Final Year Projects in Electrical and Information

Engineering: Tips for Students and Supervisors

Maximo Cobos, Sandra Roger, Jose J. Lopez and Alberto Gonzalez
Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM)
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia
Valencia, Spain 46022
Email: mcobos@iteam.upv.es, sanrova@iteam.upv.es, jjlopez@dcom.upv.es, agonzal@dcom.upv.es
AbstractFinal year projects are often the final required
step towards an engineering degree. Officially, they are only
considered as one more subject that has to be passed. However,
they play a key role in the training of students both before joining
an engineering position in a company or continuing with their
academic career. This remarkable importance is due to the fact
that students must show the skills acquired during their education
in a concrete task, representing a great challenge to be overcome
before leaving university. The success of students in this task
highly depends on its supervision, which has to be helpful and
encouraging for them. This paper is intended to be a collection
of tips and suggestions to help, both students and supervisors of
electrical and information engineering, with the development of
the final year project.

I. I NTRODUCTION
The Final Year Project (FYP) in Electrical and Information
Engineering (EIE) is often the final required step towards an
EIE degree and it represents the culmination of their EIE
studies. In such final work, students must carry out a synthesis
of their acquired knowledge during their years at university.
Officially, they are only treated as one more subject that has
to be passed. However, they play a key role in the training
of students both before joining an engineering position in a
company or continuing with their academic career. The aims
of EIE FYPs can be summarized as follows:
enable the student to obtain maximum benefit from this
final work,
enhance the students knowledge on an specific EIE
field, ranging from data collection and interpretation to
academic report writing,
develop a work of high quality relevant to both research
and industries needs.
The experience of developing the FYP can be very exciting
and motivating for a student and his supervisor. Unfortunately,
sometimes the process of the FYP can turn out to be a
frustrating and disappointing period in EIE studies, especially
for those students that get stuck at some stage and do not
find sufficient support. This fact can produce an important
delay in the finalization of the FYP and can make students
feel insecure for dealing with future engineering challenges.
From an educational perspective, interesting works on FYP
assessment have been carried out in the literature [1],[2].
Also, there exist several guides to technical writing and FYP
c 2009 IEEE
978-1-4244-5386-3/09/$26.00

planning [3],[4],[5]. However, most of these FYP guides are

too extensive and, unfortunately, not focused enough on the
EIE field. Moreover, they are particularly aimed at students,
missing the supervising task, which also plays a major role
in the success of the FYP. This paper is intended to be a
brief collection of tips and suggestions to help, both students
and supervisors of EIE, with the development of the FYP.
Throughout this work, we would like to give a useful and
brief set of hints that address the whole FYP process.
The paper is structured as follows. In Section II it is
described how to begin the FYP. Section III is focused on
the development of the work, including literature review and
methodology. Section IV addresses the final steps of the FYP
and, finally, in Section V the conclusions of this work are
presented. The place that these sections occupy in the whole
process is depicted in Figure 1.
II. G ETTING S TARTED
First of all, it is important to note that the more interesting
the topic for the student is, the more he would enjoy the
development of his FYP. In fact, motivation is an essential
factor for the success of the student, both for the period
spent working on the FYP and for his future career in
EIE. Therefore, a student should think carefully of a topic
or subject that has particularly found interesting along his
studies at university. There may be some issues in an ICT
journal or magazine that may excite students attention. In
addition, future aspirations after leaving university should also
be considered. In this sense, the student has the opportunity of
developing his work within one of the university departments
or research institutes, an external company on ICT or abroad
in other academic or industrial centers.
A. Finding a place and a supervisor
The first place where the FYP can be developed is obviously
at university. It is usual that teachers, researchers and external
companies publish FYP proposals aimed at last year students.
These proposals are normally published via a dedicated web
page or hung on news boards in classrooms or corridors of
university buildings. Working on some of these projects have
sometimes an economic compensation that helps students to
get more engaged in the FYP offer. These proposals can
be a good choice for students that are hesitant about which

Methodology

Make a
proposal

Think of a
topic of
interest

Find place
and
supervisor
Search for a
proposal

Literature
review

Abroad
At university

Define
working
plan

At an ICT
company

Implementations
and
contributions

Write the
FYP
manuscript

Manuscript
review

Present the
FYP

Periodic
reports

Fig. 1.

