Dissertation: Frequently Asked Questions & Guidance

Welcome to Dissertation Module

Welcome to the first week of your dissertation.

This document provides detailed information about how the 12-week dissertation period will work, what is expected from you, how supervision meetings will be organised, and where you can find additional support.

1. How are the 12 weeks structured?

The 12-week dissertation period consists of:

• 6 mandatory supervision meetings
• 6 optional supervision meetings

The mandatory meetings will take place every other week.

Attendance at mandatory meetings is required. If you do not attend a mandatory meeting on Teams, you will be marked absent, and this may affect your engagement score, which is marked out of 10.

The optional meetings are available to support your progress, but you are not required to attend them. However, you are expected to continue working on your dissertation during these weeks. It would be great if you could accept/reject those meeting invites to let me know if you will be attending the meeting.

Can I meet my supervisor in person instead of attending on Teams?

Yes. If you would prefer to meet in person rather than attend a scheduled Teams meeting, please contact me in advance by:

• Teams message, or
• Email

Please confirm or ask whether I am available to meet in person before attending.

2. How is the dissertation module assessed?

The dissertation module is worth 60 credits.

There are two components to the assessment:

• Dissertation Report: weighted 70%
• Viva: weighted 30%

Both components are based on the work you complete during the 12-week dissertation period.

This means that the quality of the work you carry out throughout the 12 weeks will directly contribute to the quality of your final report and your performance in the viva.

Is there formative feedback?

Yes.

Before submitting your final report, you will have one opportunity to receive formative feedback on your report.

The formative feedback should be treated as an opportunity to receive feedback on a substantially complete version of your report, rather than an opportunity to submit an early draft for extensive development.

You should therefore aim to submit a report that is as close to the final version as possible. This means that your report should already contain the main sections, analysis, results, discussion, references, and supporting evidence that you intend to include in the final submission.

The formative submission will be read once. You should therefore make the most of this opportunity by ensuring that the version you submit is sufficiently developed and representative of your final work.

The timeline for formative feedback will be provided in due course. Further information, including submission arrangements and deadlines, will be available on Canvas.

3. What should I expect during supervision meetings?

Supervision meetings are primarily intended to discuss and evaluate your research progress, experiments, coding, analysis, methodology, and research problems.

During these meetings, I will focus on the practical and technical development of your dissertation.

Will my supervisor read my report during supervision meetings?

No.

The report, or individual sections of the report, will not normally be read or reviewed during the regular supervision meetings.

Instead, meetings will focus on areas such as:

• Code
• Experiments
• Experimental design
• Data
• Analysis
• Methodology
• Results
• Problems encountered
• Interpretation of experimental findings
• Next steps

The reason for this approach is that the written report needs to be supported by the actual research work you have carried out.

A report section describing a method, experiment, result, or conclusion cannot be meaningfully evaluated in isolation from the underlying work and evidence.

For example, if you write a section explaining that a particular method produced a specific result, we first need to establish that the method has actually been implemented correctly, that the experiment has been conducted appropriately, and that the resulting evidence supports the statement.

Therefore, the priority during supervision meetings is to establish that your research work, experiments, code, and results are correct and progressing appropriately.

You should not expect to bring a draft of your report to each meeting for line-by-line review.

If you need support with academic writing, structure, grammar, referencing, or how to write particular sections, you should make use of the resources described in Section 5: Where can I find guidance on writing the dissertation?

4. What should I have completed by the first meeting?

By the first dissertation meeting, you are expected to have completed the literature review work undertaken during your proposal stage.

However, your literature review should not be considered finished at this point.

You are expected to continue reviewing relevant literature throughout the dissertation.

As you begin conducting experiments, coding, analysing data, and refining your methodology, you may need to:

• Identify additional relevant research
• Modify your approach
• Select different methods
• Change how you apply a particular method
• Identify appropriate datasets
• Justify methodological decisions

Your ongoing literature review should therefore guide your research decisions throughout the dissertation.

Think of the literature review as an ongoing process rather than a one-time task.

5. What is the role of the supervisor?

My role as your supervisor during these 12 weeks is primarily to act as a guide and academic/personal supervisor.

At regular points throughout the dissertation, I will ask you to identify a set of tasks that you aim to complete over the next 1–2 weeks.

For example, your tasks might include:

• Completing a particular experiment
• Implementing a method
• Collecting or preparing data
• Running an analysis
• Reviewing additional literature
• Developing or testing code
• Evaluating experimental results
• Resolving a methodological or technical problem

We will then use these tasks to track your progress and identify any challenges.

What will the supervisor monitor?

