Deliverable: DOER

Declarations

Give your project title and project type, complete the AI declaration, sign and date, and get your supervisor to sign and date.

You are not permitted to use generative AI tools at any stage of your project—including planning, research, analysis, drafting and final deliverables—except where at least one of the following applies:

• the use is explicitly permitted in your disability support plan
• the use is permitted under the Policy on Language Correction
• the use has been approved in advance by the Projects Coordinator—such approval will only be granted for projects in which generative AI forms a core aspect, and will not be granted where the project could reasonably be completed without it

Incidental exposure to AI-generated content (for example, AI-generated summaries in search engine results) does not constitute use of generative AI for the purposes of this policy, provided such content is not incorporated into your work.

Any use of generative AI under one of the exceptions above must be explicitly documented in the Declaration section of your final report/dissertation, stating which exception applies and describing how the tool was used.

Description

The title and a short description of the project aims, context and background. It should explain the big picture of what you would like to achieve, why it is important, and how you intend to go about doing it (e.g. by using some kind of technology or developing a new algorithm, or following a particular methodology, etc.)

Objectives

This is a list of clearly defined, measurable goals you intend to achieve by the end of your project. This could include any software artifacts you intend to submit in the end, results of an evaluation (for surveys or research algorithms), etc. Your performance will be measured against these objectives.

Typically, you will list about 3–5 primary objectives which are necessary for a project to be deemed successful, and further 3 or so secondary objectives which allow a successful project to be extended in an interesting direction. Occasionally, tertiary objectives may also be listed, but these are comparatively rare.

Ethics

For guidance on completing the Ethics section, see the ethics documentation, and the relevant project induction slides, which are linked from each of the module-specific project pages (which are themselves linked at the end of this page).

If you also need to submit a full ethics application or amendment, you are very strongly advised to do so as early as possible.

Resources & risks

This includes a list of any special resources your project will need: hardware, software, licenses, access to infrastructure, external access to School servers, etc. Think ahead, but be realistic – the School may not be able to meet all requests. Listing a resource here will not automatically notify the Systems team, so you should also proactively contact them via cs-support@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Most projects can be completed using standard school equipment, in which case this section will contain only a short statement confirming this.

See also: DOER examples. Note that these examples were written before the current DOER template form was published.

You must also note any significant risks to the success of the project, such as reliance on a dataset that you don’t yet have. Your fall-back plan must mitigate any such risks (e.g. using an alternative dataset). If this is not feasible then you need to redesign your project. It is unlikely that any deadline extension will be granted where the request is based on such an identified risk having arisen, or where that risk should reasonably have been identified at the start of the project.