Block diagram of the FYP process.

topic should they work on. On the other hand, when a

student has set ideas about his preferred topics, it may also
be considered the possibility of elaborating a FYP proposal
adapted to his interests. By following this last approach, the
willingness and initiative of the student to carry out his future
work will be certainly shown. Research FYPs at institutes or
departments belonging to the university are commonly found
among published FYP proposals, where students are supposed
to get involved in a current research line followed by any
of the working teams. This is a good option to explore a
future academic career, especially focused on students who
have thought of continuing with the PhD program. This way,
students can experience how academic research works, getting
to know closer research methodologies. Supervisors, who are
generally PhD students or professors, can benefit from the
results obtained by the students.
However, the above presented is not the only way a student
can follow. Recently, it is getting commoner to choose the
option of developing a traineeship period within a local
or foreign ICT company. Most employers give students the
opportunity of working on a project that totally or partially
fulfills the company needs, being the work developed by the
student acceptable to be presented as an official FYP. From
the students side, professional experience is acquired, which
is a valuable merit for his curriculum when leaving university.
In addition, students can get paid for their work in some cases,
which encourages them to get more involved with the project.
From the supervisors side, they can train students from the
very first moment on an specific task or job, thus, the university
becomes a source for companies future staff.
In addition, students should consider that both of these
approaches (developing the FYP at university or in a company)
are also feasible in a foreign country, under an international
exchange program, such as Erasmus in Europe [6], or directly
contacting foreign private companies or universities. One of
the main advantages of this last option is the possibility of
learning (or improving) a foreign language while working on
the FYP, and the opportunity for getting to know different
lifestyles. The experience acquired abroad will be also positively evaluated in students future professional career.

B. The role of the supervisor

Basically, the role of the supervisor (or tutor) can be defined
by means of three tasks: to give advice, to encourage and to
warn. Although the supervisor is responsible for managing
the students work, it is important to notice that the student
is the one who has the ownership of the project and that
should be prepared to defend every word contained in it.
Supervisors may not be totally experts in the FYP topic,
but the experience acquired along their career should allow
them to advise students in a useful way, not necessarily
related to issues of highly technical depth. In this sense,
the supervisor may suggest particular research lines, style,
references, software tools, etc. [7]. In the cases where the FYP
topic has been proposed by a student, it is the supervisor who
has to direct the topic towards a researchable field (or company
needs if that is the case) with the aim of having fruitful results
for both sides.
It is important for projects to be of a sufficiently rigorous
content, but assuring that they are not too wide or deep in
nature for being completed satisfactorily in the available time.
In this context, it is recommended to examine possible topics
for:
practicality, with regard to the resources and time available.
availability of reference material;
usefulness of information likely to be derived from the
investigation or developed work.
anticipated difficulties in carrying out the field or laboratory work (i.e. access to records or individuals, availability of equipment, admission to premises/sites etc).
C. Working Plan
First of all, the objectives and the duration of the FYP must
be sketched jointly with the supervisor. These two aspects
should be always a kind of loose guide to follow during the
whole working period, subject to changes as going along.
An initial plan of the chapters is always a good base
for starting with the FYP. This should include at least an
introduction to the topic, literature review, contributions of the
FYP, conclusion and bibliography. Students can define small
tasks related to each chapter of the initial plan, estimating the

duration of them depending on their background and disposability. This can help students to better organize themselves
when they are not full-time dedicated to the FYP.
III. W ORKING ON THE FYP
The process of working on the FYP must be considered as a
dynamic approach. It is important to read around the subject,
do some initial research, then do more reading to flesh out
the plan and repeat again after extracting important ideas or
conclusions. Throughout this section important aspects to be
carried out after having designed the working plan are highlighted and discussed, such as literature review, methodology
and writing.
A. Literature Review
Literature review is an essential step before dealing with a
topic that is new for the student, which is usually the case
of the FYP subject. It is important to perform an extensive
review of the commonly known as state-of-the-art of the issue,
in order to acquire at least a general knowledge of it, as
represented by acknowledged scholars and researchers. The
literature review needs to have some academic respectability,
so it is important to present information not based purely
upon anonymous material gleaned from the Internet or selfopinionated articles. The supervisor should here provide the
student with some initial references, mainly those containing
self-explanatory guides to the topic, surveys or tutorial style
papers that are comprehensive to the nonspecialist. In this
kind of materials, most representative and cited works in
the field are usually among their references. In addition, as
some FYPs are sometimes continuations of previous FYPs
presented by former students, these previous works should
be also carefully read and understood. If troubles are found
during this initial reading, students can ask their supervisors
for additional explanations of concepts that may have not been
of particular interest during the EIE studies (or have been
taught in complementary subjects that were not selected by
the student). Students and supervisors should also notice that
the literature review must comprise guides and manuals of
the hardware and software that is going to be used while
developing the FYP, such as programming books, hardware
datasheets, white papers, simulation toolboxes, user guides
and software helps. Internet discussion boards can also be a
useful resource for solving particular problems arising during
the FYP.
Once general references have been revised, a deeper approach to the FYP specific tasks can be faced. At this point,
the student may start to have a wider knowledge of the specific
FYP aspects, probably superior to his supervisors. Therefore,
purely technical advice on advanced tasks may decrease after
this stage, thus, increasing general advice on methodology.
B. Methodology
Since there are many works related to engineering and
scientific methodologies [8],[9],[10],[11], this paper is not

