CSE 260 Research Projects

One of the goals of CSE 260 is to teach you how to conduct research. A research project is a formal requirement of the course and counts for 45% of your grade. A project may be done individually or in teams of two. You should allow 5 weeks to complete it. Your project grade will be based on your successful completion of the following 3 parts:

1. Project proposal: due week 4, Tuesday 1/29 (1/10 of the project grade)
2. Progress report: due week 7, Thursday 2/21 (electronic, 1/10 of the project grade)
3. In class presentation: during week 10. Bring hard copies of your slides to class. (2/10 of your project grade)
4. Final Report: due Friday, March 14th at 5PM, in EBU3B 3244 (Hard copy and electronic).
   Be sure to read Turnin instructions (6/10 of your project grade)

Here are descriptions of some projects that I’m currently interested in. If you have an idea for a project not listed here, let me know and we can talk about what you have in mind.

Your project proposal should address the following issues.

1. What are the goals of your project? Are they realistic?
2. What is your hypothesis?
3. What result(s) do you want to demonstrate?
4. What are the significance of the results?
5. What is your experimental method?
6. What code will you have to implement? Briefly describe any software packages or previously written software that you will be relying on.

The progress report will help keep you on a steady pace and enable you to make mid-course corrections. The report should

1. discuss your progress to date. If you are working in a team, include a self-evaluation discussing the division of labor and other aspects of how you worked together as a team team (A copy of the form is available in html)
2. revise any milestones and completion dates that you established previously, including an explanation.

In evaluating your proposal and progress report I will check to see if your goals are realistic. A realistic project that is completed successfully will likely receive a higher grade than one that is too ambitious and doesn't get finished. Results alone are not adequate. You need to interpret them. If you have any questions about this, be sure and see me. If you do have an ambitious design, we can work together to set realistic goals. The project should be a polished piece of work.

Submit your Final report in hard copy form and electronically (e.g. html with ASCII and other attachments). I will give you instructions on how to submit an electronic copy later in the quarter. The report should be a polished piece of work.

Sample Projects from previous years