7.3. Final Demonstration

The final part of your assessment for the project is the Final Demonstration. This will happen after you have submitted your Project Report and Technical Work. This demonstration is longer than the Mid-Project Demonstration and it is where you will show the work that you have produced by time of submitting the work.

The demonstration is combined with an interview about your project. In addition to a practical demonstration of what your system does and how well it does it, you will be asked questions about your project and about topics related to your project. The time may be extended by the examiners if they consider it necessary and in certain circumstances they may arrange a further interview with you.

This section covers the following issues:

Who attends the demonstrations?

You will demonstrate your work to your supervisor and your second marker. The module-coordinator may ask to join some of the sessions to observe the process. Only the supervisor and second marker will mark your demonstration.

How long is the demonstration?

Each demonstration is scheduled to take up to 30-minutes. You will have up to 20-minutes to demonstrate your work and then there are up to 10 minutes for questions from your markers.

What version of the work is to be demonstrated?

You must demonstrate the version of the software that you submit by Friday 9th August 2024.

Project assessment

Your performance in the interview & demonstration will be marked and it represents 20% of the final assessment for the module. The demonstration may also influence other components of your final project mark.

Demonstration content

The demonstration is where we want to see the results of your work on the project. For the demonstration, we are specifically interested in:

  • Your insight into the project work and related topics.

  • Looking at the level of technical achievement in the project.

Make sure that you use the time to show the technical work. This is not supposed to be a PowerPoint driven presentation - it is supposed to focus on your work and your understanding of the work. You are leading a discussion about your work.

You might use one or two slides if it helps to communicate some ideas. You don’t have to use slides, but if you do then use them to support a point in the demonstration and please avoid them ‘being’ the demonstration. If you have any questions about that - speak with your supervisor.

Help your markers to understand what the project was about, how you worked on the project and what the most interesting parts of the system are.

What you say in the demo will help the markers as they read your project report.

Avoid trying to show off every feature of what you did - there probably isn’t time for that and we should be able to see more detail in your reports. Instead, think about the main points that you want to communicate that show the strengths of your work. Be prepared to talk about weaknesses, opportunities for improvements and where you might take the work if you were to continue development. If there is time you might talk about other, less important, features.

Timing and practice

Out of the 30 minutes, you can assume that you have around 20 minutes for content where you are leading the discussion. The markers will ask questions - they might ask questions during the demonstration and at the end - that is up to the two markers.

Take time to practice what you want to do in the demo. Is there time for what you plan to say? If not, re-plan the timings. Think about whether you are covering the most interesting issues. Would it bother you if you ran out of time and you didn’t get to talk about some of the items at the end of your plan? If so, think about the order of what you plan to say.

You might like to find a few people to listen to you practice your demonstration. Invite them to ask you some questions to help you prepare.

At the demonstration

Firstly, be ready at your allocated time, having got the necessary materials setup. If there is any delay during the demonstrations, your demonstration might start a bit later. The markers will communicate with you if there is going to be a delay of more than a few minutes.

Your markers will decide what questions and issues they want to cover and they will be guided by what you are showing. They might ask about something they spotted in the report, although markers may read the report after the demonstration.

Markers will be thinking about issues such as the following as they assess your demonstration:

  • Are you able to explain the purpose of the project and talk about the general problem area?

  • How well does the work meet the stated purpose?

  • How well does the technical work run during the demo?

  • Are you able to discuss the technical work, tools and techniques?

  • What are the strengths and weaknesses?

Sometimes a marker might ask you to show a piece of code and talk about it, e.g. “show us the most complex bit of work and explain it.” Therefore, it would be a good idea to have access to your code just in case your markers wanted to ask about that.