Overview of project structure & supervision

1. MSC PROJECT STRUCTURE
AND SUPERVISION
Jane Kennedy
Applications Developer
j.kennedy@epcc.ed.ac.uk

2. Practical Introduction to Student Projects
• Overview of what is required start to finish
• My experience working with our Students

3. Stage 1: Project Preparation
• When: Semester 2 (13th Jan – 27th March 2020)
• What: Student plans their project (what their objectives are and
how they will achieve this in the summer)
• Deliverable: Project Preparation report (six pages) plus “Wiki
Page” documenting progress.
• Effort: meet for one hour every two weeks
• Chance to think about risks and how these can be dealt with

4. Stage 2: There’s a break
• Exams take place April – mid-May, Students not expected to work
on their projects at this time.

5. Stage 3: Main Project
• Student follows workplan devised in Project Preparation
• Level of involvement up to you:
−Host student every day (if practical)
−Student visits sometimes
−Meetings only
• Implementation, results, evaluation
−All documented in the dissertation report
• Presentations after submission (end of August)

6. Organisation
• It’s the Student’s project, work should be theirs.
−Graded on their autonomy, organisation, and technical approach
• You provide domain expertise and advice, plus access to codes
and data
• We can support with less domain-specific questions (libraries,
machines, tools), report and all marking

7. My Experience
• Students will want to do their best and work hard
• They may have lots of questions
• Involvement can be flexible
• Lots of experience within EPCC to support
• All things legal (agreements, data protection) should be arranged
ASAP.

8. Next Steps
• Lunch
• Opportunity to ask myself and colleagues any questions
• Thank you!