Master's Project in Computer Science

A student completing the MS project option should first find a faculty member who is willing to sponsor his/her project. Each student should submit a proposal to the faculty advisor which describes the project in sufficient detail to satisfy the objectives outlined below. This proposal must also be approved by the GPD. For students with a Concentration in ICT, the MS project proposal must be approved by both the IT and CS GPDs.

Notice of the oral presentation of the Master's Project should be given at a public session to all faculty and graduate students. A copy of the Master's Project should be available to the sponsoring faculty at least one week before the oral presentation. Students should expect to make changes to the final copy of their Master's Project based on feedback obtained from the oral presentation. The final report and all supporting documentation should be submitted to be available to the public after the approval of the sponsoring faculty. This must be done before the Comprehensive Exam is considered to be completed.

Each Master's Project should meet the following objectives:

• The project should follow good methodology.
• The student should be aware of the state of the art in the proposed area.
• The proposal should identify a particular problem area and list the specific tasks to be addressed in the project. While some of these tasks may not be accomplished in the project, the student should be able to defend the reasons why some of the tasks were not accomplished. It is also likely that new tasks will come to light as the project progresses. The student should keep track of these new tasks and if unable to complete them, should list all unaccomplished tasks in the final report as areas for further work.
• The project should demonstrate both the verbal and writing communication skills of the student.
• The project should be of some value to the student and the department. At the minimum this value will be the learning experience resulting from the project.
• The project should be carried out in a professional manner. This means the supporting documentation is well-done and in the case of programming projects that precepts of good software engineering practice be followed.
• Every attempt should be made to make the project machine-independent, isolating machine dependent parts in a small kernel of routines.
• The student should be able to abstract the experience learned in the project to a wider view of the task accomplished.

The Master's Project will be evaluated on the objectives listed above by both the sponsoring faculty and (at least) one member of the Graduate Studies committee.

A Master's Project Report is expected to contain the following items:

• Background of the Research
• Justification of the Research Problem Definition
• Problem Definition
• State of the Art
• Problem Analysis
• Technical Solution
• Evaluation of Developed Solution
• Major Contributions
• Conclusions
• References/Bibliography

There is no specific format for the MS Project Report. It should look professional and meet your project advisor's requirements.