Undergraduate/Taught Postgraduate Project Suggestions (2009-2010)

The following table lists some project topics that could be undertaken by undergraduate students. However, a number of the topics, with suitable broadening of scope and particularly with inclusion of a research focus, could be suitable for taught postgraduate projects (practicums) also. Some of the topics would only be worthwhile and available for students with a solid mathematical or applied mathematical background. Some other ideas are raised in notes (ii) to (vi).

Project Suggestion	Undergraduate Suitability		No. of teams	Preferred supervisor*
Environmental data analysis and preparation (MS Word version) (a few possibilities)	3^rd	4^th	³ 1
Leaving or Junior Maths on-line [For a variation of this see note (iv) below.]	3^rd	4^th	³ 1	LT
Queue Simulation based on Non-Equilibrium M/M/1, with possible application to Motorway Traffic (in fact, would have to be extended to be a large enough project)	3^rd	4^th	1

* If left blank, then I am amenable to a different staff member supervising this project (or a variation of it).

Notes

(i) (relevant for undergraduates only): Columns 2 to 4 are suggested constraints and can be relaxed if a good case is made. Also, the “No. of teams” restriction applies for 3^rd year as 4^th year projects are normally 1 person teams.

(ii) A few other topics in the areas of scientific computing or simulation can be suggested (for postgraduates with a suitable mathematical/physics background).

(iii) On a completely different note to (ii), a postgraduate project could be considered along the lines of “Software Engineering Versus Mechanical & Electronic Engineering: A critical comparison and evaluation of processes, methodologies and tools”. However, there is quite a risk that this might be regarded as a rather woolly “study” type project so that anyone taking it on would have to be prepared to engage seriously with the literature and be very well motivated and a self-starter.

(iv) Many first year students experience great difficulty with Computing or Software courses. It is felt by many people that one reason for this is that students come on to these courses without having any real idea of what is involved, particularly in programming. Of course, most people never come across programming in Secondary School and so the purpose of this project is to include a means to allow students to carry out small amounts of programming (such as defining a loop to do a calculation etc). It seems easiest to do this in the context of maths but there is no reason why small pieces of programming couldn’t be used or be useful in most other subjects too.

(v) Ideas for MSE practicum(s) could be derived from http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~ltuohey/SuggestionsForPostgraduateResearch/AMSPL.pdf . A specific idea would be to gather requirements and hence specify an environment for conducting hands-on, undergraduate software development projects. Preferably, the system would be built on open source tools. For the purpose of assessing student performance, the system should have some mechanisms for recording activity levels. The system should include not only processes and tools for the engineering side (development, testing, non-test verification, etc) and configuration management/PRACAS but also for project management and group work.

(vi) A very specific suggestion would be to research and build a voice entry interface to a project management tool such as Microsoft Project or its Open Office “correspondent”. This should be set up as research hypotheses, say (i) that people generally have difficulty in forward planning and are resistant, particularly, to use of project management software (perhaps because of the tedium of data entry and the difficulty of seeing the wood from the trees). Then, (ii) a specific thesis would be that a new, sophisticated, voice entry interface would encourage more and better use of project management software. The project should involve some initial research to establish (i) (or something like it), then building of the system, including some example projects in the system, and validating/ testing hypothesis (ii) by canvassing/sampling user reaction to the new interface.