intended to describe the insights of research methods, but to

provide useful hints in the development of the FYP.
Research FYPs are made of new contributions to a specific
field. In contrast to PhD dissertations, FYPs do not need to
contain major contributions to a topic, but a good piece of
work in an EIE field showing the capabilities of the student
for facing an engineering task. The literature review above
described constitutes the first approach to get to know what
has previously been done in this field. As new contributions
have to be compared to previous works, it is recommended to
implement some of the already existing algorithms [12]. Many
researchers let their codes and results be available in their
websites, so it may be interesting to search for some of these
tools. Programming is an usual task in EIE FYPs, so students
must be familiarized with the programming language in which
simulation codes are going to be built. Many common blocks
in system design can be found inside simulation software
packages, so the student must be particularly aware of these
ready-to-use programs in order to avoid unnecessary working
hours. Regarding programming issues, students should not
expect their supervisors to revise every line of code, but only
numeric results or simulation graphs. Nevertheless, the attitude
of the supervisor may vary depending on the case.
As companies follow specific working strategies, students
involved in traineeship programs may discuss with the responsible person which methodology should be followed.
Hence, it is not easy to describe general guidelines for these
cases. Nevertheless, FYPs focused on more practical issues
should also explore existing solutions somewhat similar to
the problem at hand. The experience of the working team
in the topic can be very useful, thus, workmates may assist
students in analyzing and evaluating possible approaches to
the problem.
A useful way for the supervisor to follow the steps performed by the student can be the request for a weekly or
monthly report, where the student will roughly describe the
advances in the development of the FYP. This way, the
student can have periodical feedback and be aware of the
degree of accomplishment of the working plan tasks. Another
advantage of periodical reports is that students do not forget
important details at the time of writing their FYP and have
all the information organized. These chronologically organized
contents will be the main resource at the time of writing an
initial FYP draft.
C. Writing the FYP manuscript
In this phase, students turn their notes and reports into a
polished FYP manuscript. The format of the manuscript should
fit the requirements specified by the institution, so it will have
to conform to certain technical specifications. For example,
sometimes a given template must be used. Most common
word processing formats are Word and LATEX. If the choice
between them is up to the student, special attention should
be paid to the amount of equations present in the document.
Most EIE FYPs contain a huge formulae work, necessary for
analytical discussions. Therefore, although students may not

be familiarized with LATEX, they should consider its use as

the best way for having a nicely readable work [13]. Lots of
resources and templates can be found in the internet for getting
started with it. Moreover, apart from style issues, the length of
the manuscript should meet the institutional requirements. It is
important to note that excessive length is typically penalized,
as the student should be capable of writing to a specified brief,
which is a valuable professional skill.
The introduction chapter, which is usually the first formal
chapter, must roughly describe the scope of the FYP and
introduce the non expert reader to the topic, giving an specific
description of the objectives set at the beginning of the work.
It is strongly recommended the literature review to be the first
substantive chapter of the FYP, thus it should be presented
following the introduction chapter [14]. Later chapters will
make reference to more up-to-date or specialist literature as
the student proceeds. Although the literature review chapter
will have many references, it has to be composed by a critical
summary of the principal themes within the field, and not by
an exposition of everything that has ever been written about
the subject.
The central chapters of the manuscript generally contain the
specific approaches to the problem developed in the FYP. The
solutions given by the student must be sufficiently justified
and discussed, making of the manuscript a self-contained
document. In fact, all the chapters should appear logically
well-connected so that the reader is well guided throughout
the text from one stage of the argument to the next. Results,
figures, descriptions or any other information directly extracted
from other documents must be correctly referenced. In this
context, the supervisor must be the one who has to transmit
to the student the importance of not committing plagiarism.
In the conclusion, which is usually the final chapter, the
concluding remarks must be described. The degree of accomplishment of the objectives that were defined in the
introduction chapter should also be pointed out. In addition,
future work or research lines in the topic must be emphasized,
which can be considered as future proposals for new FYPs in
the field or even as a starting point for carrying out a PhD
thesis.
Following the conclusion, although it is usually an unnumbered chapter, it comes the bibliography, which comprises
all the references cited throughout the manuscript. Correctly
referencing papers and resources used for developing the FYP
is particularly important for several reasons [14]:

it acknowledges the authorship of the utilized information,

it enables an external reader to access the material that
has been referenced,
it is regarded as a badge of professionalism and scholarship.

