce", because if it is outside their personal area of expertise they probably won't have the in-depth knowledge of the subject area that is needed to refine your idea into a workable project.

If you really can't think of a solid project, then go and talk to a potential supervisor who is expert in an area that you are interested in and ask him or her if they have any specific ideas, but do bear in mind that supervisors will be much happier to talk to you if you're bringing something to the conversation, i.e. at least some ideas of areas your interested in, or technologies you'd like to work with, or research methods you'd like to employ.

When you have found a supervisor and they have agreed to take you on, you must get your supervisor to sign you up on the online database that staff have access to (the marks server). If staff seem unsure about this process direct them to Dr. Dave Kirk for further instructions.

Project Equipment

If you wish to use school equipment (hardware or software) then you must request the equipment that you will require in advance from TSG using the project equipment request form (which must be signed by yourself and your supervisor).  You can find more  information, together with lists of available hardware and software on the TSG support site.

If you wish to use your own equipment, then you can do so providing that you are independent of the School. School staff cannot support your own personal equipment, and hardware or software purchased for a project can not usually be used outside of the school (there are both good pragmatic and legal reasons for this). For reasons of Health and Safety regulations, as well as security and support, your own equipment can only be connected to school facilities under limited circumstances (e.g. laptop points in the terminal room - refer to TSG for specific guidance). Therefore, if you use your own equipment for development work then you must make arrangements to demonstrate it to your supervisor (e.g. either on a laptop, or by installing it on a School machine).

Project Plan

Your first deliverable for the dissertation is a project plan. The project plan is to be worked up based on your ideas for your project and the discussions you should have had with your supervisor. There is a set format for the project plan which you should follow. If you click the link below you will be able to download the template for the project plan. The plan includes instructions on how it should be completed.

Project Plan template.

Project Plans should be submitted in hard copy to the school office.

There are TWO components to your Project Plan submission in June. Along with your project plan you MUST also submit a signed ethics form. In all cases this will require the completion of the short form linked to below.

Ethics Short Form

However, if when you complete this short form it suggests that you need a full ethical submission then you must complete the longer form (the full "Research Ethics Review Checklist"). Which can be found by following the link below (which also includes further guidance on making an ethics submission for your project).

www.cs.nott.ac.uk/ethics

The short form, must be submitted to the school office in hard copy at the time you submit your project plan. If you are required to complete the full Research Ethics Review Checklist this must also be submitted in hard copy to the school office. If your supervisor is unable to approve your ethics submission then they may recommend a full ethics committee review. In which case you must email your forms and your Project Plan to the email address given on the ethics webpage linked to above. Failure to complete the short form will result in you failing the project plan component of your dissertation. Conducting research without getting prior approval where the short form has indicated that it is required will result in failure of the entire dissertation. Consequently, it is very important to make sure you have followed the procedure and made the correct submissions.

This is the first year that we have run the project plan element of the dissertation. This is also the first year that we have required students to complete an ethics checklist for their summer projects, so expect some teething problems and be patient with your supervisors, as they will be unfamiliar with the process for how this works, as this will be the first time they have tried it.

Dissertation Overview

1. A dissertation must be completed by all students following the MSc degree courses, although there is no dissertation requirement for the diploma course.
2. Dissertation projects will be performed individually (with one student and generally one supervisor, although joint supervision might be allowed under certain circumstances).
3. The dissertation will include some admin and preparation during Semester 2 and the research work will be completed during the summer period.
   

   Production of the Dissertation

   Students are required, by University regulations to submit TWO hard copies of their dissertation (and one soft [PDF] copy). 

   The title page of the dissertation must  have the following layout, and each copy should be signed and dated where indicated:

   [Dissertation Title]

    Submitted September 2011, in partial fulfilment of
   the conditions of the award of the degree [ name of degree ]

    [Student Name]

   School of Computer Science 
   University of Nottingham

    

    I hereby declare that this dissertation is all my own work, except as indicated in the text:

    

    Signature ______________________

   Date _____/_____/_____

    

   I hereby declare that I have all necessary rights and consents to publicly distribute this dissertation via the University of Nottingham's e-dissertation archive.*

    

   Public access to this dissertation is restricted until: DAY / MONTH / YEAR**

    

   *Only include this sentence if you do have all necessary rights and consents. For example, if you have including photographs or images from the web or from other papers or documents then you need to obtain explicit consent from the original copyright owner. If in doubt, delete this sentence. See Copyright Information for more details.

