Postgraduate Course: Pervasive Parallelism (INFR11108)

Course Outline
School	School of Informatics	College	College of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	20	ECTS Credits	10
Summary	In this course students develop their six page MSc(R) project proposal, while engaging in a sequence of collaborative activities designed to broaden their awareness of the Pervasive Parallelism landscape, developing research critiquing and presentation skills, and building research relationships with other members of the CDT cohort. In the first phase, students will be paired and, working together, will review current research in both their own and their partner's research area. Partners will be allocated to span diverse areas. Pairs will present their findings and critique the reviewed work to the larger group of CDT students, with each student focusing on presentation of the partners material. In the second phase, students will be paired with a new partner. Each student will develop an individual six page document constituting the proposal for their emerging MSc(R) thesis. Once again, they will collaborate during this phase on presentation of the proposal with a fellow student, with each student ultimately giving the other's presentation to the group. Students will develop generic research skills that can be deployed in academic or industrial environments. Students will demonstrate their ability to develop interesting concepts and hypotheses into research proposals. The course is ultimately assessed on the content of the student's own individual research proposal.
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites		Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations	Students MUST NOT also be taking Informatics Research Review (INFR11034) OR Informatics Research Review (INFR11136) OR Informatics Research Proposal (INFR11071) OR Informatics Research Proposal (INFR11137)	Other requirements	For students on the MSc by Research in Pervasive Parallelism only.

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2017/18, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: None
Course Start	Semester 1
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 200 ( Lecture Hours 1, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10, Dissertation/Project Supervision Hours 10, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 175 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	There will be two assessment types: one formative and one summative. In respect of the former, students will present their findings during the first phase to their fellow students in the CDT. After each presentation, all members of the group submit a paragraph summarising their thoughts on the presentation and the content. The course organiser anonymises and collates these to the course webpage. Partnered students during the second phase will then collaborate to co-present each other's proposals. As before, observations from the wider group will be collated, anonymised, and posted by the course organiser, who will be particularly careful to ensure that only constructive observations are posted publicly. These individual critiques will provide the formative assessment of the course through peer observation and exchange of ideas. The summative assessment closely monitors the outcomes of the learning process and is based on the six page project proposal which will be marked based on how well the proposal covers: - Purpose: a statement of the problem to be addressed, including arguments as to why solving the problem is important, with reference to ultimate industrial or societal impact and the challenge of Pervasive Parallelism. - Background: a short description of how previous work addresses (or fails to address) this problem, leading to a rationale for the project. - Methods: A description of the methods and techniques to be used. - Evaluation: Details of the metrics by which the outcomes of the research will be evaluated. Timetable and Workplan. The proposal will be marked by the supervisor, in consultation with the second supervisor.
Feedback	Not entered
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to: Make use of a range of resources (on-line, library) to gather, analyse and critically review literature on the review subject Discuss a research topic in detail, come up with new hypotheses and deliver a corresponding report Use existing research literature to justify experimental design choices Develop a structured research proposal Analyse research proposals with particular reference to key hypotheses and methodological approaches, and show awareness of projectt/research management issues