Final Year Project VIVA

I had my final year project VIVA last week (oral exam), I thought it would benefit others if I shared my experience. I’m unsure if everyone has one, seemed mainly computer science based course have VIVA’s. A basic overview of what the VIVA is that your project supervisor and you and in a room alone with an external examiner. Then quizzed about your project, it’s also now that you find out how good your idea was. From speaking to others, you get rigorously grilled about your subject choice and technicality of it.

My viva went very well, I think I was less than 5 minutes in the meeting. I answered all questions sufficiently and without blabbering. I think this is mostly because of my topic, my final year project could have been a failure. I picked something that I had knowledge of, but never tried. I basically had to invent my own methodology and without even knowing if it was possible. It definitely had its risk, but my supervisor/examiner seemed very pleased with my work.

I’m unsure legally if I can disclose exact questions, but I can give a rough overview from what I heard from others and what to expect. 

-        -  Understand your project inside out

-        -  Reasoning

o   Know why you worded your so

o   The final methodology and why

o   Does your project benefit anyone?

o   Does this project even fit in this degree area?

o   If you didn’t complete it, then why.

o   What could you do better

o   If you used any plugins, can’t you do it without?

Also be prepared to be quizzed on your own project, a viva is also there to make sure that you did your own project. I’d recommend re-reading your whole final paper again just to refresh the project.

I found a very handy link which has more information about project vivas here http://www.stars.rdg.ac.uk/viva.html

Final year project/dissertation

I’ve successfully handed in my final year project/dissertation; I would have loved to read a blog about what is involved in creating an artefact/paper. I won’t be talking about the paper itself, more about the workload and how much time it takes.

I have 4 units each year, for us we only had 150/400% grades for the final year project (dissertation, viva, poster day and artefact itself). This meant that while I was doing the final year project I had exams and other assignments to be doing. Comparing to other universities that do the same course, it’s also sometimes 100% focus on 1 artefact in the final year. This makes it much more impressive for the portfolio as you have more time spent on it, but on the other hand there is a lot more pressure to pick the right topic.

That being said, even though it was less than half of the years mark, I would not under estimate the workload that is involved. I was very confident in the software and actually producing the artefact, but when it came to writing the dissertation I was basically on everyone else’s level.  My final paper was overall around 90 pages. It’s very daunting to think that you need to write that amount and keep good quality throughout the report. It’s not something you can do last minute. Generally when it came to assignments I did like to leave it late, but for this there is paper I had to make sure I was on schedule throughout the project. I was still working on it the day before it was due in, but only trivial. I’d say about 80% of people I knew where only starting the main thesis days/less than a week before it was due. I started months before but slowly started adding stuff as I went along. I would strongly recommend that you keep a personal blog post on your final year project. A few reasons for this:

•           It’s a perfect place to keep backups, access them wherever you are.
•           Good for informal notes and errors you encounter.
•           Easier to keep in contact with your supervisor, it’s an easy place to showcase your work.
•           Keeping a personal blog is fun in general; I’ve had a lot of success with my own with plenty of career opportunities out of it.

I personally had backups of my work on multiple cloud storage spaces, multiple hard drives and constant backups being made after every change in the project. I handed my final year project in last week.  

http://it-ca.net/blogsean/?page_id=1244

My final artefact can be found here, I may release my final year report too, depending on results.