ENG401/701 Draft thesis and progress summary report

Due: upload to MyLO by midnight Sunday (week 13) before the study break

Summary

Purpose

This task report serves three purposes

It is an incentive to have made significant progress on your project in semester 1

It is evidence of what you have done to date, and forms part of your assessment

It will save you some work later on when it comes to writing the thesis.

Content

Please discuss requirements with your supervisor as every project and every supervisor may have subtly different requirements. However as a general guide you should expect to prepare the following:

Draft Thesis (including a review of relevant literature): The majority of the effort in the progress report is expected to go into a draft thesis. This should be in the form of an attachment to a brief report (see item 2 below). The draft thesis should be a substantial document representing at least 120 hours work and approximately half of your final (Project B) thesis. (The final thesis is typically 10-15,000 words) It should contain any elements that are able to be written at this time, including:

a complete table of contents and/or thesis outline containing all headings and subheadings

a full well written write up in close to final form of at least some substantial sections of the thesis. As a minimum, this should include

An introduction chapter that sets out the rationale for the project and the objectives to be achieved. The latter could be expressed as aims and scope and/or ‘research questions’ (or both) and may be expanded or revised from the original plan.

A review of contemporary literature relevant to the project that is detailed and specific enough to genuinely inform the direction of the project. The literature needs to be critically discussed, and its relevance to and influence on the project must be explained. There should be evidence that decisions about method used in the project have been influenced by the literature. This may be a stand-alone chapter, or it may be distributed throughout the thesis, as dictated by what serves the particular project and thesis best. An emphasis on high quality literature is required. This may mean peer-reviewed journal publications where relevant research has been published, but it is recognised that this will vary between projects. E.g. For other projects it may mean relevant industry or government reports.

A chapter that outlines in detail the methods that will be followed to achieve the project outcomes. For example, for an experimentally based project this would be a full description of the experiments to be undertaken, sufficient for someone to replicate those experiments, including the design of any specialist apparatus required. It may even include a description of a pilot study or some preliminary results. While some details may not be finalised at this stage, there should be clear evidence that the project methods have been considered in detail.

This close to complete written work should be sufficient to assess and provide detailed feedback on your general writing style, however it is acceptable to insert notes to yourself describing work still to be done (e.g. “figure/table/references required here”, “further explanation of ... needed”, “this paragraph needs rewriting” etc.). Don’t forget that this is a draft of what you will submit at the end of the project, not a plan, so make sure when describing your work that you write in the past tense, not the future tense, otherwise you will have a lot of unnecessary work to do later editing it.

a draft write up or outline of remaining chapters covering things as relevant to or appropriate for your particular project and progress. For example, while you would not normally at this stage have results, discussion or conclusions, it should still in most cases be possible to plan what these chapters will look like, with relevant headings and subheadings, and some notes or dot points about what you expect to include under each heading. You may also have ideas already for the conclusions chapter, such as some comments on the main applications or (expected) outcomes of the work, or some ideas about future follow-on work.

a comprehensive and properly formatted bibliography containing a variety of source types, including a significant number of recent and relevant peer reviewed academic journal articles.

The draft thesis is not expected to be complete chapters, but rather to be easily completed. A suggested approach is to create a complete outline with all headings, filling in what can be filled in, and adding highlighted comments or notes about what still needs to be done. Note that 40% of the marks are awarded directly for the draft thesis (note that it is the thesis that is assessed at the end of the year, your project can only be assessed to the extent that it is written up), but a further 40% are awarded indirectly through the evidence it provides of your progress and of your general writing, including the bibliography. In order to be assessed on your general writing it is important that there are some substantial, essentially finalised sections.

