Read This If You Don’t Want Your Academic Project To Be A Failure…

Let’s start with a disclaimer: I am not a project planning industry expert neither a certified scrum master. I’m just a professor who’s been in teaching for more than two decades evaluating projects, taking vivas…. giving suggestions for project improvement with a hope that one day I will meet ‘ Baba Rancho (3 Idiots )’.

“ To mention that, from the day of your graduation to job joining, your academic project plays a significant role. Generally, the three things that judge you in your job interview are your internship, your academic CGPA, and most importantly your final year project.”

However to a great disappointment today, there is an attitudinal change in the way students undertake and complete their final year project. Students fail to understand that when they appear for campus placement the first thing recruiters prefer in them is their academic project. Hence it is more important for their career. While finalizing the final year engineering project, around 93% of students think of working with something novel, unique cutting edge technology but, by the time their project completes what they eventually land up doing is hardly anything close to it. The cool and awesome proposed apps (Android Application, Startup Ideas)that they thought their team would create when they become an engineer remain just plans.

What causes this gap? Is there a way to bridge it?

In this article, based on the author's experience as an evaluator for the topmost project competition at National Level, the article addresses what not to do while selecting and completing a final year project (Engineering ) along with a few tips and guidelines.

Hastily selecting a research topic.

Experienced researchers note that “a topic in which you are only vaguely interested at the start is likely to become a topic in which you have no interest and with which you will fail to produce your best work”. It is important for you to choose a research area that is interesting to you professionally, as well as, personally. In addition your research area should relate to your future career path and potentially contribute to the achievement of your career objectives. Selecting the research area is the very first step in writing your dissertation. This decision cannot be made in haste. Ideally, you should start considering different options at the beginning of the term.

While deciding on a topic here are a few things that you will need to consider.

1. Choose the domain that interests you (It’s OK ! ). Please do not go with something who’s A, B, C ……you aren’t aware of. So choose your final year project in your interested area. If you are a good programmer and you are interested in coding, choose the software projects. Likewise, if you are interested in doing activities in kit equipment, it is perfect to choose hardware project domains and wireless communication projects.
2. Narrow down your search by choosing a topic related to your major specialization that will enable you to read and understand the literature. Ensure that the topic is manageable and that material is available. Here is a list of some top software projects domain: Data Mining Projects, Image Processing Projects, Internet of Things (IoT) Projects, Grid computing Projects, Cloud Computing and Security. Here is a list of top embedded projects: Robotics Projects, Automotive Projects, Biometric Projects, Arduino Projects, Raspberry Pi Projects.
3. Visit the Departmental or Institute library where you can find previous year submitted project reports. See what has been done and submitted by your seniors.
4. Sort around 10 -15 projects that sound interesting or familiar to you in terms of interest, area, technology or functionality.
5. You can then go through the project abstract, results and future scope. Go through the future scope mentioned in the project report and find out whether any progress has been carried on the topic mentioned if it sounds interesting to you. You can also contact the team members and discuss their learning about the same.

Developing a substandard project.

Do you remember all that stuff that you read for the exam you wrote a few months ago? Probably not. But you will definitely remember a lot of things if you have done a project on the subject on your own. The final year engineering project is crucial. Projects encourage students to dig deeper & help us learn new things. Projects help us become better learners and better engineers. However, a report from the WORKING GROUP ON ENGINEERING EDUCATION mentions overall degradation in the quality of engineers graduated. 8/10 submitted projects submitted lack innovation, novelty and most important usability. Almost 93–95 % of the projects pile up in the department library and never go live or are hosted. What is the use of developing something which is going to find a place in a cupboard?

In order to avoid your project piling up in a cupboard do this :

1. Keep it Simple: The topic needn’t be extraordinary or extremely simplistic in its outlook. The project is designed to test and supplement your knowledge and as such, it should be of interest to you and related to your current field of study or work as this will help you to gain more understanding from the project. So initially propose a simple and gradually you can move to more complex ones.
2. Keep it original not a copy: Referring to seniors programs and journals are different from taking or purchasing an old software/hardware project. Yes students can take guidance from their senior friends or work on the future scope of a built-in project under the same guide if permitted. However changing the GUI or the look and feel doesn’t make it a new project. Do not buy or take seniors/friends’ projects.
3. The Project Guide Selection 👩‍🎓: Generally students on seniors advise prefer selecting a guide who is easy to go for submission thus compromising on the quality of the project.

Remember: By doing so you are limiting the capabilities that will cost you in the long run. Thus the choice of the guide is important since it is the guide who would be your primary source of knowledge about the topic at hand and/or the company under study. The guide would also help you to gain a deeper understanding as you go along with the project and their help should be sought with gusto.
Kindly note: The guide should be well qualified with a minimum postgraduate level qualification. Try and avoid choosing guides who are not directly involved with either the company or the topic under study if you really want to do good project work.

4.The Conduct: Once the topic has been chosen, you then need to ensure that the methodology of conducting your project and the tools that you will apply need to be in sync with the topic at hand and that using them will not be too difficult for you. Even simple tools like a questionnaire and the analysis of the subsequent data collected in excel would give you a lot of understanding if used properly. Again, please keep in mind that the evaluator is looking for original work and sincere efforts. Your project should not just be based upon research from the internet and a subsequent printout. Some primary research surveys can be conducted to bring uniqueness to your work before finalizing the topic/title and project scope.

5. Upgrade your skills: If the project that you want to do demands that you learn new software or a new programming language, don’t hesitate to learn it well in advance. Plan for it in the third year itself. Overnight you cannot develop a new project in a language that you don’t know.

6.Title of the Project: Keep it broad and vague rather than very specific because after one year you may or may not get the expected results. In that case you are safe. Maintainability: The software should evolve to meet the changing demands of the clients.

