Deliverable: Report or Dissertation
The final report or dissertation forms a major part of your final mark. It should:
- demonstrate that you understand your work
- convince the markers that the work is interesting and worthwhile
- critically reflect on the project and what was achieved
- be understandable to any CS staff—your second marker will probably not be a specialist in your field
- be well-structured, clear and informative, demonstrate understanding of the topic and related work, and not be overly verbose
The final report should take the following general form, including certain sections specific to particular project types. You should draft an early outline of the structure and discuss this with your supervisor before writing large parts of the report. Keep in mind when reading example reports from previous years that these guidelines have changed over time. Aim to produce a draft of the entire report in time to receive feedback from your supervisor.
General report structure
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Title page | Title of the project, your name, student ID, “University of St Andrews”, the title of your degree programme, and the date of submission. You may add the name of your supervisor if you wish. If you are doing a group dissertation, this should be indicated explicitly, with the names of the other students. |
| Abstract | Outline of the project using at most 250 words. |
| Declaration | Insert the following text, replacing the placeholders as appropriate: I hereby certify that this dissertation, which is approximately [insert word count] words in length, has been composed by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a degree. This project was conducted by me at the University of St Andrews from [insert month/year] to [insert month/year] towards fulfilment of the requirements of the University of St Andrews for the degree of [insert degree title] under the supervision of [insert name]. In submitting this project report to the University of St Andrews, I give permission for it to be published online. I retain the copyright in this work. [insert date] [insert signature] If applicable, include details of pre-approved use of generative AI tools above the date and signature. If there is a strong case for the protection of confidential data, the parts of the declaration giving permission for its publication may be omitted by prior permission of the Projects Coordinator. |
| Contents page | Table of contents, including page numbers. |
| Introduction | Describe the problem you set out to solve and the extent of your success in solving it. You should include the aims and objectives of the project in order of importance and outline key aspects of your project for the reader to look for in the rest of your report. |
| Background | Explain any relevant concepts that the reader needs to understand, citing any relevant literature. You may also describe potentially useful tools and technologies here. |
| Context survey | Survey the context of the problem: citing, discussing and comparing any work in this area with similar aims reported in textbooks, research papers, or in publicly available software. You may also wish to position your project within the literature here. |
| Sections specific to particular project types here. | |
| Evaluation and critical appraisal | Evaluate your own work with respect to your original objectives. You should also critically evaluate your work relative to related work discussed in the context survey. |
| Conclusions and further work | Summarise your project, emphasising your key achievements and significant drawbacks to your work, and discuss future directions your work could be taken in. |
| References | Present your bibliography in a consistent format, including DOIs, and hyper-linked URLs and ‘accessed on’ dates for online sources. No particular citation style is mandated, but a commonly used style should be adopted. |
| Appendix: ethics | Include the ethics section of your DOER, and the full ethics application and ‘favourable opinion’ letter if applicable. |
| Appendix: optional further material | If appropriate, you may include other material in appendices which are not suitable for inclusion in the main body of your report. |
Appendices should be used for material that documents your work, is relevant, but does not need to be in the main body of the report. The main body should stand on its own. You should not include software listings in your project report, unless it is appropriate to discuss small sections in the main body of your report. Code and associated material will be submitted separately to MMS.
Report length
There is no explicit word limit for undergraduate reports (BSc and MSci). However, conciseness is desirable, and it will usually not be necessary to go over 15,000 words. If you show a draft to your supervisor, they will be able to give you guidance on whether you are giving an appropriate level of detail for your particular project. The project library contains projects with word counts as low as 6,000, all of which achieved excellent grades.
There is a hard 15,000 word limit on all MSc dissertations. This is a maximum, not a target to be aimed for. The word limit includes everything except the title page, abstract, declaration/acknowledgements, table of contents and bibliography. This includes all appendices except ethics.
Group dissertations
Group project dissertations must be written independently by each group member. Such dissertations are processed via Turnitin in the normal way, and any similarities with dissertations of other group members will be treated in the same way as for individual projects. If you wish, you can include jointly-written material that is clearly and explicitly identified as such in the dissertation, but keep in mind that the fact that it was jointly-written will be taken into account by your markers.