Cover report: Your draft thesis should be submitted as an attachment to a short summary (typically no more than around 2–4 pages excluding appendices if applicable) containing:

a concise but comprehensive summary of completed work relevant to the stated project objectives. Give specific examples of work done, and make references to your draft thesis as evidence. Describe your work in detail, but good cross referencing to your thesis should avoid you having to duplicate anything. Note that “concise” does not mean lacking detail, but that you have taken the trouble to write well and make every word count.

a guide to your draft thesis (if this is not self-evident). As the thesis is in draft form it is unlikely to make complete sense as a stand-alone document, so the cover report not only points to the thesis as evidence of work completed, but fills in any gaps so that it makes sense to the reader. It may for example be necessary to provide some additional context for your project, or to explain how various sections of your thesis relate to each other.

a detailed plan for completion with carefully thought-out timelines breaking the work up into manageable and measurable tasks and demonstrating clear and achievable milestones and final goals (a Gantt chart or similar would be recommended). You may make significant use of your original plan, but at this stage of your project you should be much clearer about what needs to be done and how you will do it. There will therefore be some changes, and significantly more detail.

comments on your progress relative to the original and/or revised plan, and if relevant highlight any potential problems or project management risks such as reliance on any third party input, dependence on availability of and timely access to experimental or computing facilities etc. If you need to request an extension at the end of the year your comments here will be taken into account as evidence that you have thought about risks and taken all reasonable actions to mitigate them, you have considered them in sufficient time to respond, and you have contingency plans in place where appropriate. Provide details, for example

If the project requires commitment to expenditure by the University a budget must be provided

If you require input from the workshop please include drawings and evidence that these have been discussed with workshop staff

Special resources not yet obtained need to be itemised (e.g. software, hardware, documents or reports not readily available…)

Details are required of access to space or equipment that may need to be shared, and evidence that you have discussed these with other interested parties (e.g. wind tunnel, fatigue testing machine).

any other relevant material. The cover report is an opportunity to mention anything else that you wish to be taken into account in your assessment, and which would not be appropriate to put into your final thesis. For example, if you spent a significant amount of time pursuing a method that proved to be a dead-end, you can mention it here, but you would not normally write this up in the thesis unless you learnt something useful in the process that informs subsequent work.

As stated above, it is intended that most of the effort in preparing the progress report contributes directly to progress on the final thesis. Thus the draft thesis is very important, and a clear revised plan is essential. The plan does not necessarily have to be very long, but forms a kind of "recipe" for completion, so that work done in 2nd semester can be as productive as possible, and a framework is in place for measuring the relevance of any work done so that time is not wasted by going off on tangents.

Finally, every student must submit an individual progress report (as for the thesis). There may be shared material for projects undertaken in pairs but this must be clearly acknowledged with the same referencing standards as if it were any other reference source. If you are working in a pair then each partner's project should be distinctly different, for example by

focusing on different aspects of a problem (e.g. structural vs fluids),

tackling a problem using different techniques (e.g. computational, experimental, analytical),

studying distinctly different cases (e.g. applying the chosen techniques to significantly different geometries or conditions).

These are some generic ways to differentiate a project, but there are probably many more project specific ways to differentiate. Group or collaborative projects should certainly have diverged significantly by the time the progress report is written.

Assessment

Your report will be assessed (usually by your primary supervisor) against the rubric at the end of this document.

It is a requirement to meet ALL learning outcomes to pass – this is indicated by checkboxes above the rubric.

Provided that all learning outcomes have been met, the grade is determined from marks awarded to each criterion in accordance with the rubric. The mark may be capped in accordance with the notes below the rubric.

As stated earlier, please discuss requirements with your supervisor, but assessment may take into account the following factors:

You have a clearly defined topic with achievable but suitably challenging scope. The project has academic merit and involves a level of challenge appropriate for an engineering honours project.

You have a good understanding of the background to the problem that you are investigating.

You have broken the project up into specific well defined major tasks with measurable outcomes and have estimated realistic times and resources required to complete each of those milestones.

If any resources need to be provided by a third party for the successful completion of the project these are identified and approved by your supervisor(s).

The report is well written, concise, brief and to the point without sacrificing detail of content.

There is evidence of significant work done to date.

The project appears to be on track for a timely and successful completion.

Extensions

The draft thesis is a work in progress. Therefore, extensions are not granted for Project A except for illnesses or special circumstances that directly coincide with the submission date (i.e. not for illnesses or delays during the semester). Your submission is a “snapshot” of progress at the designated due date. It will be assessed for what you have done relative to opportunity. If there are extenuating circumstances that have delayed progress then these must be described in the cover report and the impact on progress explained.