Unbalanced Project Team🧑‍🤝‍🧑👭

A project team is a group of people working towards a common goal with a common purpose and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. However when it comes to forming a project group, students form a group with their friends (irrespective of what they know, their abilities and technical skills ) which later creates a problem. Ya it’s good to have your friends in your project group but they need to be active team members rather than sleeping partners.

While forming a project team kindly take into consideration these tips.

1. Make a team of a maximum of 5 members.
2. Avoid all girls or all boys team, go for gender equity.
3. Have 2 Member with excellent knowledge of programming /technologies (Java, Python, or Web Technology, Android) also good in UI Design.
4. Have 2 Members with sound domain/core knowledge having fundamental clarity in understanding of the concepts required in the selected area like if the project is in Security he/she should be knowing concepts related to Cryptography, Digital Signature, Security protocols, and security mechanism, etc. They should have the ability to grasp and relate the theoretical concepts into programming.
5. At least one member shall have excellent presentation skills and be a good communicator who can very well explain the project in front of the jury/examiners. Also having expertise in technical writing and documentation. So that all the work related to presentation and documentation can be assigned to him/her.
6. So to sum it up the project team should be balanced with a combination of students with unique abilities, competencies hard and soft skills. Rather than with one or two students doing everything thing which usually is the scenario.

Do not skip the literature review/existing work.

Once a student has determined an area to work with for a research project, assessment of the current state of research on a topic and search of relevant information sources will help determine what is already known about the topic and how extensively the topic has already been researched. Most of the students are not aware of the literature review /survey/prior work conducted. What is actually literature review means … how to do it? Let me tell you doing a literature survey is different from reporting literature survey. Anyways for final year project report documentation both are required.

Here are a few guidelines for performing a literature review.

1. When you start looking for topic students should immediately start with the literature review.
2. Avoid websites containing no source information rather look for recent (last 5 years, 10 years) engineering / scientific research papers, published research papers in “established” journals, peer-reviewed conferences or survey or review articles.
3. Where should I look for papers?

In Databases and indexes of

– INSPEC

– Web of Science

– IEEE Xplore

– Compendex

– Scifinder

– SCOPUS

Upon completion of the literature review, a student should have a solid foundation of knowledge in the area and a good feel taking the topic ahead.

Delay Writing Project Report.

Project Documents/ Reports are often considered a block in the path of efficiently completed projects. Most students hate doing documentation. A trend that is observed is only upon the so-called completion of the project the team starts for writing a project report. Does some jugaad with the initial versions of synopsis and design report and submit it as the project report without following the standard conventions. Most of the time the UML diagrams and acknowledgment are a copy-paste.

There are various funny reasons for this I will narrate one “ One of my student(say A) didn’t write even a single page of the report owing to the fact that he was weak in English writing and had mutually agreed with the team members that he would do only coding and rest would do the documentation. But actually when the project software was completed the rest 4 members (B,C,D,E )were unable to write because they were not knowing what and how the modules were developed (A friends were only sleeping partners. It was a complete unbalanced team ). As a guide I kept on asking them when will they be showing me the draft version of the report. They kept on procrastinating it. Eventually after using “divide and conquer ” strategy I came to know about this coveted mutual agreement among the team members.Then I personally called all A,B,C,D,E and told them that its the last lap and we will blend each others weakness and complete the report. As a guide I sat with them for 2 hours daily and not only completed the report writing but also have written a publication on the project work ,which is now published in a reputed Journal.

The best strategies you should use to keep your documentation effective, efficient and timely are :

1. The team leader can assign a team member specifically for project documentation or rotate the responsibility week or month-wise.
2. Record all relevant information generated by the project: use a notebook, keep a diary or log debugging sessions.
3. Take the Time — use your calendar. Schedule 45 -60-minute blocks in your calendar each week to review and update documentation within the team.
4. Refer previous year Project Report and Project format form the guide or department library.
5. Arranging Material and Structuring the Project Report: Outline the chapters first as per the standard requirement, create separate word documents chapter wise as mentioned below. eg: 1_Ch_Introduction.doc, 2 Ch_Literature.doc ……. 10 Ch_Conclusion.doc.
6. As and when you read about a topic related to your project paste the text into the respective chapter for your later reference (you can copy-paste the link also ). Because when you sit to write most of the time get wasted surfing on the Internet with very less or rather no output, instead use the above method so that you have a lot of data that you can relate to later. Maintain and number version of the documents created.
7. Use online editing tools (Google docs, Wordpress, Onenote, etc ).
8. Write the first full draft of the report. Check the first draft through for consistency, obvious errors and omissions (e.g. figure captions missing? References still to do?) If you can get a friend to read through it critically so much the better. Revise the draft and re-check until satisfied.
9. Submit the draft version project report to the guide for corrections and modification.

From the above information, I hope that learners have understood what not to do while working and executing your final year project.

Here are some additional benefits of sincerely doing your final year project:

• A good academic project enhances your percentage of your degree of 90 to 95%. In the same way, good marks in your project work attract and diverts the interviewer’s attention to you.
• Additionally, projects that are research-based and industry-oriented tremendously increases weightage to your resume.
• This enlarges your job prospects. This favors you in the way that the industry professional always searches for an employee with good project background.
• Also, it helps you to enhance your admission for higher education in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, or in your preferred IITs with technically sound projects.
• The project period is the most energetic days of your life. So utilize that time to complete your projects fruitfully and efficiently.
• This memory lasts in you for your lifetime.

All the Best 👍👍 Happy Learning 😊

Furthermore, for any doubts, questions feel free to revert back. I’d love to hear them!

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