MSc Dissertation Projects in

the School of Computing

Science: Guidance Notes
2023/24
1 Introduction
These guidance notes cover dissertation project work for the MSc in Computing
Science degree taught in the School of Computing Science. It relates to the module
CSC8099.

2 MSc Dissertation Project Overview

The dissertation project work accounts for 60 credits in your degree. This means that the
dissertation contributes a third of your overall assessment, and will have a significant
effect on your degree classification.

Project work is entirely assessed by coursework deliverables. However, the project is not
just a large piece of coursework: it is the culmination of your study at Newcastle, and
should be a demanding, challenging and rewarding piece of work. In the project you
have a chance to work independently, see the connections between what you have learnt
in different modules and go beyond these modules by your own research and application.
Together with your group project, it is likely to be what you most remember about your
time at Newcastle and what you tell prospective employers about when interviewed.

Since 10 credits equates to approximately 100 hours of study, your project should
represent approximately 600 hours of work.

2.1 CSC8099 Dissertation

Immediately after the Semester 2 exams you start working on the dissertation project.
You will perform the relevant research, conduct your project work, and produce a
dissertation and demonstration covering the work you have done. During the course of
the project you will need to manage your time effectively. The following sections
provide more guidance.

2.2 Project selection

As the project will have a major impact on your degree classification, and thus influence
your future career, it is important to choose a topic which will enable you to fulfill your
potential. A project which is not challenging may be easily completed but will not attain a
distinction mark; conversely, a project which is overly ambitious and open-ended may lead
to problems. A good project should stretch you, but have achievable objectives and a clear
recovery strategy in case of unexpected problems.

Project selection will be organized by the Teaching Director at the same time for all of
our MSc programmes.
 You will be contacted by the PG director during Semester 2 with details of how to
express your preferences for your theme, and then topic as well as supervisor.
Please follow their instructions. There is a limit to the number of students each
member of staff can supervise, so you may find your preferred choice is unavailable.
Each staff member lists their general interests as well as specific topics, so it is possible
to discuss your own possible project idea with a supervisor.

Dissertation Projects are likely to be technically demanding. A project should involve

learning about some unfamiliar aspect of Computing Science, and applying what you
have learned to a realistic problem. You are normally expected to undertake a
significant amount of software development.

2.3 Organisation
Once you have selected a project topic and a member of staff has agreed to supervise you,
the staff member will sign you up for this project in NESS. For MSc CS students, the
project and meetings with your supervisor will start after the exam period in June.

Initial steps in June will be to define Aims and Objectives for your project, and to begin
research into background material (prior work, books, papers, library, web, ...). Your
supervisor may provide some starting points for you depending on the type of project.

2.4 Role of the supervisor

Your supervisor has some responsibilities in the running of your project, but most of
the responsibility is yours. Your supervisor should provide starting directions, and
suggestions and advice during the dissertation work. They may act as the “customer”
for what you produce, run any software you may produce. They will mark and give
feedback on project deliverables, read and comment on drafts of your proposal and
dissertation (if given sufficient notice), and meet with you over the course of the project
to discuss progress.

However, you cannot expect your supervisor to design, test or debug anything you
produce, write your dissertation for you, teach you any background material or remind
you to attend any meetings.

To get the best out of your supervisor, you should meet with them regularly as needed by
your project (for example once a week or every 2 weeks): if you cannot attend a scheduled
meeting, contact your supervisor in advance to reschedule it. Occasionally your
supervisor may need to be away from Newcastle for planned periods of absence, for
example to attend a conference or to take vacation. In this case you should make
appropriate arrangements with your supervisor and allow for these periods of absence in
your planning. You should also prepare for meetings by providing an agenda, and take
notes during meetings. At meetings, be ready to discuss your ideas about the project.
2.5 Assessment
There are four deliverables associated with the dissertation project. Second markers are
allocated after all students have chosen a project and supervisor. Also a third external
examiner will review projects and their marks.

The following deliverables are due during the period in which you are taking the project.
The corresponding deadlines can be found in Canvas and NESS.
1. Preliminary Ethical Assessment Form. (This is assessed as a pass/fail exercise. You
must submit the ethical assessment form to pass the project).
2. Proposal (formative, i.e. it is not marked but you get feedback).
3. Demonstration (This is assessed as a pass/fail exercise. You must demonstrate
your work to pass the project). The demonstration is to the supervisor and 2nd
marker. The quality of the developed software is taken into account by the
markers when assessing the dissertation.
4. Dissertation, submitted electronically to NESS. Hard copy of the dissertation is not
required. Any supplementary material like the source code, detailed experiments,
etc., is also submitted to NESS, separately from the dissertation.
The content of each deliverable is described in the coursework specifications available
on Canvas. Assessment of the dissertation is completed independently by the supervisor
and second marker. Dissertation sections are given a mark on the appropriate Post
Graduate scale, and used to calculate a final mark using the following weightings:
∙ Introduction 10%
Background 10%
∙
What was done, and how (including user manual) 40%
∙
Results & Evaluation 20%
∙
Conclusions 10%
∙
References 5%
∙
Form 5%
∙

