4. Assessment¶
This section describes what is assessed, where to find out the dates for the assessments, where you will submit your work and how you will receive your feedback.
4.1. Assessed Components¶
There are several elements for the assessment, including:
These are described in the following sub-sections. Information about the weighting of these items is available in the Marking guide section.
Mid-Project Demonstration¶
In week 7, you are expected to present a short demonstration of your progress. This is a snapshot of what work you have done and a chance for you to discuss what is left to do. The demonstration takes place in a 15-minute slot. You are expected to lead the discussion for 10 minutes and there are 5 minutes for questions and change-over to the next demonstration.
The demonstration is made to the Second Marker. This is an opportunity to describe your project to someone who has not been involved with the work. Your work will obviously be incomplete, but it is a chance for us to give you some feedback on your progress.
The Process section outlines information about how demonstrations are organised.
Project Report and Technical Work¶
The deadline for submitting your Technical Work and Project Report is specified on the Assessment Dates website. This is a substantial deliverable that brings together all of the technical work that you have produced, together with a report that describes your work.
See the information about the Report and Technical Work for information about the deliverable.
The technical work should reflect all of the code, project files and tests that you have produced. It is likely that you will also include test data. The technical work should be organised in a way that is easy for your markers to navigate. In most circumstances, it should also be possible for us to run the project work if necessary. We note that there are some projects where that can be harder, e.g. where specialist hardware is needed.
The Technical Work and Project Report is marked by your Supervisor and your Second Marker.
Final Demonstration¶
The Final Demonstration is where you show the work from your project. It takes place during the exam period for Semester 2. The demonstration is made to your Supervisor and your Second Marker. The session is 30 minutes long. You are expected to lead the discussion for 20 minutes and there are 10 minutes for questions and change-over to the next demonstration.
In the demonstration, you will show the technical outputs from your project running and talk about the technical issues of the work you have done.
The Demonstrations section outlines information about how demonstrations are organised.
Initiative¶
Your supervisor will make an assessment of the initiative and professionalism shown in your approach to working on the project. This is made by your Supervisor at the end of the project.
4.2. Project Outline and Ethics Form¶
Within the first few weeks of the project, you will complete a Project Outline.
Around week four of the project, you will complete an Ethics Form for your work. This will be discussed in the lectures.
These items are not marked as individual items, but meeting their expectatations and timely delivery will be something considered as part of the Initiative mark.
4.3. Submitting your work¶
All written and technical work will be submitted electronically.
The Project Outline and Project Report will be submitted to TurnItIn. Please do remember that when you upload the documents, you will be shown a preview of the document. You still need to confirm the upload. Unless you do that, your upload is not complete.
The Mid-Project Demonstration and the Final Demonstration are presented verbally to your markers. No electronic submission is required. The Mid-Project Demonstration will be demonstrated to your Second Marker. The Final Demonstration will be demonstrated to your Supervisor and Second Marker.
4.4. Receiving your feedback¶
You will receive feedback in different ways during this module.
Feedback from your Supervisor. In each meeting, you will be talking to your supervisor. The guidance that you receive in those meetings and via email is a form of feedback.
Feedback from the Mid-Project Demonstration. You will receive feedback approximately one week after all of the Mid-Project Demonstrations have finished. The feedback will highlight the mark for the demonstration and there will be a short, written item of feedback. All of the Mid-Project Demonstration feedback will be available on the MMP website.
Feedback at the end of the module. When the Semester 2 results are released, you will receive the overall project mark. The overall project mark will be on the Student Record. You will also receive written feedback from your Supervisor and Second Marker. This feedback will cover the technical work, the project report and the final demonstration. The written feedback will be available on the MMP website.
4.5. Assessment Criteria and Marking Guide¶
This section describes the Assessment Criteria and the Marking Guide that is used in the assessment for this module.
Assessment Criteria for the Mid-Project Demonstration¶
For the Mid-Project Demonstration, you will be judged against the following topics.
Project Description - To what extent are you able to clearly describe the aims of the project?
Technical Work - How advanced is the technical work?
Technical Issues - To what extent do you understand the technologies and technical issues in the project?
These topics are described further in the Mid-Project Demonstration section.
An overall mark is provided as well as a mark for each of the three topics and a few sentences of feedback.
Assessment Criteria for the module¶
The overall mark for your project will be judged using the Formal Assessment Criteria, which you are advised to read carefully. There are assessment criteria for the Major Projects and the Minor Projects.
Extract 1 shows the assessment criteria that describes a project judged to meet the requirements for a mark in the 2(i) range. The text for each band in the Assessment Criteria represents what you might expect to see from a piece of work in the middle of the mark range for 2(i).
Extract 1: Extract of marking criteria for a 2(i) mark.
