CO3008 Honours Degree Project
CO3008 Lecture 6 - State of the Art - Part 2

Lecture Documents¶

CO3008 Lecture 7.pdf

Written Notes¶

Learning Objectives¶

• Review the other requirements not yet discussed in previous lectures.
• Introduction

• Methodology

• Discussing finding and filtering technical literature.

• Explore what research methodology is and how it differs from development methodology.

Assignment Update¶

• Second Deliverable Due 28^th November 2025
• Deliverable 2 is worth 15% of the overall project mark.

• Worth taking time to get correct.

• Marks for Deliverable 1 should be received today or tomorrow.

Deliverable 2¶

• Submit the first three sections of the project report.
• Should approx be 4K words.
• Section 1 - Introduction
• Expand on the proposal problem
• Section 2 - State of the Art
• Review existing literature regarding knowledge relating to the project.
• Section 3 - Methodology
• Outline a high-level plan detailing how the problem will be addressed that has been identified.

Recommended Word Lengths¶

• 4000 words total for deliverable ± 20%

• General guide for most projects:

• Intro (Between 500 to 1000 words)
• State of the Art (Between 3000 words)
• Methodology (Between 500 to 1000)

Introduction¶

• Identifying what the problem is
• If necessary - breakdown into component parts
• Discuss appropriate standards and legal implications
• Indicate why the problem is significant and worth attention
• Discuss the impact of both solving and not solving the problem that was stated.
• Discuss how the work will be achieved toward solving the problem
• State a single high level aim within the context of the problem defined

• State 6 to 8 objectives that are progressive and measurable that work towards meeting the above aim.

• The introduction expands the problem statement from the proposal.

• There is minor repetition as a result of rediscussing the proposal's problem statement.

• Should state a single high level aim within the context of the project's problem statement.

• List 6 to 8 measurable objectives

• These are NOT requirements at this point that comes with D3 - Design and Implementation
• These are higher level objectives that will go from problem space to solution
• For the 'Methodology' section (more on that later) is PLAN for how the objectives are going to be met.

State of the Art¶

Finding References¶

• Citing work is important for informing readers where information was obtained and the sources from and which support the claims being made.

• It is not about finding random quotes relating to the problem space

• Do not need to quote to cite work

• Also do not need to explicitly state an author by name

  • By saying things such as "research suggests you don't need to provide quotes in references" (Cassidy 2025)

• Search Google Scholar for publications relating to the problem space.

• This is ok however there are better sites that can be utilised for higher quality papers.

Reference Sites¶

• ACM Digital Library
• IEEE Xplore
• Google Scholar

Accessible with university credentials via Institutional Login.

ACM Digital Library¶

• Relevant papers may also contain references that maybe of interest.

IEEE Xplore¶

• IEEE papers tend to be a little more technical rather than user focused.

Google Scholar¶

• Will give boarder set of results, not specific to computing.
• Allow to look up authors as well as papers
• Useful for key authorities (high-level figures) in important fields to assess their papers and history.
• Good for tracking citations/impact of work.

Reading Papers¶

• It is not possible to fully read all the papers identified that are potentially interesting and relevant to the project therefore it is recommended to:
• Read the abstracts
  • Try and extract what was done, why it was done, what was found.
  • After reading the abstract if it doesn't seem relevant bin it.
  • If it is relevant add it to an annotated bibliography
  • A list of references with a few short sentences summarises the paper, what was done, why, and what was found
  • Literature Review should not read like an annotated bibliography with the references stripped out.

Proof...¶

• Students commonly say things like "It has been proven that..."

• They then proceed to cite a user study that supports a particular hypothesis

• Research very rarely proves anything. Instead, research may suggest or indicate.

• May find pieces of research that suggest conflicting things.
• However, this can be a good part of the literature review for an analytical discussion.

References¶

• Are references needed in the deliverables

• Yes, they are necessary in the references section of the report template.

• How many references are needed?

• The number and type of references for each project will vary
• Defer to supervisor for advice on this but do not expect a precise value.
• To get a general idea evaluate existing literature reviews.

Proposed Literature Review Process¶

• Gather papers related to the problem domain
• Filter papers for relevance to the project
• Identify patterns/themes in the remaining literature
• Use patterns/themes to form the structure of the narrative:
• Narrative is what is wanted to say about the papers
• Don't just describe them, say something about themes
• What are the strengths, and weaknesses of the existing state of the art?

• Relate back the problem statement and project aims

• Look at the background and related work sections in papers for concrete examples of what literature reviews related to the problem domain can appear like.

Methodology¶

This should be a high-level plan for how the problem is going to be addressed.
- May be informed by the methodologies identified in the State of the Art section.
- Should outline how the methodology is going to help achieve all the objectives outlined in pursuit of the main aim.

Should discuss how progress will be made through objectives and how it will be assessed that they are complete.

Should outline the intended process for evaluation at this point.

Finally, should provide an expanded indication on how the remaining time/resources is planned to be utilised for the project.

The project will require research to:
- Understand the problem domain
- Identify the scope of a potential solution that sits within the problem domain
- Identify technologies and potential designs for the solution
- Test solution against a set of pre-defined requirements
- Evaluate solution against original aims and objectives.

Research Methodology¶

• Approach the methodology section with a research focused mindset
• All development projects are experiments
• The goal is producing an artefact to solve a problem and investigating how well the artefact solves the problem.
• It is not just discussing the development methodology but also how each objective will be met? how will it be evaluated? how will it be known whether the project can be declared a success?

Summary¶

• Discussed the next deliverable of the assignment.
• Discussed finding and filtering technical literature.
• Explored some examples of literature reviews related to computing projects and the writing style used.
• Outlined expectations of the methodology section
• An outline plan for how the stated problem will be solved
  • How will it be known that the solution works as expected?
  • How will it be known for whether it meets expected behaviour and works successfully?

CO3008 Supervisor Meeting 3 (CM223)