Term Project Abstract

Abstract Guidelines

Each group must submit a project abstract of no more than one page, describing an outline of the chosen topic. Note that you do have flexibility and you can deviate from your original plan, but any major changes will require that you submit a new abstract. Note also that a well written abstract should be reusable as part of your final report.

Some helpful guidelines to the preparation of a well written abstract are available in this PowerPoint document.

Project Pitch and Draft Abstract

Prior to submitting the full abstract, you must obtain the approval of the TAs and instructor for your topic and proposed approach. To do this, you will submit a draft abstract and give a two-to-three-minute in-class "project pitch."

For the "project pitch," think of yourselves as Hollywood scriptwriters (but without the drug habit), trying to convince a studio that they should fund your film. In other words, you have a short amount of time (approximately one minute per team member) to convince us that:

• you've done some preliminary research into the topic
• you know what you're doing
• each team member has a specific contribution to make
• the proposed project is interesting and (dare we say?) exciting!

Since we're not really Hollywood studio directors, but rather, a bunch of computer geeks, we're expecting a solid technical statement of the problem and approach, rather than a theatrical song-and-dance number.

Each team member should have something to say in the mini-presentation, in particular, offering a brief summary of their proposed contribution to the project. While the specific contributions are expected to evolve over the next few weeks, figuring out how the project tasks will be divided among the team is an important step that you should consider seriously before the abstract is written.

The project pitch will likely be based on your draft abstract, which should describe, albeit briefly:

• background of the general problem and statement of what you will accomplish ("what?")
• your approach, typically a high-level breakdown of the problem ("how?")
• what makes the project interesting or challenging ("why?")
• how you will evaluate your success ("validation")
• your reference source(s) for the project (you should have at least one good reference that provides a sufficient description for you to generate your design),

Submission Procedure

Both the draft and final abstract must be submitted by posting in the myCourses discussion group in vanilla ASCII format only. No MS-Word, PDF, postscript, or other attachments of any form will be accepted. Make sure to provide the names of your group members at the top of your abstract. Some examples of abstracts from previous years are available. These are of mixed quality so should not necessarily be viewed as a suggested template. You are urged to begin your literature search and thinking about possible topics as soon as possible. If you are unsure about a topic, please consult us.

Format

• Team: Names of group members.
• Title: Meaningful and concise project title.
• Abstract: Clear and concise overview and specifications of your topic in 150-200 words.
• References: List a few significant sources of information from your research (books, magazines, papers, conference proceedings, application notes etc.) Follow the standard format for quoting references used in IEEE papers or textbooks. For information obtained from the Internet, it is insufficient to simply write the link address. You must state the document titles and their authors pointed to by the links.

Last updated on 1 Sept 2007
by Jeremy Cooperstock