Further advice

A well written cover report will not be a long document. Put the majority of your effort into the thesis. When preparing it don’t just sit down and write. Start by working out what you wish to communicate and develop a structure. Keep it relevant and logically organized. Include what is necessary but no more. Surplus words may dilute or detract from your message. Rewrite frequently and delete anything that rambles, but ensure that you do not assume too much from the reader. Do not include details of dead-end investigations that do not contribute to your final results. Expect it to take time. You have the time to do this now, you will not have the time in October. Your supervisors may also have a little more time now than in October to help you!

How to write a literature review

Definition

A literature review is a comprehensive and critical review of a large body of specialised academic literature that leads to the formulation of clear research questions and a variety of techniques applicable to answering them. It should describe, summarise, evaluate and clarify the literature. It gives an overview of what has been said, who the key writers are, what are the prevailing theories and hypotheses, what questions are being asked, and what methods are appropriate and useful. Its purpose is to establish a theoretical framework for your topic / subject area, define key terms, definitions and terminology, and to identify studies, models, case studies etc. supporting your topic.

Purpose

All theses should contain a “literature review”. It has three (sometimes four) main purposes:

It puts your research into context.

It convincingly demonstrates that you have made a thorough search for relevant previous work, that you are aware of the state of the art, and that therefore your work makes a genuine contribution and does not merely duplicate previously published work (i.e. it guarantees that you are not wasting your time.)

Research is often incremental or evolutionary. The literature review therefore clarifies the starting point (sometimes called the “background intellectual property”) for your research, i.e. where others have finished and where you take over. This is particularly important if your project is part of a larger or established ongoing project.

It may also (if necessary) give relevant background to the reader. Generally research papers and theses are written with the expectation that the audience is an expert in the field. However, particularly for multi-disciplinary topics, it may not always be reasonable to assume that the general reader is knowledgeable in all aspects of the project. In these cases it is necessary to give some background to each topic. In this instance it is often best to give a brief description of the key points and then refer the non-expert to a good reference for further reading, or to further details in an appendix. Otherwise the thesis can end up being very tedious to read for those who do already know something about the topic.

Of these, points 2 and 3 are usually the most important in a thesis or research paper.

What is literature?

All relevant references are potentially valid literature, including journal and conference papers, textbooks, Wikipedia or other websites, manufacturer’s brochures, newspaper articles, personal communications. It does not have to be published public domain.

However, some sources may be more reliable or credible that others, most particularly articles in high ranked peer reviewed academic or technical journals. Less reliable sources may still be used if the information is not critical, or if it is validated. Validation could comprise replication through your own research activities, or by comparison with other similar but independent work. For example if you find three independent sources that say the same thing, particularly if they approach it from different perspectives, then this adds credibility. In particular, information that may be biased (e.g. advertising or promotional material, information provided by manufacturers about their products, information from lobby groups) should always be validated using sources that are not likely to share those biases, or the potential biases should be made apparent.

All sources are valid (but may be more or less reliable). Sources may be published (public domain) or unpublished, and printed or not printed. Examples include

Journal articles

Conference papers

Textbooks and other books

Theses (Honours, Masters, PhD)

Patents

Wikipedia, blogs and any other internet source

Standards (AS, ISO etc)

Company reports (annual, technical)

Product information, data sheets

Instruction or standard procedure manuals

Advertising and promotional material, leaflets, brochures

Newspapers and magazines

Personal communications

Works of art or literature

May be published or unpublished, printed or not printed

To assess the reliability you should ask: Has it been through a review process, if so how rigorous and how independent? What is the credibility of the author? What is the reputation of the publication? Are there any likely biases? Can I back this up with other independent sources?

What should the review contain?

As well as fulfilling the above purposes as completely as possible a literature review should be a critical review that clearly explains the strengths and weaknesses of previous work and their relationship to the current project. It should highlight where knowledge gaps exist.

