Useful Points for Project Dissertation

The poster is mainly two parts:

• The email sent by Dr. Ridgway
• The summary of the dissertation guide written by Dr. Al-Nuaimy
• My questions and Waleed's answers

I think you've received the email about the dissertation writing from Dr. Ridgway. I just want to put it here for convenience when we can't find the email.

Template download:(Log in VITAL first)
(Including a guide to write this dissertation)


Words: 2,000~10,000 (Discussion Section can't be too short.)

Further LaTeX drop in help sessions will be held on:

• Wed 29/2 at 2pm to 3pm
• Fri 2/3 at 2pm to 3pm

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The following is an short summary from reading the dissertation guide written by Waleed (in the Template rar on VITAL).

Abstract
(100-250 words in 2 or 3 paragraphs.)

The Lists
Including the "table of contents", I think we need the "list of figures" and "list of codes", because we must have many screenshot to show and the codes of course.


Chapters:

• Introduction---P7 in the guide, including telling us the difference between "Aims" and "Objectives", and what should the "Objectives" be (P8).
• Materials and Methods---P9 a materials list in as much details as possible (including the name and version of the software)[Here we may need building a table.]
• Results and Analysis
• Discussion and Conclusions---in Discussion:The overall error can be reduced(P12);P14~P17(worthy to read all): DISCUSSION--- to explain the findings, to describe the extent according to the objectives, self-evaluation,limitations(time experience, equipment, software or the availability of the data), about the economic, social and environmental contexts of our project etc.,Applications, Ethics considerations, further/future work; CONCLUSIONS--- to summarise the discussion, to restate what was achieved and what was learnt, to indicate briefly what remained to be done,(to summarise the main strengths and weaknesses of the project).
• +
• References---P13
• (optional) Appendix

Some useful points from the Guide:


Work on each chapters
 for easy to compile and shortening the time of compiling:

e.g.

So we can build a tex file for per chapter.

Multimedia
Using 100*100 pixels (print size of 14mm) QR codes to embed some multimedia (e.g. our flash)
I think we can copy the code in the html file generated by publishing the flash automatically and paste it to the html panel of the blog posting and make sure there is no problem to run the flash in common computer.(such as the socket, the adobe global setting, the connection to the headset.)
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My questions and Waleed's answers
(If you have the same questions, the following will be helpful.)
        1.    Do we need to add "the list of tables" if we only have one or two tables? (I only can imagine one table for our materials list of our project.)
        Yes

2.    (Procedure) We don't have documented procedue and do the project concurrently. Is the procedure subsection necessary?

The procedure is the methodology – what did you do? Divide it into 3 sections and describe the procedure/tasks.

3.    Do we need to write a sentence to thank the people helped us? If yes, at where? (before the abstract?)

You can write an acknowledgement if you like, it normally comes after the abstract.

4.    You mentioned the way to work on each chapter, and showed the way of writing main tex. I wonder what will be the code in the chapter file? e.g. how to write its environment setting(I mean the codes in the front of the tex and at the end of it)? 

No code at all, just the text.

5.   Do we need to write the comments and what is learnt from group cooperation and where?(in: >Disscuss>Self-evaluation?)

Yes, in the Discussion, under “Reflection” or “Self-Evaluation” or “Lessons Learnt”

6.    When to use "footnote" and when to use "citation/reference"? For the reader to understand my code, besides adding comments after every lines, I think some concepts of key word is important for understand the code, so where to write them? In background information? but it seems not so relevent to the whole project... :( Therefore, in this situation, it's time for adding footnote? :P

          Footnotes are an excellent way to add explanatory comments to help someone understand something without breaking the flow of the sentence or paragraph.  The footnote normally contains some explanation, fact, reminder or definition. Citations are different – they are used to tell the reader where you got the information, or to point them to further reading. They are two different things for two different purposes.

          Sometimes, in some types of writing (such as novels/books/magazine articles), the reference is actually put in the footnote on the same page, because the reader might not be an academic reader, and may not want to turn to the back of the publication to check the references, and it’s quicker to put the reference on the same page. This does NOT apply to a technical lab report or dissertation though J

7.    Because I came across many problems as a new programmer on ActionScript3.0, most of time one problem was solved leading to another problem appearing. What's worse, some problems showed I need to change to another method to implement what I expected, which means these previous solution didn't contribute to the final version of my flash. Do I need to mention these problems which seemed no use for final version and how to solve it in details? And I have five version of my flash, need I show them all and explain why the previous four failed, or just show main different code? 

Just the final code and design. In the Discussion section you can allude to some of the types of problems that arose and how you solved them, but not each single problem.

Thanks for Waleed's answers again. :)