Time Management

You should plan for 12 weeks with 40-hour work weeks for all your work in the Teaching Block. You need to balance your workload between your project, your other unit(s), and the innovation case if in Year 4. You should not plan to work every day in TB2, doing so will likely leave you falling behind, so it’s important you build days off into your project plan, and rewards/things you are going to do just for fun. Ideally you should be doing at least 1 non-study activity a week that’s not Computer Science, tht you have to leave the house for.

Importantly, you should plan for at least 1 week of disruptions which could be illnesses, job interviews, computer issues, etc.

Minimum Viable Product

When planning your project you should define a minimum viable product (MVP). This should be enough to pass the unit that you will be able to complete after around half of your alotted time and should be discussed with your supervisor when confirming your project.

If your project is harder than expected, then you have the MVP to fall back on, otherwise you can add extra features to the MVP to increase the challenge of your project.

You should be constantly reviewing your progress during TB2, for yourself and for your supervisor. If you think you cannot finish the MVP you should let your supervisor know immediately.

Dissertation Writing

When writing your thesis, we strongly recommend writing it using LaTeX unless you are confident writing a large document within microsoft word (or equivalent). Large files in Word can cause formatting issues or crashes when saving/loading the project file. There’s more information on writing in LaTeX, including a dissertation template, below.

Academic Writing support

Academic writing can feel indimidating, especially if you have not done many writing assessments in the past. It’s also one of the most important parts of your project, because this is the primary information your markers have.

We strongly recommend you start writing as early as possible. One of your first project tasks should be to set up your dissertation template and think about how to structure your report. We have examples of previous projects in the Class Materials pages of the Projects Team which you can use for inspiration (each example starts with the unit code - note that COMS30044 is the 20 credit Maths & CS project worht half of the other units).

We recommend you show your initial structure to your supervisor they can give you tips on what they would expect. Make the template a living document, adding bullet points of things you’ve done and want to include on a weekly basis, and start writing in the first few weeks. You can write an initial Introduction very early, and get started on the Background in the first few weeks, so you can get feedback on your writing from your supervisor.

You will see some optional sessions in your timetable - Writing Workshops by CALD, the Centre for Academic Language & Development, which are workshops specifically for Computer Science Projects students, and Writing Retreats, sessions where you can come and write in a quiet environment with Mike, Sarah and other students, with snacks and support.

For more support with writing:

General Purpose Guide to Academic Writing by Professor Dave Cliff has some useful useful tips towards how to approach academic-style writing for Computer Scientists.
Study Skills guides to academic reading, writing, planning your work and more - scroll down the page to get the various guides to different topics.
The University Study Skills team run bookable workshops and tutorials and dropins where they can give you feedback and advice on your writing at any stages.
University Writing Fellows are also available to give you advice on writing and feedback on your drafts.
Wordsmiths is a weekly writing group for any Bristol students to come together to give each other tips and feedback on your writing - scroll down to the Study Groups section of the website.

Dissertation Templates

LaTeX Dissertation Template

The LaTeX template for the Dissertation can be found here.

We recommend you use Overleaf to write in - scroll down on the log-in page to ‘Log in with SSIO’ and sign up with your University account. Save the LaTeX template zip file above to your machine, and follow Overleaf’s instructions. The Dissertation template in the zip file is called ThesisTemplate.tex - click this in the left-hand menu.

You’ll notice that the template has information about what to include in each section. Note that certain sections are compulsory and cannot be changed, but feel free to change the other sections based on your project.

Help with LaTex and Overleaf

The University Library Services have a useful guide to LaTeX and Overleaf and there are helpful guides to Overleaf and LaTeX on the Overleaf website.

Word Dissertation Template

The word template for the Dissertation can be found here.

Research Support

The Computer Science Subject Librarian is here to help your research. They can meet with you, help you get started and even find you papers or other references. They can help you with research in any subject, not just Computer Science - use the link to make an online appointment, or email Victoria Hopton if you want to make an in-person appointment.

Referencing

Whenever you look at an article, book, paper, website, video, podcast etc for your project, make sure you record them and reference them in your work. Failure to do so will count as academic misconduct.

We recommend you use BibTeX, a tool and a file format which are used to describe and process lists of references (mostly in conjunction with LaTeX documents) and a referencing tool like Mendeley or EndNote to organise your references. The library has a guide to using BibTeX with Mendeley and EndNote so you can keep track of references in Mendeley and then export them into BibTeX to seamlessly integrate them into your report.

It doesn’t matter which referencing style you use, as long as it’s consistent. In general, CS people recommend IEEE - there’s a guide on Cite Them Right which tells you how to reference almost anything you can think of. We recommend you use the DOI link for online articles and hyperlink for webpages, so it is easy for your markers to follow your references to the source.

The University Library referencing page is a great resource, which we recommend bookmarking.