This is an individual course with no teaching sessions that can be commenced at any time during the term.

Course requirements

To pass the course you must

Submit a Topic proposal
Submit the essay for peer review
Perform peer review on an essay
Submit the essay for assessment by the examiner

Deadlines

This course can be commenced at any time during the term. To facilitate peer review, there are deadlines for each assignment, usually around one month apart. When one deadline has passed a new date will be set.

Re-registering

If you need to re-register for the course, please use this form.

Subject

The essay subject will typically be in one of three different categories:

An in-depth study of a previously studied course in computer science. The topic should be discussed with the course coordinator for that course, to ensure that it is a suitable subject.
An account of a complex technical system, project or task that you have previously worked on. For this category, it is important to identify a computer science question that can form the basis of the thesis.
A study of new material in any computer science subject, through self-study and reading of a book or some articles.

You are not allowed to re-use an essay that you have previously handed in and received credit for in another course (this is seen as self-plagiarism).

Outline

The essay should contain about 2000-5000 words, corresponding to about 4- 7 pages.

The important learning objectives in DD1395 are

that you should be able to search, read and summarize scientific and/or technical literature that is relevant for the topic,
structure and write a scientific essay,
critically review the collected sources of information and analyze and discuss these in the essay, in order to arrive at your own, independent conclusion, position or prediction about future development.

In your proposal, you must specify which target group the essay is aimed at, e.g. an engineering student, a beginner in the subject, a member of a project group focused on the subject. The level and content of the text should be adapted to the intended target group.

Assessment

During the assessment, the examiner typically checks if the essay

has a sufficient scientific and/or technical level
follows the accepted structure and style for academic essays (has a summary, an introduction, a clear formulation of the purpose of the essay, a structured review of the topic, a discussion, and a reference list)
has clearly reported and relevant references to scientific and/or technical literature
is well written, in your own words, and is coherent.

Course literature

Jeanne Godfrey Writing for University. (ISBN9781137531865)