Final-year project implementing rules for the Bachelor's Degree in Informatics Engineering from the UPM
Preamble
The Final-Year Project (hereafter FYP) is a compulsory module worth 12 ECTS credits. The FYP is defined as an “original exercise to be completed individually and presented and defended before a higher education examining board. It is a professional project on informatics engineering technologies that synthesizes and integrates competences acquired throughout the degree programme” (Spanish Official State Gazette 187, Tuesday, 4 August 2009).
The subject outline for the FYP in the degree programme handbook specifies all the general and specific competences and learning outcomes to be attained by a student completing the project.
Enrolment
Students should enrol for this subject and complete their FYP when they enrol for the last of the 240 ECTS credits that they have to earn to complete their degree programme.
This subject makes no provision for assessment in a deferred or referred examination in July. Students that fail the ordinary examination shall have to repeat the project, that is, the process and milestones described here, under the supervision of the supervisor and the subject committee. Neither is there an option of assessment by final examination only.
Subject milestones for students
- Project choice - Students have to fill in a web-based form stating their preferences for the projects on offer by the end of the enrolment period.
- Publication of project assignments - The Office of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs shall publish the final list of assignments in the first week of term, and enrolled students can then contact their supervisor and start their project.
- Work Plan - Students have to submit a work plan by the end of the third week of term. More information
- Progress Report - Students have to submit a Progress Report by the end of the tenth week of term. More information
- Final Report - Students have to submit their Final Report by the end of the sixteenth week of term (end of term). More information
- Presentation and defence before a higher education examining board - Students have to present and defend their project before a higher education examining board in a public hearing on either of the last two days of the examination period. More information
Assessment
Student final grades will be based on the three submissions and the public presentation and defence:
- Grade points awarded by the project supervisor:
- 1 point - Work Plan (10% of final grade),
- 1 point - Progress Report (10% of final grade),
- Grade points awarded by the project examining board:
- 4 points - Progress Report (40% of final grade)
- 4 points - Presentation and defence (40% of final grade)
Project proposal and assignment
- Generalities:
- Interested academic staff shall be entitled to propose projects during the period specified for the purpose by the subject committee.
- All departments and departmental sections shall have to assure that enough projects are offered to cover the demand of students enrolling for the subject. If the initial voluntary offer falls short of 120% of the demand (1.2 * no. of students enrolled for the subject in the same term of the previous year), each department and departmental section shall offer additional projects to meet their quota. This quota is calculated as follows: Dept. quota = Integer sup. [(1.2 * no. of students enrolled in the subject in the same term of the previous academic year * (no. of full-time academic staff attached to the dept. / total no. of full-time academic staff)) - no. of projects proposed by dept. in original offer)]. (Two part-time academic staff members are equivalent to one full-time member.) Departments and departmental sections shall submit the additional offer to the subject committee at least one week before the start of the term enrolment period. The departments and departmental sections shall have a margin of at least two weeks to put together this offer after receiving the request from the chair of the subject committee.
- Proposal constraints:
- Each proposal must have exactly one supervisor (co-supervision is not allowed).
- Each proposal should be sized for completion by one student within one term and shall require a total scheduled workload of 324 hours of work (27 hours/ECTS * 12 ECTS credits).
- All proposals shall have to conform to the specifications in the FYP outline in the degree programme handbook.
- Proposal structure:
- Supervisor name and project title
- Abstract
- List of specific project objectives
- Itemization of total project workload in hours by work phase or task (e.g., state of the art, analysis, design, implementation, testing, liaison, project report writing, preparation of project presentation and defence, etc.)
- List of prior knowledge required for project completion
- Proposal review:
- The subject committee shall meet at least once, three weeks before the start of the September-January term enrolment period (at the end of June) to review the proposals submitted by academic staff.
- As part of this review, the committee shall appraise all submitted proposals and decide which are suitable (and therefore passed) and which need to be reworked according to committee guidelines. Proposals that do not pass a second appraisal may be rejected. The proposer shall be notified of the reasons why the proposal was rejected.
- Proposal publication:
- The subject coordinator shall publish a list of projects passed by the committee before the start of the enrolment period.
- Choice of projects by students:
- Before choosing projects, students are advised to contact and speak to the academic staff that proposed the projects in which they are most interested.
- Students are also advised to contact the academic staff working on topics akin to their interests to encourage the submission of project proposals.
- Students that intend to complete their FYP as part of a work placement shall have to contact their work placement advisor to assure that the respective offer is submitted.
- Students have to complete a web-based form stating their preferences for the offered projects no later than the end of the enrolment period.
- Project assignment:
- The subject coordinator shall provisionally assign students to their first-choice project.
- Supervisors that have more than one student provisionally assigned to any of their proposals shall have one working day to select which of these students will be admitted. Students that are not admitted shall be assigned their second option.
- This process shall be repeated until all students have been assigned a project or until the quotas of all the projects chosen by students are full.
- If necessary, the subject coordinator shall contact students without a project. They shall be assigned any of the projects with available quota, whenever possible in accordance with their preferences.
- Assignment publication:
- At the end of the project assignment process, the subject committee shall report to the Office of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and publish the final project assignment list within the first week of term. Enrolled students can then contact their supervisor and start their project.
Submissions
Students shall have to make three submissions:
- Work Plan
- Progress Report
- Final Report
To pass the subject, students have to submit the three scheduled submissions on time. All submissions shall be made via the Facultad de Informática's Virtual Lecture Theatre (Moodle) and be accessible (visible) to all academic staff.
Late submissions shall not be accepted unless there is, in the view of the subject committee or, failing this, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, a justified reason.
