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Some Good Ideas For Student Projects From The Disciplinary Commons

Conference Paper · January 2011

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 SOME GOOD IDEAS FOR STUDENT PROJECTS FROM THE
DISCIPLINARY COMMONS

Thomas Lancaster Tony Jenkins Leonor Barroca

School of Computing, Department of Business Support Computing Department
Telecommunications and Networks WharfeBank Brewery Open University
Birmingham City University
thomas.lancaster@bcu.ac.uk tony@tony-jenkins.co.uk l.barroca@open.ac.uk

Maurice Calvert Siobhan Devlin Richard Foley

Computing and Information Systems Department of Computing, School of Engineering and
Leeds Metropolitan University Engineering and Technology Computing
University of Sunderland Glasgow Caledonian University
m.calvert@leedsmet.ac.uk siobhan.devlin@sunderland.ac.uk r.foley@gcu.ac.uk

Julie Horton John Moore Paula Sturdy

School of Computing, Engineering School of Computing and School of Computing and
and Information Sciences Technology Engineering
Northumbria University University of West London University of Huddersfield
julie.horton@northumbria.ac.uk moorejo@uwl.ac.uk p.sturdy@hud.ac.uk

Disciplinary Commons Web Page: http://www.disciplinarycommons.org

ABSTRACT
This paper describes a number of ‘good ideas’ designed to assist staff who are involved in the management,
delivery or support of student project work. The ideas were formed from a Disciplinary Commons. The good
ideas discussed include online forums, a project repository, alternative project structures, project preparation,
progress reviews, instant supervision, peer support and anti-cheating mechanisms. Readers are encouraged
to dip in, consider the ideas and implement those of most use for their own institutions.

Keywords
Student projects, Disciplinary Commons, good ideas, project preparation, project supervision, project review.

1. INTRODUCTION
The Disciplinary Commons [1] is a project whereby academics from different institutions come together over
the course of an academic session to share their practice and to develop portfolios to document this practice.
Previous instantiations have covered introductory programming, human-computer interaction and databases.
In the session 2010/11 a group came together to share their practice in the area of final year project work. The
group met monthly from October to June, and this paper documents examples of some of the ideas and other
examples of good practice that were raised and discussed during the meetings.

2. ONLINE FORUMS
At the Open University, distance project students face the same challenges of face-to-face students, but also
the isolation and the difficulty of engaging with a remote community. Online forums are an important tool to
cope with added challenges imposed by distance. Project students are given the opportunity to discuss project
ideas in an online forum that is open well in advance of project starting date. Students are encouraged to
participate, to post one or more ideas for projects, and even those feeling less inspired are encouraged to say
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© 2011 Higher Education Academy
Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences
so and given some suggestions. This forum is monitored on a regular basis, feedback is given and interesting
discussions take place. Typical feedback in this forum is as follows: “here are a few things to think about…”,
“try to look at the problem from a different angle…”, “have you come across…”, “you seem to have scope for
several projects in what you propose, try to focus on …to develop sufficient depth…”. Students feel supported,
clarify their ideas about what they want to do, and get a better feeling for the true dimension of a project.
Students who participate in this forum are also those who end up with better final results. This online forum
continues open once the project starts and some students tend to carry on participating, and developing a
small “community of practice” [2], that lasts throughout the whole project, supporting each other and actively
sharing knowledge and practice. The role of the monitor in the forum is to give feedback, but also to engage
students in refining and sharing their practices throughout the whole project.

