Student should find a faculty member who is willing to sponsor his/her project. Each student should submit a proposal to the Graduate Studies Committee which describes the project in sufficient detail to satisfy the objectives outlined below. The proposal should normally be submitted at least 2 weeks before the end of the Add/Drop period for the new semester. Notice of the oral presentation of the Master's Project should be given at least one week in advance to all faculty and graduate students. A draft copy of the Master's Project should be available from the sponsoring faculty at least one week before the oral presentation. Students should expect to make changes to the final copy of their Master's Project based on feedback obtained from the oral presentation. Two copies of the final report and all supporting documentation should be presented to the Computer Science office by the sponsoring faculty. This must be done before ODU Form 7 (comprehensive exam completion) is completed. Form 7 must be signed by the sponsoring faculty and a (different) member of the Graduate Studies Committee only if the student received a B or better in the project.
Each Master's Project should meet the following objectives. Proposals for projects will be judged using these objectives. The project should follow good methodology. The student should be aware of the state of the art in the proposed area. The proposal should identify a particular problem area and list the specific tasks to be addressed in the project. While some of these tasks may not be accomplished in the project, the student should be able to defend the reasons why some of the tasks were not accomplished. Is is also likely that new tasks will come to light as the project progresses. The student should keep track of these new tasks and if unable to complete them, should list all unaccomplished tasks in the final report as areas for further work. A project should demonstrate both the verbal and writing communication skills of the student. The project should be of some value to the student and the department. At the minimum this value will be the learning experience resulting from the project. The project should be carried out in a professional manner. This means the supporting documentation is well done and in the case of programming projects that precepts of good software engineering practice be followed. Every attempt should be made to make the project machine independent, isolating machine dependent parts in a small kernel of routines. The student should be able to abstract the experience learned in the project to a wider view of the task accomplished.
The Master's Project will be evaluated on the objectives listed above by both the sponsoring faculty and (at least) one member of the Graduate Studies committee. The sponsoring faculty should fill out and sign the evaluation sheet which will be filed with the two copies of the final report (as mentioned above).