Course Aims
The thesis provides an opportunity for you to bring together engineering principles learned over the previous years of study, and apply these principles to innovatively solve problems such as the development of a specific design and/or the investigation of a hypothesis. Thesis projects are complex, open-ended problems that allow room for your creativity, and the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of results. Typically, the project you work with will have multiple possible solutions or conclusions and sufficient complexity to require a degree of project planning. The thesis requires you to formulate problems in engineering terms, manage an engineering project and find solutions by applying engineering methods. You will also develop an ability to work in a research and development environment.
Learning Outcomes
At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to:
- Carry out a project following industry and professional engineering standards and methods.
- Critically reflect on a specialist body of knowledge related to a topic.
- Apply scientific and engineering methods to solve an engineering problem.
- Analyse data objectively using quantitative and mathematical methods.
- Demonstrate oral and written communication in professional and lay domains.
- Ability to complete complex tasks through effective planning and communication
Structure
Thesis A
- aims: understand the problem, develop a plan, start working on solution
- assessment items: presentation in week 8, initial report in week 11
Thesis B
- aims: complete part of the solution, evaluate it, and demonstrate your partial solution
- assessment items: demonstration in week 11
Thesis C
- aims: complete the solution, evaluate it, write up the whole project
- assessment items: project demonstration in week 8, final report in week 11
Students with excellent academic records and who perform exceptionally (HD grade) in Thesis A may be permitted to do Thesis B and C together in a single term. However, for students who do both Thesis B and Thesis C in one term there are different deadlines for Thesis B deliverables:
- assessment items: preliminary demonstration in week 4
Tasks
Through the thesis, you will put into practice the knowledge and skills that you’ve learned in your study up to this point. You do this by investigating a research topic, developing a significant software/hardware system, or some combination of these. All topics will require you to carry out the same basic set of six tasks:
- Define the problem: with the topic description as starting point, you need to describe in more detail what the problems are or what the product is. You also need to motivate the work and say why it is important that it should be done.
- Survey the literature: you need to determine what the key developments in the area are, and in particular, how they relate to your topic. Describe, compare and analyse the competition.
- Present your options: describe and compare the alternative methods that could be applied to solve the problems that you have identified, or the (alternative) steps involved in making the product. Highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each of the methods.
- Plan your attack: decide on the method(s) that are most appropriate, and justify your decision(s). Plan how you will do the work, and check with your supervisor that your plan is realistic. Note that you will be using this plan in Thesis Part B.
- Solve the problem: carry out your plan and either develop a solution to the research problem, or build the system.
- Evaluate your solution: justify why your solution is a good solution. For a theory problem, this may already be clear from the solution (proof) itself. For other kinds of research problems, you might do some complexity analysis or build a simulation. For software development, you need to carry out a testing plan which analyses relevant aspects of the system such as correctness, performance, usability, etc.
Deliverables and Assessment
Thesis A
- Thesis Seminar Presentation (during Week 8) (25%): Make a 30-minute presentation about your Thesis A topic and the plan
- Thesis A Written Report (Wednesday Week 11) (75%)
A mark out of 100 will be returned by your supervisor and the assessor. Your thesis A mark is the average of your supervisor’s mark and assessor’s mark. It will contribute 20% towards your final thesis mark. In your UNSW academic transcript, Thesis A is graded as Enrolment Continuing/Discontinuing. You must pass both the written report and the seminar to receive an Enrolment Continuing(EC) grade in Thesis A.
Marking Criteria
Thesis B
- Thesis Seminar Presentation (during Week 11) (100%): Make a 30-minute presentation about your preliminary outcome and the plan for the rest of the thesis
A mark out of 100 will be returned by your supervisor and the assessor. Your thesis B mark is the average of your supervisor’s mark and assessor’s mark. It will contribute 5% towards your final thesis mark. In your UNSW academic transcript, Thesis B is graded as Enrolment Continuing/Discontinuing.
Thesis C
- Thesis Demonstration/Presentation (During Week 8) (10%): Make a 30-minute presentation about the final outcome of your thesis. This could be a demonstration of your system built or a presentation of your theoretical work.
- Final Thesis Report (Week 11) (90%): The final Thesis Report is often called simply “The Thesis”.
- Thesis Summary/Abstract (Wednesday Week 11): Along with the report, you are required to submit a 150-word summary of your thesis. This summary is going to be published in the CSE Thesis Digital Archive.
A mark out of 100 will be returned by your supervisor and the assessor. Your thesis C mark is the average of your supervisor’s mark and assessor’s mark. It will contribute 70% towards your final thesis mark.
Participation:
- Participation is a component of Thesis C but assessed by the supervisor only.
- The supervisor gives the participation marks based on student participation (contact frequency with the supervisor, efforts made, etc) during the entire thesis process.
A mark out of 100 will be returned by your supervisor.