3. REPOSITORY OF PREVIOUS MARKED PROJECTS

Providing effective feedback to students as they develop their work is one of the most difficult objectives to
achieve given both the nature of the teaching resource and the overall environment within Higher Education.
Indeed, feedback has been consistently identified as the least satisfactory aspect of the student experience in
all five years of the National Student Survey [3].
The traditional view of feedback is that of a “transmission process”, where a student undertakes a piece of
work and a member of staff returns comment of “what is right and wrong in their academic work, about its
strengths and weaknesses, and students use this information to make subsequent improvements” [4].
Certainly this is a common feedback approach within a project module, which was reported upon by all
Commons participants, where a supervisor is expected to read and review interim and draft work as the
student is developing it. Commons participants, however, identified that consistency of feedback can be
difficult to achieve within a project, where the students are supervised by an often widely disparate range of
academic staff, each with varying experience and workload pressures. Also, a student often presents draft
deliverables very close to project deadlines and so this can leave little time for the student to make,
sometimes, quite significant changes when they find out that their initial understanding of appropriate
performance is somewhat “wide of the mark”.
One approach identified to try to engender self-regulated feedback amongst students in the development of
both project deliverables and their reporting is the use, at Glasgow Caledonian University, of a repository of
previously marked project deliverables. This approach endeavours to give students a clearer idea of both good
and bad levels of performance and reporting before the student undertakes the development of their own
associated deliverable. This feature consists of an electronic repository of a selected, but significant, set of
actual (but anonymised) report deliverables from previous sessions. Each anonymised deliverable is
accompanied by enhanced commentary from the marking scheme criteria, based on the original report which
made up the exemplar. Both good and bad exemplars are included in the repository, as this gives students
examples and information about varying levels of quality and competence. Thus the repository becomes
effective exemplars as identified by Sadler [5], i.e. as “key examples chosen so as to be typical of designated
levels of quality or competence”. Sadler also identified that for exemplars to be effective requires a large
collection of them. Thus the repository developed at GCU has a “rolling” set of around 20 examples of each
type of deliverable in their project structure, i.e. project proposal, interim report, final report and project poster.
It is “rolling” since as each year ends, some “older” exemplars are removed and new ones are added, so that
the exemplars remain “fresh” and up-to-date in terms of content.
These exemplars have been fairly easily generated over a few academic sessions by simply requesting that
students deposit a soft copy of each submitted deliverable along with their hard copy. The project co-ordinator
then identifies some appropriate exemplars of student work and produces the exemplar by creating a pdf
version of the report with any student identification information (e.g. name, matric number) removed. A
similarly anonymised enhanced marking commentary is also supplied with each report.
Students at GCU, in their evaluation of this approach, report that they benefit significantly from the ability to
study exemplars and their commentary. Staff feel that it enables students, in an autonomous fashion, to
achieve the first two of Sadler’s three necessary conditions for effective feedback. Firstly it enables students to
know what good performance is because they possess a set of exemplars which demonstrates the goal or
standard being aimed for. Secondly it enables them to reflect upon how their current performance relates to
good performance. For this, the student is able to compare, through their own self-reflection, their current
performance and understanding with the good performance reflected in the exemplars.
As an endnote, some care does need to be taken with the topics and content of the selected set of exemplars.
If an exemplar is too close in topic content to a current project then it may tempt the student into plagiarism.
Whilst this can easily be detected since many Institutions (including GCU) require students to submit a soft
copy via Turnitin, it is generally prudent to avoid including exemplars which are too similar in nature to existing
projects.

4. ALTERNATIVE PROJECT STRUCTURES

The Disciplinary Commons identified a number of different structural systems for the overall management of
student projects. These are shown in Figure 1. For reasons of brevity, the universities involved in the
Disciplinary Commons are identified by their first initial in the column Uni. The credit rating of the final project is
shown in the column Cr. This is based around a standard 120 credit year.

Figure 1 – The Structure Of Projects At The Universities Participating In The Project Commons

