Instructions for Mini-project Sponsors

Purpose

The purpose of these mini-projects is to provide the incoming PhD students with some initial research experience. For this reason, the faculty and the senior PhD students from all research areas are requested to submit mini-projects. Students are required to choose three mini-projects from the list of projects. Students are required to choose projects from different areas.

Duration

The time allocated for each mini-project is three weeks, and each project should require approximately 30 to 40 hours of work. The sponsors are requested to be considerate of this time allocation in designing their mini-projects. These projects should be the initial work that you would require students to undertake before they work on an 8903 or a GRA. Please avoid completely open-ended problems and define the scope of your project. The project description should encourage the students to come and meet with you to discuss the scope and define exactly what they can accomplish in the limited time frame. Senior PhD students can also sponsor projects, ideally with their advisors. Examples of possible projects can be found by looking at last year's projects

Project Schedule

The schedule for the projects is as follows:
Date
Milestone
September 7, 2004 Identify Project #1
September 30, 2004 Project #1 Due
October 5, 2004 Identify Project #2
October 28, 2004 Project #2 Due
November 2, 2004 Identify Project #3
November 23, 2004 Project #3 Due

Evaluation

Please specify what you are looking for in terms of evaluation. You will need to provide me with feedback on the completed project so that I can assign final grades. Each project is worth 20% of the overall grade.

Students will also receive an additional 5% of their grade from their project report (this is new this year).

Submitting Projects:

We request (but do not require) that all the projects be submitted to the faculty mini-project swiki: http://swiki.cc.gatech.edu:8080/phd/664. Use http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2001/cs7001_fall/projects/essa02.html as a template. Typically, the mini-projects are kept on your personal site and then hyperlinks are placed on the swiki. Please contact the instructor if you cannot or prefer not to use the swiki.

Last year's projects

Several of you have already suggested that you'd like to use last year's mini-projects. That may be fine, however, please review them, update them as neccessary.

Student reports

This year, students will be required to produce a 5-10 page report (double-spaced) for each mini-project. This is encourage reflection on the project, as well as incentive to keep a research journal as the project progresses.