The literature review should conclude with recommendations or suggestions for further research, some of which will presumably be the subject of the thesis. These are often framed as the “research questions”.

Concentrated or distributed?

Some authors (and/or supervisors) prefer a specific stand-alone chapter that they call “Literature review”, while others might include the same kind of information distributed throughout the entire thesis under such headings as “Introduction”, “Background”, “Relevant theory”, “Previous studies” etc. at the start of each chapter. This is a personal choice, often influenced by the nature of the project. The distributed approach is more typical for projects that involve the synthesis of several distinctly different aspects. For other projects the distributed approach may lead to too much fragmentation and it becomes difficult for the reader to gain a good overview, or even to work out which parts of the thesis are reporting on previous work and which parts are new contributions.

Both approaches can usually be made to work successfully if well written. The important thing is to ensure that the review is thorough, and that it is clear to the reader what in the thesis was done by the author and what was not.

However it is presented, the literature review should have a logical structure. Possible structures could include organization of literature based on method or technique (i.e. a “methodology”), geography (e.g. if there are key research groups of centres), or chronology.

Facts or opinions?

A good literature review should be a critique of the literature, it will contain both facts and opinions, but it must be clear which is which and opinions must be logically argued with evidence.

Opinions may even be expected, especially if there is disagreement in the academic community on a point (e.g. “Authors A and B developed apparently incompatible models, but it is noted that they were based on different assumptions and these must be considered in choosing the appropriate model to use.”)

Opinions need not be value judgments; comment may discuss usefulness, relevance or validity to the current project (e.g. “The additional complexity of the more accurate model is not justified for this application.”)

How much to write?

The level of detail you include depends on the relevance, as well as on the total number of citations.

Don’t be afraid to be brief. There is nothing more tedious than reading endless details about something that is not relevant. If you are citing marginally relevant work you can often refer to several similar or related sources in the one sentence, e.g. “one method of solving the problem is technique X, in which …. This approach has been successfully adopted by several authors (A, B, C, D and E).”

Moderately relevant work can often be described in one or two sentences, or perhaps a paragraph. The reader can always look up the reference themselves if they desire full details.

Highly relevant citations should be described in detail. This does not always apply when writing conference or journal papers, where space is limited, but it becomes frustrating to the reader of a thesis if important material is assumed or not adequately explained. If the answer to the question “does the reader need to know this?” is “yes” then you should not expect the reader to have to look up the reference. The reader should only need to look it up to verify it, not to understand it.

The exception to the last point is widely available standard references with which readers are likely to be familiar or able to easily look up (e.g. Australian Standards). These rarely need to be described in detail.

What should it not contain?

The literature review should stick to discussing the work of others and how it relates to the current project, but this must be clearly separated from the new ideas introduced in the project. This helps make it quite clear what original ideas the author is or is not contributing to the project.

How to reference sources

All sources should be acknowledged – not to do so constitutes plagiarism. A common misconception about plagiarism is that it relates to words, and that it can be avoided by paraphrasing. However plagiarism may also relate to any form unacknowledged use of intellectual or creative material that has been created by someone else, including ideas, images, data etc. On the other hand, if your thesis contains mainly other people’s ideas or words etc. but they are properly acknowledged then there has been no misconduct and the worst that you can be accused of is lack of originality.

There are many valid bibliography formats and citation styles, and many guides that describe them, but they fall into two main classes: “Harvard” styles, sometimes called “author-date”, where the work is referred to by the author and date (e.g. Jones et al. (2015)); and non-Harvard styles, where works are referred to by a key or symbol, usually a number in square brackets (e.g. [1]). Harvard styles have the advantage that numbers don’t change when a new reference is included, which can be a nightmare to correct if references are inserted manually, but this is not a big issue with modern automated referencing software such as BiBTeX. Non-Harvard styles are frequently used in Journals because they are more efficient for space.

