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

Poster day

I personally had no idea what to expect when going in for poster day. All we was told to do is print / create a poster about our artefact and final year dissertation.

This was my final poster

The above is my final poster that I designed for my project. We was asked to print this poster in A1 both for the poster day and the final year project VIVA. The first recommendation would be set money aside for printing. Printing A1 and colour costs around £20 (if laminated) but really depends where you go. 

The day itself, it was a lot different to what I expected. Basically it was an informal event where people walked around and just asked questions about my project. There was also a film crew there that interviewed me.  

They generally asked trivial questions and nothing really specific and technical about the project. This was the same with everyone, the odd person wanted to know some specifics, but generally they all wanted the same overview of the project. We all had computers with the artefact loaded up on them. It made it easier to showcase the poster. I noticed the games students had a slimier thing and everyone had their project loaded up. Although I didn’t walk around every room, there was some people in which a computer wouldn’t help showcase the project.

Lastly I what would have been great information for me is that there is no audio on the computers you are showcasing your project on. Luckily the audio wasn’t really the main aspect of my final year project. That being said, I did have my video loaded on my tablet if anyone did want to hear the audio for it. I gave my mobile phone headphones to a student whose animation was a music video. He got much more use out of audio than what I would have done.

Applying To University - My Experience

This is my first blog post on here, so I’m going to start with a little introduction about myself and my university application process. So at this moment in time I’m a Microsoft Student Partner, a Third year Computer Science student in Computer Animation. I will not disclose the university names that I applied for mostly because I don’t want to alter your university decision as you should apply for a university based on your personal course and preference. 

I applied for 4 universities while in sixth form. I got accepted to 3 of the 4 universities I chose. Being accepted into one of them involved doing a written exam and interview. The exam was about an hour long and generally job interview style questions. Although there was a practical test. We had to draw something in a few minutes which was contrasting. So I actually drew an elephant on a bicycle. It wasn't the artistic skills they was looking for but more the fact that you can be creative and think on the spot. This shows that getting adequate grades won’t confirm your place at university. That being said, I got accepted, but I decided not to got there because of the machine OS and their primary software focus.

Another university I got accepted at looked amazing from the outside. Contrastingly inside was completely out dated. Paint was pealing from the walls. Both hardware and software needed huge upgrade all round.

Machines that looked like this running Win95 in the room...

Now at the University of Bedfordshire there was up to date hardware and software. I’m giving my honest opinion here, I’m not being biased but for me it was perfect. It was the only university that had good motion capture technology and it used software that I had prior experience with.

Learn from my mistakes! Attend as many open days as possible. Know exactly what you want from the course, especially in a computer science degree. In this field, courses are named very vaguely. Game Development can mean primarily Photoshop/3D editing. On the other hand it main flash/2D based so it's very important you know what your getting into!