[  http://web.cs.dal.ca/~vlado/ecmm6000/project.html  ] Fall 2011 (Sep8-Dec7) Faculty of Computer Science Dalhousie University

ECMM 6000 - Course Project

The objective of the project is to allow students to explore in more depth an e-commerce topic or problem. The components of project activity include research on published and known work, analyzing and organizing findings, optionally coordinating with other team member(s), designing, developing and implementing solutions, presenting results, and preparing the final report.

Project can be done individually, or in teams of up to three students.

Regarding presentation dates, please take a look at the free time slots on the course calendar and let me know by email your preference. Use subject line "ECMM6000 Project Presentation Slot". The presentations will be scheduled based on first-come-first-served basis. The presentations are individual, and they will last 10-15 minutes, with 5 minutes reserved for questions.

Deliverables

• P0 - project topic, by email, as soon as possible but before Thursday, Oct 13, 2011,
• P1 - a project statement, due on Thursday, Nov 10, 2011,
• Oral presentation, and
• Project Report, due Wednesday, Dec 7, 2011.

P0 - Project Topic

Worth: 1% of the final mark.

Send me your project topic, or tentative title, one paragraph description, and the list of team members by e-mail (if there is a team). Please do this as soon as you have chosen topic. If two or more projects have the same or very similar topic, the one that sends P0 later will have to change the topic. Use the email subject line "ECMM6000 P0 Project Topic". There should be one P0 email per team. You email message should be a plain-text message with no attachements.

P1 - Project Statement

Worth: 5% of the final mark.

The project statement has to be printed, and should be about 2 pages long. It must include:

• Names of the member(s) of the group,
• Project title,
• Problem statement,
• List of possible approaches with references to relevant work,
• Project plan for the rest of the term, and
• List of references.

P – Oral Presentation

Duration: The presentations should last 10-15 minutes, with 5 additional minutes reserved for questions and speaker switch. Presentations are individual, even if you are a member of a team.

Content: You have quite free choice about the content of the presentation, but it should be related to the project. It could be the work you have done up to that time, or simply what you plan to do. It is a good idea to include research or other related work that you did so far. You could also present a related method from the textbook or another paper.

Evaluation scheme for presentations:

• content: how interesting and valuable is the presentation, appropriateness of the topic, appropriateness for the audience and the time allocated,
• presentation: clarity, eye contact with the audience; it should be vivid, interesting; it is not a good idea to read from paper, or from slides; avoid looking too much to the slides rather than to the audience; organization and structure of the presentation; appropriate length (being on time),
• slides: organization of the presentation; slides content: appropriate amount of text, use of figures,
• question answering: listening and answering the questions being asked, appropriate answers, answering the actual question to the point, but not going into a too lengthy additional discussion.

R – Project Report

Worth: 24% of the final mark.

The written project report is submitted in printed and electronic form. It is checked for plagiarism, but not by submitting to any third-party sites. The printed report is kept in archive with the instructor for several years.

A typical structure of a research project is:

• Title, Author(s), Course name,
• Abstract – make sure it is an abstract of the whole paper and not just a part of the introduction. The abstract should be brief, definitely not longer than a half of a page.
• Introduction – introduce the problem; get a reader's attention; explain motivation and significance of the problem. It is said that the title, abstract, introduction, and the whole paper should in a way express the same story in 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000 words, respectively.
• Related Work – cover related work. Has this topic been studied yet? Do not just give an annotated list, Give a critical analysis of the previous work.
• Problem Definition and Methodology – there is no good research without a research problem. Define it precisely.
• (optional) Experiment Design.
• Evaluation, validation, or discussion.
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendices

General Guidelines Regarding Project Topic

You can chose different types of projects, such as:

• Research project with focus on a research problem. You can develop and evaluate your own solution to the problem.
• Practical idea about a Web site. Design the site, build a prototype, and analyze it (advantages, limitations).
• Explore an e-commerce topic in more depth. Write a survey of the area. Provide your own insight, predictions, and ideas.
• Examine a software tool, on-line service, or methodology used in E-commerce; describe your findings.