PROJ-H-402 - Computing Project: Rules

Overall information

PROJ-H-402 is a computer programming project for students of the first year of the Master in Computer Science and Engineering. This project is equivalent to 5 ECTS.

With this project, the student will gain experience in how to produce software for a customer. The role of the customer will be played by a member of the faculties involved in the master program. The faculty member that commissions the piece of software will provide the student with all the needed guidance.

It is the final responsibility of each student to find his/her project.

The student

The student has to find a supervisor and to agree with them on the goal of the project. The student will then carry out the project under the guidance of the supervisor. The student can find the names of faculty members that are willing to supervise a project and information on available projects on the webpage maintained by the coordinator -- please read on to learn more on this.

The supervisor

The supervisor can be any member of the scientific or academic staff of the faculties involved in the master program. The role of the supervisor is to define the details of the project and to guide the student. The supervisor will typically meet the student every couple of weeks. A supervisor might propose a project directly to a student or might advertise a project through the apposite webpage maintained by the coordinator -- please read on to learn more on this.

The director

For each project, a director must be appointed. A director must be a member of the academic staff. If the supervisor is a member of the academic staff, the director is the supervisor themselves. The role of the director is to guarantee that the project has an appropriate formative and didactical value. Also, the director will be the main responsible of the evaluation of the project: at the end of the project, the director will give a mark to the student.

The coordinator

The coordinator of PROJ-H-402 is Mauro Birattari <mbiro@ulb.ac.be>. The coordinator maintains a webpage (PROJ-H-402 - Computing Project: List of Projects) that can be used by faculty members to advertise the projects they propose. The coordinator will also take care of registering the final mark as communicated by the director.

Advertising a project

In order to have a project mentioned on the webpage maintained by the coordinator, a faculty member should send an email to the coordinator. The email should contain the following information in the following format:

== title of the project ==

* Supervisor:   name of supervisor   <email address of supervisor>

* Director:   name of director   <email address of director>

* Webpage:   http://...

Replace the text in red with the relevant information. The webpage should be a Link to a webpage maintained by supervisor where further information can be found, e.g., abstract of the project, required background knowledge, diagrams to illustrate ideas, links to preparatory readings.

The subject of the email should be "PROJ-H-402: New project". If a faculty member wishes to propose more than one project, they should send an email for each of them. If the name of the director is not given, it is implied that the supervisor is a member of the academic staff and that they will also play the role of the director.

It is not strictly needed that a project is advertised on the webpage maintained by the coordinator. A faculty member can directly propose a project to a student, should they feel that this student is an ideal candidate.

Deliverables

The concrete result of the project will be a set of deliverables. Typically, the deliverables will be a report of about 15 pages, the software produced and its technical documentation. At the beginning of the project, the supervisor will define exactly the deliverables that have to be produced -- if the supervisor is a member of the scientific staff, the director of the project will have to validate this step.

The final evaluation

At the end of the project, the student will have to present the results of the project to a jury. The evaluation might take place at the end of either the first term or the second term (in first or second session). It is the responsibility of the director to schedule the evaluation and to form the jury. The jury must be composed by (at least) three members of the scientific/academic staff (including director/supervisor). The jury will be chaired by the director of the project. At least one member of the jury must be a person that has not been involved in the supervision of the student and that does not work on the topic of the project -- rationale: the student should be able to explain their work also to non-experts. After the evaluation, the director will communicate the mark to the co-ordinator via email. The subject of the email should be: "PROJ-H-402: Mark -- student name". The email should contain the following information:

• Student: name of the student
• Mark: final mark
• Supervisor: name of the supervisor
• Director: name of the director (if different from supervisor)
• Jury: names of all members of the jury
• Remarks: remarks (if any)

Replace the text in red with the relevant information. If a director is in charge of more than one student project, they should send an email for each of these student projects. The director should communicate the mark to the coordinator at least one week before the deadline for registering the marks in eCursus.