Semester 1, 2007
6 credit points
Coordinator for INFO4990: A/Professor Alan Fekete,
Coordinator for DECO3008: Dr Xiangyu Wang
NEWS:
The library offers training in EndNote. An online tutorial is available.
Here are lecture overheads (revised and improved from the inclass presentation)
This unit of study is required for students in IT and Design Computing that are planning or have started a research degree. The unit provides an overview of research methods that are used in information technologies. The unit is comprised primarily of lectures, with some sessions set aside for students to discuss their research topics and methods in groups, and some sessions are scheduled for short presentations by students.
Each of the following submissions are due at the beginning of the scheduled lecture of the due date. The submission should be submitted as a printed document with a title page including the title of your research topic, your name, the name of your supervisor, the unit of study, and the date. Please read the University Policy on Academic Honesty and submit the appropriate cover sheet with your signature with each final submission.
Database Search Results. 10% Due week 5 (April 2)
Submit a report that includes the title of your research project, a paragraph
about your topic, a list of 30 to 50 articles or books to which
you have found refernces and which seem potentially relevant,
and a summary of 4-10 from this list that you have
already read. Each summary should be no more than a paragraph
long and should include a few sentences about the content of the article/book
and a few sentences about its relevance to your research topic. You should
cite the publication properly, using the standard ACM conference style,
but make sure you can adjust style easily by using a
proper template or style mechanism in your text processing.
Literature Review. 30% Due Week 8 (April 30)
Submit a report that is a critical review of the literature you have found that
is related to your research topic. The report should be about 5-10 pages. Include
at least 20 properly referenced articles or books. Organise the review
around the questions or claims relevant to your research rather than just listing
the papers you have read. The assessment criteria are: covers the most
important relevant work, clearly identifies the
contributions of the literature reviewed, identifies the research methods used
in this collection of literature, connects the literature to the research topic
by identifying its relevance, clarity of presentation and english.
Outline of research approach. 10%. Due week 9
(May 7)
Submit a page or two which identifies the research contribution you intend
to make, and outlines how you will gather evidence to back this up. You should
provide enough detail to show that you have thought about how to convince readers. For example, if you intend to measure performance, you should describe
what aspects will be measured, and what you will compare the measurements to;
but you don't need to describe exactly the hardware platform, or details
of the harnass that will run the tests etc. The assessment criteria are:
clearly states the intended contribution,
offers an approach to evidence gathering that
is appropriate to the claim, clarity of presentation and english.
Research Proposal/Results. 50% Due week 13 (June 4) for
written report; presentations may be in class in week 13,
or arranged at other times in that week or following ones)
The submission
has two parts: a written report (40%) and a slide presentation (10%).
The report should be approximately
12-20 pages in length. A research proposal report should include:
motivation and context, objectives (questions/claims) of the research,
critical literature review,
research method, plan (with tasks and timetable).
A research results report should
include: motivation and context, contributions of the research, critical literature
review, research method, results. It is normal for a "results" report
to be a draft of a thesis that will be submitted later (eg in a week or so!);
in particular it is OK to have sections where "explanation will be written" or
"experimental results are
still being gathered". However, you should make sure that the account of your
achievements and the description of the research methods,
are clear and comprehensible.
The slide presentation should
include 5-10 slides outlining and motivating the research, and the research
plan or results. The assessment criteria are:
Report: understanding of context, identification of the intended objectives
or achieved
contributions, relationship to literature,
identification of research methods, quality of plan or results, clarity of
presentation and english.
Presentation: quality of slides, organisation, presentation style