5. PROJECT PREPARATION MODULES

All participants of this Commons identified that the development within students of a set of core research skills
was a challenge in preparing them for the nature of a Final Year project in Computing. Indeed this, in itself, is
not a new observation, as the general teaching of these types of skills, within the computing discipline, has
been an issue for quite some time [6]. However, this challenge is made all the more difficult since it has been
recognised that the final year project is both a “capstone experience”, which requires students to demonstrate
competence in their programme’s core set of technical and engineering-based skills, as well as providing
students with the “opportunity to engage in research like behaviours and activities” as part of the overall
Research Based teaching approach identified by Healey [7]. Furthermore, important influences on institutions,
both external and internal, require this combination of objectives in the final year project. For example the
British Computer Society in their accreditation criteria for final year projects [8], requires, in addition to the
application of practical problem solving skills, both “an in-depth investigation of the context and literature” and
“a description of any research hypothesis”. Also, this Commons found that whilst most Computing departments
encourage their final year projects to be related directly to the wider research grouping and/or staff research
interests of their department, some require it. Computing students traditionally get plenty of exposure to the
“technical and engineering” skills of the Computing discipline throughout their degree programme at all levels.
However, that often means less exposure and practice in the set of core academic-research related skills
which are often seen as “part and parcel” of many “non-engineering” disciplines. These research-based core
skills encompass areas, such as: literature review skills, academic writing and plagiarism, development of
research objectives and hypotheses; evaluating and implementing appropriate research methodologies.
The most widely used approach within the Commons participants was to integrate a research skills preparation
programme within the period of the Project module itself. This generally consisted of a programme of lectures
to provide students with some basic knowledge and understanding of the aforementioned research skills. The
problems which were reported with this approach was mainly related to student motivation and engagement
with that programme and, anecdotally, it was reported that students often took an “I don’t need to know this
just now approach” and thus did not try to develop these skills prior to attempting to use them on their critical
project activities.
There was, an alternative approach, used by two participants, of having a separate Research Methods module
to be undertaken prior to the commencement of the final project. Each, however, took a distinct approach
within that.
At Birmingham City University the students have a penultimate year module focusing on these skills. It is not
directly linked to the final year project, but does allow students to commence development of the core research
skills required. The students, as part of a small Action Learning Set (ALS), investigate a practical research
question in a Computing topic area. They have to identify the appropriate research techniques to use, propose
and carry out the research, with the module’s assessment consisting of the presentation of the results in a
written form as well as in a poster form. Generally, they’re expected to use a variety of research tasks to try
and answer their question (and expected to carry out one task per member of the ALS – to allow for different
ALS sizes). For example, one person will be likely to be primarily responsible for undertaking a literature
review, another a survey – and they also use other methods such as action research, focus groups and
interviews. Given the tasks the members will be expected to help out in a secondary capacity on the other
tasks and during their group meetings and discussions they require sharing the experiences and outcomes of
the tasks as a peer review and feedback process. The overall exercise does give some useful comparative
data at the end, whilst also allowing them to see strengths and weaknesses of different research techniques
first hand.
At Glasgow Caledonian University the students undertake a half credit module in the first half of the first
teaching semester in the final year. The objective of the module is for the student to take their allocated project
topic and to develop a fully detailed proposal based on that. Formally the project itself only commences after
this module concludes, thereby trying to ensure that the student has a sound context and detailed plan for
his/her individual project. This proposal is to include: an initial literature review sufficient to justify the greater
detail of their project; a detailed research question; an outline of the specific methods and technologies to be
used; along with a full plan for the project itself. The module has a “traditional” delivery pattern with a weekly
Lecture, Seminar and Lab session. The lectures aim to present the basic overview of the process of research,
the skills needed to undertake it and to develop a detailed proposal from an initial topic idea. The seminars
contain a series of weekly activities in areas such as Project Scoping and Objectives identification, Literature
reviewing, Academic Writing, Research Question formulation, Proposal Reviewing and Development. The
students are required to work on each weekly activity in advance of the Seminar, so that the session itself can
concentrate on discussion and feedback. The students are also encouraged to undertake the work on the
weekly exercise in small informal study groups to provide opportunities for further peer-based feedback and
reflection. The lab activities centre on the use of Electronic resources in searching for, collating and utilising
literature sources directly relevant to the student’s own project. The submitted proposal forms the assessment
of the module and the student gets detailed feedback against the marking criteria for the proposal. This can
support the supervision process for the project itself once that commences from the second half of the
semester. Most Commons participants required students to produce an early project deliverable for a proposal
and plan. However it was noted that with this preparation the final proposal produced was generally more
substantial than the proposals produced without it.

