Honours Individual Project

• • Eligible students working on individual projects should solicit for their own projects. They may use the broadly categorized list of our staff’s supervisory interest for reference when looking for potential supervisors.

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• • Students who wish to work with external supervisors may do so, but subject to approval. They are to follow these guidelines and timelines when seeking approval from the Department.

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• • Students pursuing Double Degree Programme and who wish to work on an integrated honours project would have to follow this workflow when proposing projects.

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• • Once the supervision is confirmed, students should email the details (name of student and supervisor, and project title) to the Department immediately.

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• • Students need not register for the honours project course during course registration period as it will be pre-allocated to them at the end of the registration period. But they must ensure that sufficient workload is set aside (6MCs in each semester) for the pre-allocation of this course.

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• • Project marks will be deducted from students who do not secure project supervisors by end of Week 3.

• • During this period, besides self-study, each student will need to present:

1. 1. 1. 1. Introductory Talk:  15-20 minutes together with 8-10 minutes discussion and questioning;
         2. Mid-term Progress Talk:  25-35 minutes together with 15-20 minutes discussion and questioning.

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• • Supervisor and Co-supervisor are expected to sit in for all talks in order to give quality feedback to their students, to help them improve at future sessions.

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• • Examiner’s presence at these talks is optional.

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• • The objective of these talks is to help students prepare for their projects. Thus, meaningful and active discussions are strongly encouraged during these talks. The discussions will provide students with more opportunities in speaking up, to encourage the exchange of ideas and to develop students’ communication skill besides preparing for their projects. It is, therefore, important for the presenter to ensure that other students are able to follow most of the talks to facilitate meaningful discussions.

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• • Each student is expected to attend at least 4 Introductory Talks and 4 Mid-term Progress Talks*. Attendance will be marked at the talks and students are expected to ask questions and get involved in active discussion.

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• • Students who start honours project in Semester 2 may attend talks given by Semester 1 students, for interest and to meet the quota since there may be less honours students in Semester 2 intake.

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• • Students who start honours project in Semester 1 may also attend talks given by Semester 2 students, for interest and knowledge.

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*Students working in Project cum Seminar Groups are not required to meet this quota as they will be attending talks within their groups. Nevertheless, they are strongly encouraged to attend talks given by students working on individual project, for interest and knowledge.

• • The project thesis must be saved in PDF format with file size below 2MB.

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• • If a project requires programming, save the programming files and the instructions file (if any) into one ZIP folder.

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• • There is no strict limit on the length of the report but this should normally be between 30 and 45 pages, and should not exceed 55 pages (excluding summary, content pages, etc. and figures or tables).

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• • Font size should be at least 12pts and paragraphs should be double-spaced. The margins on each page should be at least 3cm (top, bottom, left and right).

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• • Students are further discouraged from producing thesis with more than 65 pages in length (excluding summary, content pages, etc. and figures or tables). Examiners will have the discretion to impose marks penalty for theses that exceed this page limit.

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• • The thesis must be submitted by the stipulated deadline (refer to timelines for individual projects ). It will be assessed by the supervisor and an examiner (nominated by the supervisor or the Department). This is the most important component of the project work as it accounts for about half of the overall project grade.

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• • These report writing tips may be helpful to students.

• • Each student is required to give an Final Oral Presentation on the completed project. The oral presentation will last between 30 and 45 minutes and will be assessed by the supervisor and examiner.

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• • Each student is also required to attend at least five other presentations*. Attendance will be marked.

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• • Students who start honours project in Semester 2 may attend talks given by Semester 1 students, for interest and to meet the quota since there may be less honours students in Semester 2 intake.

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• • Students who start honours project in Semester 1 may also attend talks given by Semester 2 students, for interest and knowledge.

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• • Supervisors do not sit in at rehearsals.

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• • These presentation tips may be helpful to students.

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*Students working in Project cum Seminar Groups are not required to meet this quota as they will be attending talks within their groups. Nevertheless, they are still strongly encouraged to attend talks given by students working on individual project.

• • After the oral presentation, each student will have to appear in an interview by the two assessors (the supervisor and the examiner). The interview will be on the subject matter of the project.

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• • The interview, which is the second most important component of the project, will last about 30 minutes and will give the student an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings or uncertainties about the materials presented in the report. At the interview, the assessors may give the student a list of matters requiring attention (ranging from typographical to mathematical errors requiring correction). The student would be required to amend the thesis accordingly for final submission.

• • A student who is required to make amendments to the report should do so immediately after the interview. The amended thesis should be submitted by the stipulated deadline (refer to timelines for individual projects) for final assessment by the supervisor.

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• • Students who do not need to make amendments do not need to do final submission.

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• • The marks weightage for each assessment phase is only for reference.
  • The final marks of a project is computed based on the weightage table and a formula based on department guidelines.
  • Supervisor may deduct marks as appropriate in the final submission stage, if the final thesis does not address the points brought to the student’s attention or is not amended to the supervisor’s satisfaction.