When using a Harvard style, there are two ways to reference a work – the reference itself can be part of the text, e.g. “Jones et al. (2015) solved the problem by…”, or it can be a parenthetic citation that provides information additional to the main text, e.g. “The results were inconclusive (Jones et al. 2015)”. In the former only the date appears in brackets, while both author and date are in brackets in the latter. In a non-Harvard style only the parenthetic citation is possible and if author’s names are desired in the text they need to be added explicitly, e.g. “Jones et al. [1] solved the problem by…” and “The results were inconclusive [1]”. For this reason, if you are using an automated referencing system it is easy to change styles within either of these classes, but you may need to modify the text if changing from a Harvard to a non-Harvard style or vice versa.

Finally, most recent journal publications can be accessed electronically. It is tempting to provide a URL, but if you have the option, you should ALWAYS provide a DOI (digital object identifier) in preference to a URL. DOIs are persistent, i.e. they are permanent and the material at the DOI location can never be changed. URLs on the other hand can cease to exist, and/or the material at the URL location can be modified, so if other options exist they are not a good way to reference material. If you do use a URL (and sometimes it is necessary) you should always provide the date accessed.

How to conduct a literature search

What are you looking for?

For an honours thesis the literature search is expected to go well beyond a few websites, a couple of relevant textbooks and some past theses, reports or papers that your supervisor has given you. But you are not going to find anything if you don’t know what you are looking for.

One of the purposes of an honours project is training for a research higher degree. You would be expected to be fully up to date with the current state of the art, with other research happening right now in other parts of the world. This won’t be in even the best textbooks because the techniques or developments might be too recent, not yet proven, not widely adopted, etc., textbooks generally describe well established or widely used methods. Even what makes it into textbooks may be distilled or simplified. You need to go back to the original sources to get the details.

It is therefore expected that a research project will extensively cite recent research literature, which will typically be published in technical journals and conference proceedings. However you are encouraged to search far more broadly than that, e.g. information may come from newspapers, correspondence with experts, company reports, or a variety of other less formal means (as well as those mentioned in the first paragraph).

This summary will focus on the academic journal and conference publications, of which there is a vast quantity. It would not be unusual to have 50 such relevant citations in a good honours thesis, or several hundred in a PhD thesis (though this would depend on the nature of the topic).

Finding journal articles

The first port of call should be databases. Most good journals are indexed in databases. There are lots of databases. There will be significant overlap between databases but also significant differences. In choosing a database you should therefore start with ones in the most relevant disciplines, but you should not limit yourself to a single database. At least 3–4 would be recommended. The library has information on the databases they subscribe to, and runs courses on how to use them. Go to

http://www.utas.edu.au/library/study/assignment-support

and click on “Subject guides” to find recommended databases for your discipline, then “A-Z Databases” to find and access the database. Some good engineering ones to start with include

Compendex,

Scopus,

Web of Science,

IEEE Xplore,

INSPEC.

“Google scholar” is also a good place to look, don’t dismiss it, but is unlikely to be as comprehensive as the relevant databases that the library subscribes to.

Refining your search

Getting the right key words can be a challenge. To begin with you will probably get either 2 hits or 200,000. Don’t be discouraged. Try other combinations. Try American or English spellings. Use AND and OR to narrow or broaden your search. Use brackets to nest your logical statements. Put things in quotes if you want them to appear exactly at typed, especially phrases of more than one word. Use wildcards, e.g. to allow singular or plural alternatives, or other different word endings.

For example, a search for “fatigue” will get numerous hits from the medical research literature, but “fatigue and (steel or alumin*)” will get more relevant hits. Note that “alumin*” captures capture British and American spellings “aluminium” and “aluminum”.

Once you have found one or two articles, read them and get to know the jargon that they use, see what words or terms recur often. This could provide a good source of new key words to try. As you find (and read) more relevant articles you will learn more of the language and be able to refine your searches further.

Finding more articles

Databases certainly aren’t the only good way to locate articles, and subject keywords aren’t the only way to get good information out of them.

Going backwards in time: All articles have a bibliography. If you find a good paper look at its bibliography to see if there are other relevant articles. You only have the title to go on but you can use your databases to obtain its abstract. Check for papers that reappear in several bibliographies. If a paper is cited often this may indicate that it is a seminal or landmark paper, in which case you really must be familiar with it.