2(i): 60%–69%
A good body of work demonstrating a good insight into the problem and presented as such.
Written components will be well presented in both layout on the page and logical structure. They will also be presented in an appropriate style and will be of a good grammatical standard.
Demonstrates good insight into the technologies employed and a good grasp of the terminology appropriate.
Implementation components will be complete, will represent a reasonably high level of technical achievement and can be demonstrated. The components will usually fulfil the functional requirements in all aspects.
The project demonstrations and discussion will illustrate a good level of achievement in the work.
The project as a whole will demonstrate commitment and will have been approached in an organised manner.
The evaluation will show good insight into the submitted work. There will be a good attempt to assess the strengths and weaknesses in the work but has probably not addressed a few of the relevant issues.
Results and products of the project would require some rewriting and improvement to be of publishable research quality and are likely to be of a standard slightly below that found in the products of industry leaders.
In order to achieve a mark in a specific range, the work must satisfy the criteria shown in bold, along with a majority of the remaining criteria for the range.
Marking guide¶
The Marking Guide comprises four main components, which are shown in Table 1.
Information about the Mid-Project Demonstration and Final Demonstration will be provided closer to the time when the demonstrations take place.
Mid-Project Demonstration |
|
Assessment of progress at the Mid-Project Demonstration. The Second Marker makes this assessment. |
5% |
Project Report and Technical Work |
|
Assessment of the technical work and a report on the work. The report discusses the preparation and problem analysis, design implementation, testing and evaluation of the project. The accompanying technical work represents the results of the work discussed in the report. The Supervisor and the Second Marker make this assessment. |
70% |
Initiative |
|
Assessment of the initiative and professional conduct shown during the project. The Supervisor makes this assessment. |
5% |
Final Demonstration |
|
Assessment of the technical outputs and the student’s insight and knowledge of the project topic. The Supervisor and Second Marker make this assessment. |
20% |
Total |
|
Total of all assessed elements. |
100% |
The Report and Technical Work section describes the issues considered for the largest single section.
Marking process¶
The project is double-marked. It is assessed independently by your Supervisor and the Second Marker. The two sets of marks are then compared and if, as is usual, the two marks are similar, there is a discussion and the final mark is agreed.
If, after discussion, the two markers have significantly different views, the module co-ordinator will moderate the submission to help arrive at the final mark. In some situations, a third member of staff may be asked to look at the work and offer a view.
The Module Coordinator will moderate a sample of the projects, checking that the marking processes are followed.
A sample of the projects will also be inspected by the external examiners. These are people from outside the University who are appointed to offer an independent view on how we follow our quality processes.
General issues considered during marking¶
The following list identifies the main areas that are considered during the marking process.
Preparation: How well you researched the background to the project topic, how well you understood what you read, and how well you presented it, with appropriate citations and references.
Analysis: How well you understood the problem you addressed, how well you assessed alternative possible approaches to it and how well you justified the approach you selected. The selection and application of an appropriate process that guides the work to a successful conclusion.
Design: The appropriateness of the design process that you used, how well you compared the various design options, and the quality and appropriateness of the final design that you selected.
Implementation & Testing: The quality of the technical work that you produced, its organisation, style, layout, and your use of software tools, and how well you designed, executed, and documented the process you used for testing your system and presented the test results you obtained.
Critical evaluation and Insight: How well and in how much detail you analysed the strengths and weaknesses of the system you produced and your approach to the project. How well you demonstrate your understanding of the various aspects of the project and related topics, and the relevance of your work to the general body of work in the area.
Technical Achievement: Consideration of the quality and capability of the system you have developed, as well as the difficulty of the problems that you had to overcome during the project.
Security Considerations: Where appropriate for a project topic, there should be consideration of the security implications for the project. This is likely to be reflected in the analysis, design, implementation and testing and the critical evaluation.
Report presentation and quality: The way in which your report is organised, including appropriate ordering of the contents, ease of reading and ease of finding specific sections and the completeness of the report. This also includes the correctness and appropriateness of the language and punctuation and the quality of diagrams, tables etc.
Demonstration: This considers the way in which your work is presented during the demonstrations and showing the work running. How well you can discuss and talk about the problem area, the technical issues of the work and, where appropriate, the relevance of your work to related work.
Initiative: How effective you were at finding relevant information, generating ideas, and putting your knowledge and experience into practice. This also considers your professional approach to working on the project, such as attending the weekly meetings and meeting deadlines for the project outline and ethics form, and the extent to which you recognised the benefits of ideas and advice provided by your supervisor.
Anonymous Marking¶
This work is not marked anonymously. Each student has an individual topic, which is presented to both of the markers for the project. Therefore, it is not possible to provide anonymous marking for this module.
