The core of the Honours programme is an individual project. The project comes in two flavours: a Research Project worth 20 points and an Industry Project worth 12 points. Students who wish to go on to a post-graduate research degree are strongly advised to take the Research Project. Students who are not interested in post-graduate research and who wish to go on to industry employment are advised to take the Industry Project.
For many Honours students the Honours project is unlike anything they have done before. Sometimes it's hard to know what you should be doing and when you should be doing it. Here are some general guidelines. However they are not applicable to all projects and your supervisor will be able to - and should - provide more project specific guidelines and goals.
Both projects include written and verbal presentations. The Research Project is designed to take about 500 hours for the average student, while the Industry Project is designed to take about 300 hours for the average student.
A Research Project may be concerned with theory, program development, hardware development, evaluating and improving on a new technique, analysing performance - in fact anything associated with computing which involves a reasonable amount of intellectual and practical effort. The student is expected to read the relevant literature and carefully analyse the problem posed, to formulate a solution or proposals for a solution, and where appropriate, to implement and prove, evaluate or test the validity of their results and proposals. The project solution will usually require creative and original thinking. Typically, a project is designed for a problem in some area associated with a research programme being carried out by a member of staff. The Research Project involves substantial mentoring by a staff member, and is designed to teach research skills. These skills are particularly important if the student wishes to undertake a post-graduate research degree.
An Industry Project will typically be concerned with developing a sizeable piece of software or hardware to solve a problem. The project will involve a literature survey to find the appropriate way of solving the problem, and then implementation and evaluation of the solution. Typically, the project is designed by a staff member or suggested by a local company. Occasionally it may involve development of software which will be used in the teaching activities of the department. A more detailed description of the requirements for the industry project (which were introduced in the department in 1997) will be made available early in the year.
Regardless of whether you do the industry or the research project you will be required to give two oral presentations and hand in two written reports about your project. These should demonstrate that you have learnt the appropriate skills. Note that the first oral presentation will be to members of the department, and the second will be to members of the department as well as invited guests from local companies and research institutes.