Aims & Learning Objectives:
Aims: To provide students with an opportunity to develop further their ability to define, plan and execute a technical project under limited supervision, but with individual responsibility for the outcome. On completion of the unit students should be able to accept responsibility for delegated tasks within a project area, plan a scheme of work and complete it to a standard expected of a professional engineer. The student should be able to develop innovative solutions to problems and produce designs which meet the requirements of the project.
Objectives:
Students will choose a title from a list of topics offered by the department or, preferably, propose their own project through requirements/ideas from their workplace. Students proposing their own project will need to have the project plan approved by the Course Director. The project solution may involve a design exercise or implementation in hardware/software. Students will be expected to follow through the accepted problem solving route beginning with the identification and specification of the problem and proceeding to proposals for solution, analysis of alternatives, implementation of chosen solution and final proving and acceptance testing. To commence the dissertation, students should initially produce a planned timetable of goals and milestones relevant to the work. This plan will be approved by the Course Director, or his deputy, before the student can proceed with the work. It may be necessary to amend the timetable during the course of the work. The final report should contain evidence that the plan has been adhered. The dissertation will be supervised by a member of staff who will be available to students either via phone, fax or email. The dissertation will be marked by the supervisor and an internal examiner who will agree a score representing 90% of the marks. Following submission of the dissertation the student will attend the next residential school and make a presentation to an audience consisting of distance learning students and 2 other examiners who will assess the presentation and the student's ability to answer questions.
|
