CS7001: Instructions to Students regarding Mini-projects

Projects & Time Committments

It is suggested that 60 hours of research work is equivalent to one credit hour for the semester.  This is a five credit course. Thus, it is expected that you will spend about 300 hours for the course for the semester (5 x 60 = 300 hours/semester).

Lectures are three hours/week for 15 weeks -> 45 hours of direct class interaction.   Some people say that each lecture hour is equal to three hours of research (out of class) hours [I guess that depends on the teacher and the course material]

I'd say that projects should be about 120-135 hours of your time for the whole semester.  This is of course approximate because:

  1.  This is research
  2.  As far as I know there are no clocks in CoC to punch in when you start something and punchout when you leave.
  3.  Results matter!

One another way of looking at it is as if you are doing a 3-unit 8903 or 3 1-unit 8903s.

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

Choosing Projects

  • Select a project from the list of descriptions OR ask a professor in the college to design one for you OR design one for yourself and propose it to a professor.
  • Contact the sponsor and set up a meeting to discuss the project.
    • Explain your interest in doing the project
    • Ask what would be required to do this project.
    • Ask what would be a deliverable (ie, a report, etc.)
    • Set up a schedule with sponsor, as to when you want to end the project and when/if you'd like to meet again to discuss the project.
    • Choosing a project, WITHOUT approval of the sponsor is not ALLOWED.
  • Put a link on your CS7001 page stating your project and the modifications that you have discussed with the "sponsor".  If anything specially different send an email to the instructor.

    THIS HAS TO BE DONE BY DEADLINES previously ESTABLISHED.

Ending Projects

  • The projects have to END on the day they are due. If your sponsor asks you to continue the project past the deadline in order to get a grade, please contact me. Note: It's okay to keep working on the project, just as long as it doesn't hold up the grade.
  • For the project report:
    • You should email a copy of your report by midnight of the day it is due. Please send an email with the header such as "7001 Project #N - YourName" and attach either a PDF, RTF, or Word version of the file. Please cc your project sponsor.
    • You should also put a copy of your report on your home page. HTML or PDF is preferred, but PDF, PS, Word, or RTF formats are all fine.
    • The length and details of the report depends on what you and the sponsor have agreed to. However, this year it should be at 3-5 pages, single spaced, in an 11 or 12-point font. It should be written in a professional style (with proper citations and references). If you need to use a different format for your project (i.e., if the paper is one that your advisor is hoping to send to a conference) you can use that format instead.
    • If your sponsor does not have a predefined format, and you'd like some guidance, here is a suggested structure:
      • Introduction: The research problem or project that you decided to address, perhaps with a simple example.
      • Motivation: Why is this an interesting problem? Address why it is important to researchers in this area, but also consider addressing why the problem is interesting in more general terms.
      • Plan: How did you decide to tackle this problem? You may want to write this section at the beginning of your project, to help focus your work.
      • Results: What finally happened? What did you accomplish?
      • Discussion: General discussion of new insights that you gained from the research, and what the results mean more broadly.
      • Conclusion and future work: Re-summarize your results, and briefly discuss some possible future work.
      • References
  • Please ask your faculty sponsor to email the grade to the me.