6. WEEKLY PROGRESS RECORDS

Most project modules aim to develop students’ ability to manage their own work. However, some students fail
to monitor their own progress against their project plan, and do not manage their time proactively. Use of
written records for progress recording and goal-planning can help students to take more control of their
progress, but motivation to engage with the monitoring process is needed, and it is helpful to make the benefits
clear.
At Northumbria, students have a combined module handbook and logbook which contains weekly progress
sheets. These encourage students to monitor their own progress, provide a structure for the weekly
supervision meetings, and build into a summary record of the project. A strong expectation that the logbooks
will be completed is established by project tutors and supervisors, so that use of the logbooks becomes part of
project ‘culture.’
Before each supervision meeting, students record in the logbook a summary of the work done and the number
of hours spent on the project since the last meeting. At the meeting, the student and supervisor will review
what has been done against the previous week’s objectives. The supervisor provides some immediate
feedback on progress. Documents that have been discussed are listed, and there is a small space for
supervisor comments; the main purpose of this is to record that feedback has been given. Once current work
has been discussed, the objectives for the next week are agreed; these should relate to the project plan. The
form has space for any additional points that need to be remembered, and for the date and time of the next
meeting.
Most students use their logbooks consistently, though some fail to complete the sheet before the meeting.
Students are encouraged to use the logbook when writing the evaluation of their project work. It is then handed
in with the project report and students are informed that supervisors may use it to confirm the student’s
evaluation of their project management. The vast majority are submitted, even though no marks directly
depend on them and there is no mark for student performance.
At Glasgow Caledonian, similar record sheets are available. Here, the pattern of supervision meetings is
agreed between student and supervisor. Before each meeting, students should list the work done since the
last meeting and the topics to be discussed. At the meeting, the issues discussed and general comments are
recorded, and goals for the next meeting are set along with the date and time. However, supervisors find that
students are not inclined to plan their work on the basis of achieving regular goals, and few students make use
of the forms. This is thought to be because there is no perceived benefit: 5% of the module mark is allocated
for students’ effort and self-reliance, but this is not directly linked to the sheets. A more direct link with marking,
such as requiring a certain number of sheets to be completed as one of the grading criteria, might encourage
use of the record sheets and a more proactive approach to planning..

7. INSTANT SUPERVISION
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was created over twenty years ago and still remains a popular form of text-based
real-time group communication.
Typically a user will join what is referred to as a channel. Many channels exist and users can even create their
own. The channel often reflects a theme or project. For example, hundreds of users can be found in channels
representing well known open source projects. They provide a place to gain information at a rate often far
exceeding other forms of text-based communication.
IRC has been used by the module leader of the project module at University of West London (UWL) to
supplement supervision of final year students. This form of synchronous communication provides some unique
benefits but also presents some challenges. Discussion in a channel can be supplemented with additional
services such as a pastebin. A pastebin is a web service which allows code to be shared amongst a group of
users. Together these features provide an interactive way of supporting students through technical problems
they may encounter.
The use of such support presents some interesting questions regarding the level of supervision students might
expect to receive for their projects. However, IRC can also be used in a more asynchronous fashion similar to
email. There is no presence service typically found in instant messenger communication, therefore, the
amount of interactive support can be easily mediated by the supervisor.