All students enrolled in the subject, even students on a work placement at a company, shall be subject to these deadlines. In this case, the academic supervisor assigned to the work placement shall be responsible for following up these submissions.
Work plan
Students' first task shall be to give a written description of the project according to the instructions given by the supervisor during the preliminary work sessions. During these sessions, academic staff and students shall further specify the goals to be achieved, plus a preliminary work schedule. The document shall be no more than four pages long and shall have four sections:
- General description of the project with a list of goals
- List of tasks
- Gantt chart
- Copy of the project proposal written by the supervisor
Submission grading recommendation: 30% of the grade for each of the first three sections and 10% for overall presentation.
Progress report
The second student submission shall be a progress report describing the work that the student has completed, highlighting any changes that have had to be made to the work plan. The document shall be no more than five pages long and shall have five sections:
- Summary of the work completed
- Explanation and justification of the changes made to the original work plan
- Review of the list of project goals
- Review of the list of tasks
- Review of the Gantt chart
Submission grading recommendations: 30% of the grade for each of parts 1 and 2 of the document, 10% for the other three sections, and 10% for overall presentation.
Final report
Students shall be responsible for electronically submitting the final project report completed according to their supervisor's instructions and respecting the report structure and other requirements established by the Degree Programme Academic Committee at the instance of the subject committee.
The first two pages of this report shall contain a brief summary describing the developed project. It shall be up to the project supervisor to define the structure of the remainder of the document and the maximum number of pages.
Project presentation and defence
To pass the subject, students shall have to present and defend the project outlined in the submitted report at a public hearing before an examining board:
- Two members of the subject committee appointed by the committee chair or, failing this, by the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. Of these, the highest-ranking and longest-serving member shall act as the chair and the other as senior member.
- The project supervisor shall act as a voting member.
The presentations shall be given on the last two days of the examination period. These dates cannot be changed without express permission from the Office of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs subject to submission via the Facultad de Informática's Registry of the respective application and justification, as established in the Examinations Policy.
The project defence shall focus on the background, goals, theoretical foundations, processes, results and conclusions.
Students shall have a maximum of 15 minutes to present and defend their project. This will be followed by a 10-minute question and answer session.
The grade shall be proposed by the majority of the board members and shall be accompanied by a reasoned report from each board member. The subject committee shall award the grade of A with honours to candidates proposed for this grade by the respective boards up to the maximum permitted by the Examinations Policy. In their deliberation, committee members shall have recourse to the reasoned report issued by the examining boards. Only if the examining board's decision is unanimous shall candidates be eligible for the A with honours grade.
Students must upload their presentation in PowerPoint, Open Office or PDF format to the subject electronic repository on the day before public defence. Students must use a laptop provided by the Facultad de Informática to give their presentation, and software demonstrations (e.g. requiring configuration or installation of additional software, Internet connection, etc.) shall not be acceptable. Students shall download their presentation from the electronic repository at the time of the presentation. This way they will not have to connect any device to transfer files to the laptop.
If, for any justified reason (speech difficulties, diction problems, anxiety neurosis, agoraphobia, etc.), any students feel that they should not be expected to present their project under the same conditions as their fellow students, they should notify the subject committee at least one month in advance of the examination date so that the circumstances can be appraised and the case treated, if necessary, as an exception to the rule.
Erasmus students
Students completing their FYP as part of an Erasmus programme at a higher education institution abroad shall not have to follow this procedure, nor are they subject to these rules, which are substituted, in this case, by the respective Learning Agreement. If the presentation and defence of their project before an examining board is not a requirement at the receiving institution, they shall have to give the presentation and defence at the Facultad de Informática as stipulated here.
Students repeating the subject
Students that are repeating the subject can, with the permission of their supervisors and the approval of the subject committee, continue with the project that they were assigned in the previous term or can apply for a new project.
Repeating students that choose to continue with their project may opt to retain the grades that they received for their Work Plan and Progress Report last term or resubmit them for regrading. Students that opt for new projects are obliged to submit new Work Plans and Progress Reports.
Subject coordination structure
The subject shall have a coordinator proposed by the Degree Programme Academic Committee and appointed by the Office of the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, a FYP subject representative on the Degree Programme Vertical Coordination Committee and a subject coordination committee.
The committee shall be set up every academic year at the end of the first-term enrolment period (September-January) and shall be composed of:
- The subject coordinator who shall act as chair
- The FYP subject representative on the Degree Programme Vertical Coordination Committee
- The directors of all the departments and departmental sections at the Facultad de Informática or delegates
- Each department or departmental section shall appoint a representative that shall be a committee member for two academic years until its renewal.
- Additionally, an additional member shall be appointed for every ten students enrolled in the previous year. This person shall be a committee member for one academic year. The distribution of these members among the participating departments and departmental sections shall be proportional to the number of full-time academic staff members attached to the department or departmental section (two part-time members are equivalent to one full-time member).
These academic staff members shall be appointed by the directors of department and departmental section in advance of the end of the previous academic year's enrolment period (30 July).
Recommendation: These representatives shall be chosen, on a rotation basis, preferably from among academic staff that volunteer and/or put forward projects in this or previous academic years.
The responsibilities of this committee shall be to:
- Appraise the different offers submitted and decide which are suitable (and therefore passed) and which need to be reworked according to committee guidelines
- Decide whether to reject any offers that do not pass a second appraisal after rework
- Follow up FYP development and propose improvement actions in the event of significant deviations from the original work plan
- Act as members, together with the supervisor of the project under appraisal, of project examining boards
- Suggest changes to this policy for consideration by the Degree Programme Academic Committee
- Any other responsibilities bestowed upon it by the Degree Programme Academic Committee