Bibliography styles are varied. The formal format specificated by the institution is usually provided, giving examples
on how books, journal articles or conference papers must be
referenced.

Appendices are also common, although not strictly necessary, in FYP manuscripts. They are a kind of complementary
chapters located after the bibliography. They usually contain
extra material that complements the descriptions appearing in
some parts of the text, such as mathematical proofs, algorithm
codes and theory basics.
IV. C ONCLUDING THE FYP
In this section, some tips regarding the final steps for
concluding the FYP are given. These are related to the careful
review of the manuscript before handing it in and to the
successful presentation of the work in front of a jury.
A. Review of the FYP manuscript
The student must dedicate plenty of time to a good proofreading of the manuscript, preferably over a hard copy. Supervisors should also review carefully the FYP draft, annotating
all the possible changes for later discussion with the student.
Moreover, when a person is in close association with a
document, objectivity is sometimes lost, thus, failing into
elementary errors on concepts that are taken for granted by
the author. Therefore, a review by an external reader (maybe
a classmate) can be also very helpful. Common errors include
typos, missing references, incorrect labelling of figures or
tables and non-consistent nomenclature or symbols. Generally,
many errors are found in the review process. This fact must not
demotivate the student: the more time spent on the preparation
of the final manuscript, both in terms of clarity and technical
contents, the easier it will be for the reader to understand the
key contributions of the work.
B. Making the presentation slides
Normally, the FYP is presented to a jury for evaluation
in a public act, where the student has to show briefly the
work carried out, aided by a set of slides [15]. Important
considerations have to be taken into account when designing
the presentation, since it can considerably influence jurys
decision and thus the final mark given to the FYP. Good
presentation may not imply getting extra marks, however, poor
presentation will certainly make students marks decrease. For
this reason, some tips for making successful FYP presentations
are hereafter described.
As a matter of fact, slide contents should be self-evident in
order facilitate the jury the task of following the presentation.
Moreover, too crowded slides must be avoided and only
necessary information has to be included. A very useful rule
of thumb can be just including seven words per line and
seven lines per slide. In the cases of showing graphics, these
must be big enough in order to let the audience correctly
perceive the quantities appearing on them. Also, including
more than two graphics per slide is not advisable. Equations
explain ideas accurately, but it is usually difficult to follow
detailed mathematical derivations during a short presentation.
Hence, just enough mathematics should be presented to bring
the key points across [15]. In addition, information should
be presented visually balanced. It can be convenient to adopt

some of the templates that can be found in the internet. Finally,

it should not be forgotten to include slide numbers to facilitate
the access to selected points during the question round.
C. Presenting the FYP
This part of the FYP owns particular importance. This
is due to the fact that many psychological aspects have a
big influence here, which can impede the student enjoying
the presentation. Although the student may have succeed in
the accomplishment of the previously describe steps, attitude,
self-confidence and self-control are key aspects for a good
FYP presentation. Therefore, as emotions can be difficultly
managed, it is important to plan the presentation carefully.
In this context, it is recommended to contemplate the kind
of audience that will attend the presentation. For example, it
is common the jury to be formed by members belonging to
different departments or specialities. Although some aspects
may appear as obvious to some of the members, others could
have troubles to understand them. Therefore, emphasizing
those critical points may result in a better assessment of the
students work. Supervisors should help students to determine
those key aspects that need special attention.
Practicing the presentation will help to estimate the duration
of the speech and also to increase the self-confidence of
the student, who will be better aware of which are his/her
weaknesses (and maybe how to improve them). At this point
it would be interesting to make an informal presentation where
the supervisor and other invited people can express their
opinion on several aspects. Writing down notes on a hard
copy of the presentation slides will be useful. Therefore, it
is convenient to provide the jury with these hard copies at the
beginning of the presentation.
Speaking comfortably and clearly is completely necessary.
Note that some of the most common mistakes include speaking
too fast, speaking too low, avoiding looking at the audience
and making an inappropriate use of the laser pointer. Moreover, if the jury has questions at the end of the presentation,
students should be direct in their answers. If doubts appear
regarding any of the questions, students just need to express
their sincere opinion (as it is understandable that there might
always be missing points in every work).
V. C ONCLUSION
This paper has presented some useful information on how
to successfully develop FYPs in EIE studies, both from the
student and the supervisors side. The main steps to correctly
perform an FYP are described, covering from finding a place
and a supervisor to completing and presenting the final FYP.
Therefore, this paper is intended to be a straight-to-the-point
guide aimed at people involved in EIE studies and FYPs.
Several tips to be considered at each of these stages are given
in order to address common problems that may appear during
the whole FYP process.

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