My role is to monitor whether:

• You are making sufficient progress
• The planned tasks are being completed
• Your experiments are appropriate and accurate
• Your methodology is being applied correctly
• Your code and experimental implementation are working as intended
• There are mistakes or issues that need to be addressed
• Your results provide appropriate evidence for your research
• Your work is progressing towards the requirements of the dissertation module

If I identify mistakes or areas that need improvement, I will point them out.

Your responsibility is then to refine your work, make the necessary updates, correct errors, and continue developing the dissertation in line with the module requirements.

6. What should I do between supervision meetings?

You should continue working on your dissertation between meetings, including during the optional-meeting weeks.

At each stage, you should have clear objectives for what you want to achieve before the next meeting.

A useful approach is to divide your work into 1–2 week goals.

For each period, consider:

• What do I need to complete?
• What experiment or analysis will I run?
• What literature do I need to review?
• What problems have I encountered?
• What evidence do I need to collect?
• What code do I need to develop or test?
• What conclusions can currently be supported by my evidence?
• What aspects of the report can I develop based on completed work?

This will help you demonstrate continuous progress throughout the 12 weeks.

7. What are the requirements for passing the module?

You must pass both components of the module independently. Passing marks for the components are

• Dissertation Report: 50%
• Viva: 50%

You therefore need to achieve at least 50% in the report AND 50% in the viva to pass the module.

What happens if I fail one component?

If you fail either the report or the viva, you will be required to resit the component that you have failed.

Further details about the resit process and requirements will be provided on an individual basis where applicable.

8. Where can I find guidance on writing the dissertation?

The dissertation report template will be provided on Canvas.

If you need guidance on how to write particular sections of the report, you can refer back to the Research and Application module, where you were taught how to structure and write different components of academic research.

This includes guidance on areas such as:

• Literature review
• Methodology
• Data
• Analysis
• Results
• Discussion
• Other sections of the research report

You can also make use of the University Library’s Dissertations & projects guide.

If you require additional support, you can book a meeting with the Library Skills team. They may be able to help you understand particular aspects of academic writing or review aspects of your work before you submit it for formative feedback or final assessment.

9. Can I use the University’s HPC facilities?

Yes.

For your MSc project, you may be able to access Viper, the University’s High Performance Computing (HPC) facility.

Viper is particularly useful for projects involving highly computational tasks that cannot reasonably be performed on your own computer.

How do I get a Viper account?

If you require access to Viper, please let me know.

As your supervisor, I can request an account for you.

You should therefore identify early in your project if your computational requirements are likely to exceed the capabilities of your own computer.

Are there alternatives to Viper?

Yes.

You can also use the computers available in the DAIM lab. These computers have GPUs and may be suitable for projects that require additional computational resources.

You are encouraged to make use of these facilities where appropriate.

10. What should I do if my project uses Reddit or social media data?

If your project specifically requires Reddit or other social media data, you are not expected to apply for an API for this dissertation

Obtaining and setting up API access can take considerable time, and the 12-week dissertation period is limited.

Instead, you should use the relevant existing data repositories and tools where appropriate.

Reddit data resources

• Arctic Shift Reddit Data Download Tool

• The Eye – Reddit Archives

Please ensure that any data you use is appropriate for your research project and that you follow the relevant ethical, legal, and university requirements.

11. What should I remember throughout the 12 weeks?

The most important thing is to keep making consistent progress.

Key expectations

• Attend all mandatory supervision meetings.
• Continue working during the weeks when meetings are optional.
• Set clear 1–2 week goals for your work.
• Continue your literature review throughout the project.
• Keep your experiments, coding, analysis, and methodology aligned with relevant research.
• Use supervision meetings primarily to discuss code, experiments, data, analysis, methodology, and research problems.
• Do not expect regular supervision meetings to involve detailed reading or editing of your report.
• Keep your report developing alongside your research, but remember that the formative submission is the opportunity for your report to be read and receive feedback.
• Submit a substantially complete, near-final version of the report for formative feedback.
• Act on feedback and correct issues identified during supervision.
• Use Canvas regularly for templates, deadlines, guidance, and module information.
• Make use of University resources such as the Library guides where necessary.
• Contact your supervisor early if you encounter a problem that may affect your progress.
• Remember that both the report and viva must be passed independently.

Final reminder

The 12 weeks are designed to help you develop your dissertation progressively. The work you do throughout this period will form the basis of both your final report and your viva.

Your supervision meetings are primarily about doing and validating the research: developing code, conducting experiments, analysing data, identifying problems, and refining your methodology.

Your report should then document and communicate the research that you have actually completed and the evidence that you have generated.

The formative feedback opportunity is limited to one reading of your submitted report, so you should not treat it as an early-draft review. By the time you submit for formative feedback, your report should be as close to the final version as reasonably possible.

The more consistently you work, review the literature, conduct and refine your experiments, document your findings, and respond to feedback, the stronger the foundation you will have for your final assessment.