[Academic] PH450: Clarifications on Report Feedback

[Daniel Oi]

To 4th Year Project Supervisors,

FYI I include at the end of this email the notice sent out to students about the 10  pages of report feedback. The nominal date for them to send you material to give advice on is today, but I leave it up to individual supervisors to make suitable arrangements for this process as appropriate. I also reproduce the departmental guidelines on what feedback is appropriate:

Guidelines on Project Report Feedback for students
We recognise the importance of giving appropriate feedback to students preparing their project presentations and
reports and of doing this with a level of consistency that is fair to all students. The feedback we give should
supplement the training that is inherently associated with the supervision of the project and this includes giving
students advice on how and what data are to be presented etc. The following guidelines hopefully will address this
point:

1. The report should be the student's own work and we must avoid the report including large elements of the
work of the supervisor(s). Students undertaking computational analysis and using pre-written programs to
generate data should be considered in the same way as students who are undertaking experimental work
using existing equipment. It is the analysis of the data that is of importance.

2. In order to provide a suitable level of guidance in project preparation each student should receive feedback,
covering the correctness as well as presentation style, on approximately 10 pages of material (submitted at
least 1 weeks before the hand-in deadline). The feedback from the staff should be in the form of a discussion
highlighting both good points and areas that need addressing rather than a re-writing of material.

3. In order to promote consistency across the department the supervisor(s) should not be involved in an
iterative process of correction of, or input to, the report material. Guidance along the lines of “I think that you
should include these data etc.” is appropriate.

4. We do however stress the importance of general feedback throughout the project and report writing. For
example, wherever practicable supervisors should point out significant mistakes (for example, this figure plots
the wrong quantity or this equation is incorrect). Care should be taken to avoid getting into a loop where the
student is continually told that something is wrong but not directed on how to address the problem.

5. The Department will produce a list of the common mistakes made when producing a project report – e.g.
labelling of figures, referencing

6. The Department will, subject to a receiving agreement from the relevant students, post examples of good
reports on MyPlace. There will be an example of a theoretical report and an experimental report.

7. The Department will also ensure the project marking schemes are posted on Myplace.

Thanks,
Daniel.


From: Daniel Oi <myplace-post-notifications at strath.ac.uk>
Sent: 11 March 2019 15:08
Subject: PH450: Feedback on 10 pages and other Clarifications


To clarify, the deadline today for the 10 pages of report for feedback is flexible, subject to the agreement with your supervisor. However, there should be enough time for them to read, comment, and feedback advice so that it can be meaningfully incorporated in the final write-up. Please correspond directly with your supervisor for specific arrangements for handing it in, in whatever format is most convenient all parties, e.g. emailed PDF.

The Project Handbook states that the literature review “…will usually form the basis of the first chapter of your Final Report”. It is expected that the literature review is updated and expanded to turn it into introductory material for your report. It will not be flagged on TurnItIn as plagiarism per se (unless there are other similar materials included).

The use of the report template is highly recommended to provide a level of consistency across reports. Both LaTeX and Word templates are available. If you wish not to use the provided template, then please follow the style of the template in whatever document preparation program you use.

Whether you include code as an appendix depends on how relevant it is to your project. For some projects it would be useful to have it as reference for the reader to understand and assess your work, particularly if it is a major component of the project. Otherwise, you may still choose to include code in the appendix even if it is not strictly necessary, as it serves as a record of your work. If the code is not very long (not 10s of pages), then it should not be a problem to include it. For much longer code, then discuss with your supervisor the best way to reference it, e.g. a code repository.

Regards,
Dr Daniel Oi.
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