8. NEAR-PEER SUPPORT
The final year project is an arduous module for many students at the University of Sunderland for a number of
reasons: it forms the largest contribution to their final classification - worth a third of their final year; the work
entailed is largely a solitary activity; it is in many cases their only opportunity for practical software development
in the final year of study; it is the show-case module through which they have a chance to sell their skills,
developed over three or four years, to potential employers. The near-peer support idea involved video
recording recent graduates talking about their experience of working through the project module and to release
clips at key times during the year. For example, students might recount their methods of combating stress
during the write-up, how they dealt with difficult clients, how they managed their time, how they responded to
feedback etc.
The idea was to engage the students through the support of people who have very recently been in exactly the
same position. There is a large literature on peer supported learning but the final year project can be such a
difficult learning curve that it is unfair to expect students to both ‘learn on the job’ and pass this knowledge
sideways. Last year’s graduates, however, have enough distance from the experience to be able to offer
meaningful and measured advice.
The University of Hertfordshire’s STRIDE project (Students and Tutors Reflections and Insights into the
Dissertation Experience), aimed at supporting distance learning students, provided the initial inspiration for this
idea although Sunderland only include student commentaries. This is because they feel that the tutor advice is
already available in weekly workshops, surgeries and supervision sessions, and the Sunderland students are
on campus full time.
The areas covered in the student commentaries are: general descriptions of the whole project experience
(highs and lows); looking back at their planning and control; how they dealt with deadlines and allowed
themselves ‘downtime’; how they did or wished they had made use of their supervisor and the module
documentation; how they made use of their prior learning and how they approached the task of independent
upskilling; how they kept themselves motivated during the length of the project; how they did or wished they
had interacted with their client or sponsor; whether or not they had made use of their project and the project
experience subsequently (in applying for jobs etc); and finally general advice.
 9. ANTI-CHEATING MECHANISMS
Plagiarism is becoming a widespread concern in higher education and many HEIs in the UK have developed
their own policies and codes of conduct to handle it. In the final project, this is particularly relevant, as not only
students tend to work more independently but they are also at a stage where they should have acquired and
have, with the project, the opportunity to demonstrate good academic practice. Projects should clearly
demonstrate what is the student’s own work and acknowledge what is someone else’s work. Plagiarism can
result from poor academic practice (inadvertent plagiarism) but also from intent to cheat (deliberate
plagiarism). Many reasons exist for inadvertent plagiarism such as: poor study skills, not understanding what is
required, poor language skills, poor note taking and, in the case of collusion, poor collaboration practices. In
cases of inadvertent plagiarism students are usually warned and advised about good academic practices. For
deliberate plagiarism there are a series of penalties that are applied [9].
Most Universities use software to help detecting plagiarism, with Turnitin being the standard amongst UK
HEIs. Turnitin is a text matching tool accessed via the web which compares a piece of work against a
database of online sources. Some institutions (like the OU) also use Copy Catch which is a text matching tool
useful for comparing students’ work for collusion in current and previous cohorts, and for comparing against
any provided documents, such as course materials. Plagiarism detecting software is still far from perfect
detecting many false positives that require a heavy human intervention to eliminate.
Dealing with plagiarism, requires, at institution level, a series of measures to define policies and procedures
and to help developing the skills that will helps with plagiarism avoidance. For an undergraduate project these
skills should be addressed, in particular, when guiding students through how to do a good literature review,
and using citations and references.

10. RECOMMENDATIONS
The ideas presented in this paper are intended to encourage readers to think about how project coordination
and supervision is carried out in their own institutions. There were many more good ideas that could have been
added. The Disciplinary Commons has shown that there is no need to carry on with a certain project regime
just because of the “it has always been done this way here” attitude. By incorporating appropriate good ideas,
projects can be modernised, student engagement increased and results generated to aid in student
employability.

11. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the support of the National Teaching Fellowship Sharing Practice project [10].

12. REFERENCES
[1] The Disciplinary Commons Overview Page, http://www.disciplinarycommons.org (2006).
[2] Wenger, E., Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge University Press (1998).
[3] National Student Survey: Findings and Trends 2006-2010, April 2011 Issues Paper, HEFCE,
www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs (2011).
[4] Nicol, D. and Macfarlane-Dick, D., Formative Assessment And Self-Regulated Learning: A Model And
Seven Principles Of Good Feedback Practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199-218 (2006).
[5] Sadler, D., Formative Assessment And The Design Of Instructional Systems, Instructional Science, 18(2),
119–144 (1989).
[6] Jackowitz, P., Plishka R, and Sidbury, J., Teaching Writing And Research Skills In The Computer Science
Curriculum, in Proceedings Of The 21st SIGCSE Technical Symposium On Computer Science Education
(SIGCSE '90), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 212-215 (1990).
[7] White, S. and Irons, A. The Research Teaching Nexus In The Computing Disciplines: A Comparative
Survey, in Proceedings of the Informatics Education Europe II Conference, Thessalonki, Greece,
November 2007 (2007).
[8] Guidelines On Course Accreditation: Information for Universities and Colleges, September 2010, BCS:
The Chartered Institute For IT, http://www.bcs.org/accreditation (2010).
[9] Heap, N., Martin, I. and Williams, J., Issues Of Quality Assurance In The Management Of Plagiarism In
Blended Learning Environments, in: EADTU (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities)
Annual Conference 2006, 23-24 Nov 2006, Tallinn, Estonia (2006).
[10] Sharing Practice Project, http://www.sharingpractice.ac.uk/homepage.html (2010).

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