   **Only include this sentence if there is some reason why your dissertation should not be accessible for some period of time, for example if it contains information which is commercially sensitive or might compromise an Intellectual Property claim. If included, fill in the date from which access should be allowed.

   This is followed by a one page Abstract which should summarise the contents of the Dissertation.

   Beneath the abstract you should list any keywords you think would help someone trying to find your dissertation (e.g. in a web search). Please be careful to enter specific keywords relevant to your dissertation, and don't be too general. We recommend that you include the full version of any acronyms in your title or abstract and also include synonyms or alternate spellings. Seperate words or phrases with commas, e.g. Keywords: MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, resonant tunnelling, resonant tunneling

   The next page is a Table of Contents for the dissertation. Include page numbers throughout the dissertation.

   References are collected at the end of the Dissertation and given in a standard journal format as described in the Information Services publication IS2010 - "How to Cite References".  Dissertations must be typeset and printed on a publication-quality printer.

   There is a recommended dissertation structure in the Your Dissertation section below.

4. The Project Plan is an independant, assessed piece of work. It is important as it ensures that both you and your supervise know what you will be doing during your research. It is also your opportunity to demonstrate your project planning / management skills. Details on the exact structure for your project plan will be posted here in due course.
   
5. The Presentations are scheduled during September 2011, and will consist of a ten-minute talk (followed by approximately five-minutes for questions). All members of the school (staff and students) are allowed to attend (and ask questions).
   
6. Late submission of the dissertation, the interim report or failure to give a presentation will be considered as non-submission. Non-submitted work will be awarded zero.
   
7. The supervisor will arrange a demonstration of any software or hardware systems that have been developed as a part of the research, as necessary for them to help mark your work.
   
8. Examiners may if they wish require an internal viva-voce examination.
   
9. All marks shall be subject to the final moderation/approval of the Board of Examiners.

Assessment Criteria and Grades

The work is usually assessed using criteria such as: amount of effort, diligence, initiative and enthusiasm shown; difficulties experienced and extent to which overcome; the extent of self-organization and ability demonstrated by the students; the effectiveness, quality, and quantity of work produced and the extent to which the objectives of the work were met. The organization and structure of the work; quality of referencing, appendices, figures, programs and any other supporting documentation where relevant Originality, novelty and innovation displayed in the work and reflected in the dissertation. The quality of the dissertation as a source of clear, concise and interesting information.

To give a better indication of how your work will be marked, copies of the marking sheets that will be given to the assessors can be found below.

Dissertation Mark Sheet

Grades

The following are general characteristics of grades awarded to dissertations by the University. Your dissertation is worth 60 credits, and you are not allowed to compensate more than 40 credits, therefore you must pass the dissertation to get your MSc. As with all other MSc level courses, the minimum pass mark is 50%, anything less is a fail.

NB, If you fail, like any other module, you are entitled to resit.

