Graduate Projects

Unit Information

This unit requires students to apply the knowledge and skills acquired from other units in the course to complete an individual project under supervision. The nature of the project can be either developing a significant and functional computer-based system or an in-depth investigation of a relevant topic. The information given in this web page applies to GCO5001, GCO5002, GCO5809, GCO5960 and minor thesis unit. The requirements pertain to specific courses are given at the end of this section.

A student wishing to enrol in a project unit, whether it is a 6- or 12-point project or a minor thesis, must submit a project proposal to the unit adviser for approval first. Students are allowed to enrol only if the proposed project has been approved by the unit adviser. Once the project has been approved, the student can enrol and begin the project either in semester 1 or semester 2 each year, but not summer semester.

The project must contain at least 25% research component. A project proposal which contain purely developmental work will be rejected. A typical research project (100% research component) will include identifying a problem that needs investigation, and designing a research methodology to approach the problem, and implement the methodology and finally evaluating the result. The amount of programming varies from projects to projects, and it does not determine whether a project has research component or not; so as the amount of reading.

The amount of work involved in this unit can be looked at in two ways. Firstly, in terms of time, a  6-point project is equivalent to one unit, and 12-point project is equivalent to two units and usually complete in two semesters, and a 24-point minor thesis is equivalent to a honors project. Both the 24-point and 36-point minor theses are expected to complete in two to three semesters. Note that 6-point projects are usually hard to achieve, even with the minimum of 25% research component.

Secondly in terms of written work, as an indication, a 6-point project leading solely to a written report would typically result in a report of at least 6,000 words; a 12-point project would typically produce a report of up to 10,000 words, a 24-point minor thesis of up to 20,000 words, and a 36-point minor thesis of up to 30,000 words. Here is a sample 36-point minor thesis.

Project deliverables are usually progress reports, final project reports and a software system as the end product of the project.

The usual progression of a student in this unit is given below as a guide:

1. Prepare a project proposal. The project may be from your own or select one from the GSCIT staff's proposed projects. Please communicate with the proposed project leader to help you preparing the project proposal, if you want to do one of the staff's proposed projects.
2. Submit a project proposal to the unit adviser, two months before the intended semester starts (because several rounds of revisions might be required before the project is finally approved.)
3. If the project is approved, a project supervisor will be assigned to the project. The student can now enrol and begin the project by preparing a timeline indicating when progress reports (at least two during the course of the project period) and final reports will be submitted. If you are developing a system, then you must also include in the timeline when you will perform the evaluation of the system. The timeline shall be submitted to both the supervisor and the unit adviser.
4. During the project period, the student will communicate with the project supervisor to seek advice and submit scheduled reports. The supervisor will monitor the progress of the project and assess all reports submitted by the student.

Please note that students are not allowed to submit a similar report/thesis on the work they have done elsewhere or in other universities. Your attention is drawn to the  statement on ethics and integrity in research described in the GSCIT Plagiarism policy.

Master Course Requirements

There are specific project units for Master of Business Systems (MBS) and Master of Multimedia Computing (MMC). For MBS, the graduate project is GCO5809 Graduate Research Project (12-point). For MMC, it is GCO5960 Multimedia Project (12-point). Restricted by the course structure, both MBS and MMC students do not have the option to do a minor thesis. However, students may choose to do a 6 points project instead of a 12 points one, but not both.

For Master of Information Technology (MIT), students may choose to do GCO5001 (6 points), or GCO5002 (12 points), or a 24-point minor thesis. 

Only Master of Information Technology (Minor Thesis) degree students do a 36-point minor thesis.

Note that all students, who want to do a research project, are expected to complete a "Reading and research method" unit (e.g., GCO4010) before commencing the project unit.

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Major areas of Graduate Projects

• Intelligent Networks and communication
• Data mining and data bases
• Multimedia technologies
• Bioinformatics
• Information systems

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Guidelines for preparing project proposal

1. Project Title

·        Indicate the type of project: 6- or 12-point project, or minor thesis.

·        Specify the intended semester to begin the project and its duration: whether you intend to complete the project in one or two semesters, or more.

2. Background

·        Describe the background to the project.

3. Aims of the Project

·        Describe what you want to achieve at the end of the project period.

4. Methodology

·        For the research component, outline the research methodology; describe how you are going to approach the research problems that are likely to achieve the stated aims.

·        For the developmental component, outline the conceptual design and methods; describe the tools you are going to use, if any, and computer programs you are going to develop.

·        Specify how you are going to evaluate the system when you have developed it.

·        If the proposed project is part of a larger project, you must clearly specify what constitute your work in relation to others’ work in the larger project. The contribution of other people towards your proposed project must be properly acknowledged.

5. Expected Outcomes and Deliverables

·        Describe the expected outcomes of the project.

·        List the deliverables that must include a written report.

Submit the project proposal to the unit adviser via email. The advisor's contact is given at the end of this web page.

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Assessment

A student starting a project unit has two options in terms of allocating the percentage of worth to their work. They can choose either:

1. 100% for the final reports and deliverables, or
2. Not less than 70% for the final reports and deliverables, and the rest accounts for progress reports.

A student must inform the unit adviser at the beginning of the project if they want to choose option 2 for assessment. Because every project is different, the student must propose the breakdown of the percentage in the timeline for each progress report and the final reports, satisfying the condition setup in option 2. The proposed percentages are subject to approval. 

Regardless of which option you choose, you must include submission of at least two progress reports in the timeline. The progress reports serve two purposes: The first is to inform your supervisor about the achievement so far at each stage, and the second is to get timely feedback from your supervisor which you can then use to improve any short-comings along the way, and eventually those improvements will be reflected in the final report/thesis. Thus, it still pays to have the progress reports written even if no mark is allocated to the reports (as in option 1).

The default assessment is option 1. No change of assessment option is allowed after four weeks from the unit commencement date.

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The unit adviser for all graduate projects is: