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ITEC810 Assessment


1 Assessment Rationale

The major assessable piece of work for the ITEC810 unit is your final project report. Most of the other assessments are also directly related to the execution of your project.

Your ITEC810 project accounts for 12.5% of your degree. Since ITEC810 is a four credit point unit, you are expected to spend 12 hours on the unit for each of the 13 weeks in the semester. If we assume that three hours is spent each week either in class or directly related to class work, then you have 9 hours per week to spend on the project, for a total of somewhere around 117 hours. This is roughly equivalent to working on a project solidly for 3--4 weeks full time.

2 Assessable Work

The following items make up the assessment for this unit. Marks shown total to 100.

ItemMarksWeek DueDate Due
Timely Delivery of Progress Reports10Weeks 3, 5, 7, 9 and 1112 noon Friday every second week
Project Proposal5Week 312 noon Friday 13th March
Review of Sources15Week 512 noon Friday 27th March
Draft Workshop Paper--Week 912 noon Friday 8th May
Review of Workshop Papers5Week 1012 noon Friday 15th May
Final Workshop Paper20Week 1112 noon Friday 22nd May
Ethics Study5Week 1212 noon Friday 29th May
Project Report20Week 1312 noon Friday 5th June
Workshop Presentation10Week 13Evening Friday 5th June
Class Participation5Throughout semester---
Web Participation5Throughout semester---

The project-related assessable elements here are designed to assist you in working through your project methodically.

See the Workload page for one way you might allocate time to these activities.

3 What's Required

You can find example submissions for many of these assignments here.

3.1 Timely Delivery of Progress Reports

No later than 12 noon of the day of the classes in Weeks 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11, you should submit via Moodle a progress report that indicates how your project is developing. Progress reports will be via a form-based questionnaire on the website. In addition to this textual report, you should also provide an update on progress on your project in the form of a PowerPoint presentation; the required content of these reports will vary during the course of the semester, and will always be discussed in the class meeting prior to the class in which they are due.

3.2 Project Proposal

No later than 12 noon on Friday 13th March (Week 3), you should submit via Moodle a 2-3 page project proposal that outlines the background to and objectives of your project, and lays out a plan for how you will achieve these objectives. We will discuss what is required in these documents in class in Week 1. You should also provide a set of three PowerPoint slides, whose structure and content we will discuss in class in Week 1, that you will use to present your project to the rest of the class.

This piece of work is expected to correspond to 1-2 days of solid effort. The overall structure of a project proposal is the same for each of ITEC808, ITEC809, ITEC810 and ITEC811: the main focus here is understanding, decomposing and scheduling what you need to do, and you have to do that regardless of the nature of your project.

See here for more information on what is involved in a project proposal and how they are assessed.

3.3 Review of Sources

No later than 12 noon on Friday 27th March (Week 5), you should submit via Moodle a well-structured and appropriately thorough review of soruces for your project. This document, which is likely to be around 10 pages in length, will be marked by your project supervisor. We will discuss what's involved in a review of sources in class in Week 3.

If you are doing ITEC808, or you are doing an analysis project in ITEC810 then your final project report might be thought of as a substantive literature review. You can think of your Review of Sources as an early version of this, written as a staging post prior to the detailed analysis you will carry out for the final report. It's important to realise that a real literature review is more than just a catalog of what's been done; it's a careful and thorough analysis of that material to identify key themes and issues and to make recommendations. In these circumstances, your Review of Sources is likely to limited in some regard: for example, it may only cover a subset of relevant material you will eventually cover, or it may only make a first pass at organising the material into themes and issues.

If you are doing ITEC809 you will have already produced a literature review in ITEC808. It is likely that you will be able to use some of the material in your ITEC808 report here, but a primary focus of your Review of Sources for ITEC809 will be a clear working out of the outstanding issues to be addressed in your ITEC809 project.

See here for more information on what is involved in a review of sources and how they are assessed.

3.4 Draft Workshop Paper

No later than 12 noon on Friday 8th May (Week 9), you should submit a draft of your six page workshop paper, and a PowerPoint presentation that presents its contents. The structure and content of workshop papers will be discussed in class in Week 5. You must submit your workshop paper via the EasyChair conference system; you will have to create yourself an account on your first visit to the site in order to be able to submit a paper. You should submit your slides via the Moodle website as usual.

See here for more information on what is involved in a workshop paper and how they are assessed.

3.5 Review of Workshop Papers

No later than 12 noon on Friday 15th May (Week 10), you should submit brief peer reviews of a number of workshop papers that will have been assigned to you. No one will receive more than three papers to review.

The reviewing process will be discussed in class in Week 9. You will submit your reviews via the EasyChair system, no later than 12 noon on Friday 15th May. The reviewing task involves assessing each paper you have been assigned using the same assessment rubric that will be used by your supervisots to assess the final versions of the workshop papers.

Once you have submitted your review for a given paper, you will be able to see the other reviews for that paper, which you may find instructive.

You will receive the reviews for your own paper later on Friday.

3.6 Workshop Paper

No later than 12 noon on Friday 22nd May (Week 11), you should submit a final version of your six page workshop paper that takes account of the comments you have received in the review process. This version of your paper should be submitted in the normal way via the Moodle website.

This version will be marked by your project supervisor, and will be incorporated into the proceedings of the workshop to be held in Week 13.

3.7 Ethics Study

No later than 12 noon on Friday 29th May (Week 12, a week in which there is no class meeting), you should submit a short ethics essay of around 1-2 pages in length that discusses a professional ethical issue that will have been raised in class in Week 11.

Details of the assignment are provided here.

3.8 Project Report

No later than 12 noon on Friday 6th June (Week 13), you should submit the final version of your project report. This should be on the order of 30-40 pages (i.e., around 15000-20000 words). You may obtain feedback on earlier drafts of this from your supervisor, but that is up to you to arrange on an individual basis. The final version will be marked by your supervisor. Your project will be assessed on the assumption that you have spent the equivalent of four weeks of full-time effort on it.

As a general rule of thumb, project reports for ITEC811 projects should be in the 50-60 page range (i.e., around 25000-30000 words).

See here for more information on what is involved in a project proposal and how they are assessed.

3.9 Workshop Presentation

No later than 12 noon on Friday 6th June (Week 13), you should provide your PowerPoint presentation for delivery at the ITEC810 Workshop on the evening of that day. Your presentation at the workshop will be assessed: see here for details of what is required.

3.10 Class Participation

Up to five marks will be assigned in recognition of your participation in class discussions throughout the semester.

3.11 Web Participation

Up to five marks will be assigned in recognition of your participation on the class website throughout the semester.

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Last Modified: 15th May 2009