1. Exceptional (90-100%) The work and dissertation should exhibit all the characteristics of an Excellent grade. Additionally the dissertation should be publishable without significant reworking or alteration. Any software and supporting documentation should be of the highest possible quality. The work should display complete and comprehensive originality. In short the work should be reflected in a dissertation of stunning and universally accepted quality!
2. Outstanding (80-89%) The work and dissertation should exhibit all the characteristics of an Excellent grade. Additionally the results should be publishable in a suitably modified form. The work should exhibit a large degree of independent thought and originality. Technical assistance from the supervisor would have been minimal and the student would have exhibited high levels of self motivation. Any software and supporting documentation should be of the highest possible quality.
3. Excellent (70-79%) The work should display a complete and thorough understanding of the conceptual and practical issues surrounding the chosen topic. There should be evidence of independent thought in the form of some degree of originality in the presentation and discussions of the material. The dissertation should be well structured with a clear line of argument and the quality of the analysis should be excellent. Any software should be completed in all respects and exhibit very high quality; there should be evidence of a high degree of testing. Supporting documentation should be complete and approaching the standard of high quality professional documentation.
4. Good (60-69%) The work should show a good understanding of the conceptual and practical issues surrounding the chosen topic; the arguments should be clearly structured, but there is no specific requirement for any degree of original work. The quality of the analysis and the writing of the dissertation should be good. Software should be competently designed using a recognized design method; evidence of testing should be presented. The software should be a complete and usable package which not only illustrates the principles of the work but also exhibits good levels of quality. Supporting documentation should be excellent for all purposes; it should be complete, well written, well presented and generally exhibit high quality.
5. Average (50-59%) The work would be expected to display an adequate understanding of the key conceptual and practical issues, although weakness may be present in some areas. There should be evidence of some attempt to construct an argument around the information available. The analytical content should be average. Software should be adequate to illustrate principles; it may display weakness in areas not central to the work and lack comprehensive testing. Supporting documentation would be well presented yet lack completeness; the quality of the documentation should be very good.
6. Probable Fail (40-49%) The work would display an incomplete understanding of the central issues relating to the chosen topic. The dissertation would lack a clear structure and strong argument and the quality of analysis would be below average. The writing would be mediocre. Software would be poorly designed, incomplete, poorly commented and difficult to understand; it would exhibit poor levels of quality. Supporting documentation would be adequate.
7. Definite Fail (below 40%) The work would display a very poor understanding of the chosen area; there would be no clear structure and the analysis may be weak or incomplete. The dissertation would be poorly written and presented. Software would be limited n capability, and difficult to use. Supporting documentation would be inadequate for most purposes.

Your Dissertation

Before writing your dissertation, be sure to read the section below on copying of other work.

Your dissertation is important!

It is important to realise that you cannot perform excellent practical work and then follow it up with  a poor write-up and expect to do well. You must remember that others will be involved in the assessment of the dissertation who you have not had weekly meetings with and who do not have access to knowledge not presented in the dissertation. Indeed, in the case of the External Examiner, they will not even know who you are! Thus all they have at their disposal to grade you is the written dissertation.

Given this crucial observation you should not leave the writing of your dissertation just to the last few weeks of your project timetable. Also bear in mind that many others will be rushing to produce documentation towards the end of the second semester and that the printing facilities will be at full stretch during the last two or three weeks. The failure of printers, computers and the absence of paper at weekends, overnight or indeed at any time during this period will not be a valid excuse for the late delivery of your dissertation. All these occurrences can be guaranteed to occur so you must plan accordingly.

Writing your dissertation

The best dissertations and reports, whether for a third year-project, a PhD thesis or even in some commercial applications, usually all follow much the same structure, as described here.

The exact layout of dissertations tends to vary depending upon the nature of the material and the style of the author.  It is  recommended that you discuss this in detail with your supervisor.  However the following might be considered to be a typical layout: 

1. Title page: with a signed declaration that the dissertation is your own work
2. Abstract: giving a short (500 words max) overview of the work in your project
3. Acknowledgements: thanking anyone who has helped you in any way
4. Table of contents: giving page numbers for all major section headings
5. Introduction: set the scenes, explain why you are doing this work and what is the problem being solved.  Most importantly you should clearly explain what the aims and objectives of your work are.
6. Related work: explain what is the current state of the art in your area.  What work have other people done (published or commercial) that is relevant to yours.
7. Methodology:  explain what tools and technologies have you used.  If you have collected data then explain how it is collected and analysed.
8. Description of the work: explain what exactly have you done.  If this is a software project, describe your software in detail.  If it is a data-based project, present and explain your data in detail.
9. Discussion: explain what your work means.  In a software project you should evaluate the functionality of your software. In a research project you should interpret your experimental results.  In all cases you should evaluate what you have achieved against the aims and objectives you outlined in the introduction.  The discussion should always end with a Conclusions section - in which you should briefly explain what conclusions you have come to as a result of doing this work.
10. References: provide a list of papers, books and other publications that are explicitly referred to in the text.  These should be  in a standard journal format as described in the Information Services publication IS2010 - "How to Cite References". 
11. Appendices: Supplementary material should be included in appendices - these are optional, but they might contain:

• Code listings - a listing of the code you have written for the project. You should NOT include code listings for code you have not written!! If your project involves modifying code previously written by others, then you may include this other code as long as you indicate clearly in the code listing what parts have been written by you.
• User manuals
• Technical documentation
• Raw data - if your dissertation involved data collection then this should usually be included in appendices.  This should provide supporting evidence for claims made in the main part of the dissertation (eg copies of a user evaluation questionnaire and some sample responses).
• Examples of test data.
• Electronic material  on a floppy disk or CD taped inside the back cover.  This might contain executable software, source code, graphics, slides used for your presentation, etc.

Where the appendices are long (e.g. code listings) do not print them out, rather provide them on a CD.

Dissertation size

Maximum length is 20,000 words.

One final question concerns the inclusion of Appendices. Appendices are excluded from the total word count. It is unlikely that an Appendix will be read in detail by an examiner. The aim of an Appendix is to act as a supporting reference to the main body of the dissertation. Thus you might state in the main dissertation that "A complete and detailed User Manual was produced (see Appendix E)". Appendix E would contain the User Manual. This allows any casual reader to access the User Manual easily to verify the truth of the statement.

Copying - quoting or plagiarism?

A commonly used definition of plagiarism is "passing off someone else's work, whether intentionally or unintentionally, as your own for your own benefit". This means that it is not plagiarism if you make use of someone else's work and acknowledge it properly and fully. It is therefore legitimate to, for example, include text in your dissertation by quoting someone who has written or said something relevant to your work. However, you must indicate very clearly which part of the text is copied, the name of the author(s) and where it comes from, and you must italicize the quoted text and delimit it with quotation marks.  Under no circumstances should quotations comprise more than a small fraction of the submitted work.

You should also be aware of copyright law - it is illegal to duplicate substantial amounts of text (with or without indication) unless you have the explicit permission of the copyright owner.

Exactly the same goes for copying code or images - you can easily breach both copyright law and University regulations on plagiarism.

Staff can easily detect copied work because usually there are changes in the quality of the work, the written expression, syntax and so on all make it obvious that some parts of the work are not by the claimed student author.

In summary - do not copy text, code or anything else and attempt to pass it off as your own work. For example, never succumb to the temptation to cut & paste text or images from the web into your dissertation without proper reference.  This is plagiarism, it is ILLEGAL as it breaches copyright, and it is CHEATING as it breaches University regulations.  It is regarded as a very serious offence and is punishable when caught, and an especially dim view of plagiarism is taken when it occurs in dissertations.

For a tutorial on plagiarism see here.

Archival and Publication

The Presentation

As an integral part of your project you will be required to give a presentation. This will take place in a seminar room or lecture theatre, and you will have access to a data projector and a PC with MS Office installed.  You are strongly advised to use MS PowerPoint for your presentations, although an overhead projector, whiteboard and VCR will also be available should you want to make use of them.  You may use your own self-powered laptops, providing that it has a VGA output to connect to the VGA input of the data project and provided that you know how to force the laptop to send a signal to this output!  This is usually a proprietary keystroke, and you cannot expect School staff to spend time working out what this is!

The mark for your presentation will be determined by the scores given to you by the panel of markers at your presentation day. The marking panel will be made up from a selection of members of faculty and research staff within the school. Your mark will be determined from an average of their scores.

Plan to speak for ten minutes and allow five minutes for questions. The chair of the session will impose strict timekeeping. Do not go over the ten-minute time limit.

Absolutely ensure that your arrive punctually for your presentation (this will be arranged in blocks of time). You must arrive and stay for the entire presentation block to which you are assigned. Make sure you arrive at the beginning of the session to check your slides and any technical equipment you will use - laptops etc.

Some helpful notes on giving presentations are given in "Preparing and giving presentations" a guide on study skills, and a part of the University's Pathways program - this is highly relevant to M.Sc. students.