Final Year Dissertation Advice Daniel Bryant Software Systems Group Dept. of Computing

February 2006Daniel Bryant2 Overview of my Talk General advice Example Dissertation Structure Advice on the “Conclusion” Chapter –A much misunderstood chapter Questions?

February 2006Daniel Bryant3 General Advice Keep in contact with your supervisor –Discuss ideas and any problems you may be having Try and submit regular drafts to your supervisor –This keeps your supervisor informed of your progress (and also shows you haven’t started your dissertation the night before the submission date!) –Follow up on any comments/feedback (Obvious, but often forgotten) Tips for the Report –Try and keep the number of chapters small (max 10) –Keep the chapters concise (easier to proof-read, and for the reader to understand) –Introduction/overview at the beginning of each chapter –A short summary at the end of each chapter to help the reader clarify the important details

February 2006Daniel Bryant4 Dissertation Structure Title Page Abstract (brief – 200 words) Acknowledgements Table of Contents Introduction (5 pages) –Overview of the dissertation topic –Aims –Brief structure/outline of the complete dissertation

February 2006Daniel Bryant5 Dissertation Structure Analysis I – Literature Review (10-15 pages) –Give an educated reader an overview of your topic, the problem you are solving and why it is important –Key technologies/current state-of-the-art Analysis II – Identify System Requirements (5-10 pages) –Appropriate SDLC Methodologies –Requirements gathering and prioritisation

February 2006Daniel Bryant6 Dissertation Structure Requirements and Specification (5 pages) –Outlined requirements for complete project/solution highlighting the core details and other ‘bonus’ features System Design (5 pages) –Methodology chosen – in my case Phase Development –Overview of the system –Identified modules/phases of development for the system Phase I, II, III (25 pages) –Brief design overview –Interesting detail from the implementation – challenges, problems etc… –Unit testing –Integration testing and ultimately user testing

February 2006Daniel Bryant7 Dissertation Structure Discussion/Evaluation (5 pages) –Discuss testing and any interesting results (or problems) you have found –Identify how your project compares to related work –Evaluation (or “critique”) of the overall project, the report and any deliverables Conclusion and Future Work (5 pages) –Final conclusions – the reader should be able to read this section and get an overview of how the project was conducted, what results were found and the final conclusions drawn –Future work – is there any problems that could be fixed or scope for improvements (particularly relating to your discussion) References –Extremely important –I know you hear this a lot, but please don’t plagiarise! It’s easy to identify in a report of this size

February 2006Daniel Bryant8 The “Conclusion” Chapter This is a key chapter – don’t leave it until the last night! Overview –This dissertation has explored the use of argumentation within agent- based communication… –Using the phase development methodology and a series of experimental simulations, the dissertation has illustrated how… –A fully functional agent-based distributed dialogue game application has also been presented that demonstrates... Conclusions and Future Work –The deliverables produced upon completion of this dissertation satisfied the initial requirements… –Extensive testing of the agent-based dialogue application indicated… –Future work should therefore focus on the development of a standard representation of semantics …

February 2006Daniel Bryant9 The “Conclusion” Chapter Final Summary –Many new software-engineering techniques and technologies, such as …, were identified and researched. –Identifying and learning about … was very interesting and illustrated the challenge of designing large-scale software systems consisting of… –… the production of this dissertation and associated deliverables has greatly added to the authors’ existing knowledge, abilities and skills…

February 2006Daniel Bryant10 The End Thanks for listening…