Going forwards in time: If you find a good paper you can use the databases to search for more recent papers that cite it. Do this for any relevant paper you find. Also do it if you identify a landmark paper (see previous paragraph). This will keep you up to date with recent developments in that field.

Look for key authors, active institutions, and relevant journals. If a particular journal, a particular author’s name or an institution appears frequently in your searches and looks like it is relevant you can do two things:

Use them as search terms in your database.

Look up their websites. You can browse through the table of contents and read paper abstracts for any journal (and sometimes even download the paper). Individual authors (particularly if academics at another university) may have their own home page which often contains a complete list of their publications, some of which may not be contained in the mainstream databases. Institution websites may also list publications, or at the very least will provide names of other important researchers.

Look at conferences, particularly if your topic is in a fast moving field. Conference papers are not always as complete or rigorous as journal papers but the short publication lead times mean they often contain the most recent developments. Conferences often publish work in progress, new ideas that haven’t yet been fully tested, or summaries of work in a given area. Look up the conference website. Conference papers are sometimes free too.

Obtaining the articles that you have found

The UTAS library subscribes to many of the journals you will come across, though these days they are moving more towards electronic subscriptions. However you will probably find many articles in Journals that we do not have (well over half in some fields).

The university has a system called “document delivery”, which enables you to get copies of almost any article you are likely to want from other libraries, typically within a week if it can be obtained within Australia. The next section has details on how to sign up for this and order articles. You should also talk to your supervisor and/or library staff.

Finally, you can sometimes download articles for free from the author’s home page.

Document delivery requests

Go to the library home page http://www.utas.edu.au/library and scroll down a bit and you will see “document delivery” (circled in the figure below) under the “For researchers” heading.

Click on this, then on the link “Document Delivery”, then either “Register” if you are new or (just below this) “Request” if you are already registered, i.e.

and or .

Enter your User ID and Password (these are probably not your normal login details, e.g. the User ID is usually your student ID).

When the following screen comes up, click on the link to “Create Request” in the menu at the left (circled in the figure below). This is not so obvious, but it is to encourage you to look in the UTas catalogues before making a request.

At this point the screen below should come up. Enter as many details as you can – the more you enter the easier it is for them to find – and click on request. Journal articles are usually scanned and emailed, so the pickup location is not relevant. The service is pretty good, particularly if the document is available within Australia and it is not a busy time of year. There is usually no need to make a “RUSH” request – my last request (a standard one) arrived within 24 hours.

Mostly you will be ordering journal or conference articles, which are normally scanned and emailed to you so you have it permanently. With books you are given a reasonably generous loan period, but that is determined by the library issuing the book. Some may allow renewals. If you need the book for much longer (e.g. you want it for the whole year) then you should talk to your supervisor about whether they or the library should purchase a copy.

Useful websites

http://courseworks.unimelb.edu.au/research_and_writing/literature_reviews

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/

http://www.uq.edu.au/student-services/literature-review

Project A: Draft thesis and Progress report assessment: STUDENT __________________________________ ASSESSOR (Initials) ___________

The submitted report provides evidence that the student is on track to achieve the following learning outcomes by the end of their project B (please indicate with in the boxes):

Select, adapt and effectively apply research processes, methods, tools, and techniques to plan, conduct and manage an independent related research project;

Critically analyse research literature to conduct a literature review;

Address WH&S, IP, data management and ethical considerations and act in accordance with best practice and industry standards;

Analyse, synthesise and evaluate factors to answer a research question, and to defend a research approach;

Document and communicate effectively the research techniques used and the results of the research both orally and in a written thesis;

Note 1: If any of the learning outcomes in not achieved then the total mark is capped at 44%

Note 2: Marks >=45% for both criteria “Evidence of Progress” and “Draft thesis chapters” are a prerequisite for a pass overall. If either of these is <45% the total mark will be based on the aggregate mark but capped at 44%.

Note 3: Mark based on average, but not more than one grade higher than lowest. MARK __________ /100

(= lesser of [sum = ] or [(lowest expressed as percentage + 10) = ], see Note 3.)