Following this assessment, the two marks are averaged to give the final dissertation mark.
In case of discrepancy of more than 8% between the two marks, resolution is achieved by
discussion between the two markers and, if necessary, appealing to an independent third
marker.
 2.6 Dissertation writing guidance
Remember, the dissertation is a formal document to satisfy the examiners that you have
carried out a substantial piece of work, investigated a solution to a problem, engineered
an effective solution to that problem, and, above all, learnt something during your time at
Newcastle!

The dissertation itself must be well-written, i.e. clear, concise, coherent and complete. It
must also be your own work (see the section below on Plagiarism).

Each Chapter will need several drafts, so it is vital to involve your supervisor and give
sufficient time for them to read your drafts. You may find it easiest to begin with the
introductory “scene-setting” parts first, as these are some of the most important parts in
your document and the hardest to write and to get right: the rest of the dissertation
writing will follow much more easily once you have sorted out the introduction. It should
tell the story of your project in a coherent way: if you achieve this, the rest of the
dissertation should be straightforward to read. Save the technical details for later
chapters.

The formatting of the dissertation should be as follows:

● A4 page.
● Either single- or double-sided pages.
● Single line spacing.
● Font such as 12 point Times New Roman (Courier for code snippets).
● Margins: 25mm minimum, especially for the binding margin.
● Include numbers on pages, diagrams, tables.
● The title page should give the project title, your name and student number, the
name of your supervisor, and the date. Put the word count (excluding references
and appendices) at the bottom of the title page.
● Code listing should not be included (the code is submitted separately to NESS).

2.7.1 Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the disciplinary offence of attempting to pass off someone else’s work as
your own. It makes no difference whether this is done innocently or otherwise! All
dissertations will be checked for plagiarism using an automatic plagiarism detection
system, as well as by the markers, and if plagiarism is suspected then an action will be
taken in consultation with the School’s Assessment Irregularities Committee.

All sources must be acknowledged clearly in your dissertation and references/citations

provided. If you copy someone’s words or software code, make this clear – for text, use
quotation marks and/or indented paragraphs:
Indeed, it has been said [Bloggs03]:
“This is possibly the best programming language ever invented.”
If you paraphrase someone’s words, provide a citation. If you are reusing some software,
make this clear in your program listings and in your dissertation. It must be completely
obvious to the reader of your dissertation what is your own work and what is not!
2.7.2 References and Citations
In the Reference or Bibliography section, a reference should give the full details of the
original document or web-page so that a reader can locate the original document. A
citation is the label placed in the main body of text. Different styles can be used, as
long as you stick to one consistent style throughout the dissertation. For example,
... is a well developed field [Lee91].
... shown by several authors [Lee and Anderson94, Randell93a].
or
... is a well developed field [4].
... shown by several authors [5,6].
The references should include the citations as labels and should be sorted alphabetically
or in numerical order of citation:
[Fowler02] H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Oxford Press
2002, ISBN: 0198605064.
[Lee91] [Link], “Exception Handling”, Software Practice and Experience, Vol.
3, No. 5, Jan. 1991, pp.23-31.
or
[1] H.W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Oxford Press 2002,
ISBN: 0198605064.
[2] [Link], “Exception Handling”, Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 3,
No. 5, Jan. 1991, pp.23-31.
Using URLs as references can be problematic as they are not fixed in time: there is no
guarantee that the reference provided will still be there, with the same content, when the
reader wishes to access it. Avoid using only URLs as references, and place all URLs
together in a separate section of your reference chapter, together with the date last
accessed:
[Fixit99] The Fixit Software Distribution Kit,
[Link] June 2005.

3 Recommended Texts
Author Title ISBN
Christian W. Projects in Computing and Information Systems: A 0321263553
Dawson Student's Guide (Addison Wesley 2005).
M. Berndtsson Planning and Implementing your Final Year Project 1852333324
et al with Success!
I. Ricketts Managing Your Software Project: a student’s guide 3540760466
(Springer 1997)
S. Rumsey How to Find Information: a Guide for Researchers 0335214282
B.J. Oates Researching Information Systems and Computing 141290224X
T. Cornford and Project Research in Information Systems (2nd 1403934711
S. Smithson Edition)