Project Information

All deliverables are submitted electronically via Mycourses by the beginning of class on the date due, unless otherwise noted/arranged. 

The research project (RP) will give you experience in pursuing a research topic.  Rather than one grade at the end of the term, you will turn in drafts and pieces of the portfolio over time.  The RP as a whole is an electronic 'binder' that includes all info and work conducted as your work through the research process.  Each 'tab' or part of your research binder is listed below. If you have papers that are not in digital form, then please submit them separately (they will be returned).

The 'tabs' for your research portfolio that will be reviewed at the end of the term are: 

• Topic Summary
• Research Proposal Draft
• Relevant Papers
• Overview Papers
• Annotated Bibliography

The sections are described in various areas below, in terms of each of the deliverables expected during the class.

Deliverable 1: Problem Statement

After you narrow your research interests to one topic, you need to provide a Problem Statement for approval. This problem statement should clearly and concisely describe the issue you are trying to address. Your problem statement should be no more than 1-2 paragraphs in length.

It is expected that you have discussed the topic and problem statement with your advisor and obtained their approval. Your advisor should have also reviewed at least a draft copy of your problem statement and signed the signature sheet.

After this is handed back to you, include it in your Research Portfolio. See the course slides for the specific contents of the Problem Statement. You must use Latex to create this, and all subsequent project deliverables.

Deliverable 2: Literature Review Process Work

The literature review artifacts are comprised of multiple components, filtered into several categories to help you refer to them later.  These categories are: 

• The Overview Papers directory contains copies of papers that help provide an overview with your topic area.
• The Relevant Papers directory contains copies of papers that relate specifically to related work in your research area.

A few notes about this submission:

• The submission should be in essay format. Follow the same format as in the Related Works sections of many of the papers you've been reading.
• Have a relevant title, not something like "Literature Review". The title should reflect the focus of your proposed research.
• Begin your submission with a 1-2 paragraph overview of your intended work. This will provide context to your submission
• Be sure to provide ample information about the examined related works. Do more than merely mention them and say a terse sentence about them. 3-4 sentences are typically required to provide sufficient information about a related work.
• Add in a brief analysis of how the discussed work differs from the work you are proposing. You can also describe how your proposed work will build upon this previous research. You should use 1-3 sentences to do this.
• At a minimum, you should plan on including at least ten full (approximately 10 page) papers in your review. If you cannot find ten submissions, you are likely not looking hard enough or you have not selected a popular enough area.
• This (like all submissions) should be in pdf format
• Include links in proper MLA/APA format.
• Paper should be written in ACM/IEEE format.

Sample format

Krawitz [4] and Roy et al. [10] both explicitly defined clones of all four types in a small controlled environment. However, these works only specified a small number of clones which were artificially created. In 2002, Bailey and Burd [2] formed a manually verified clone data set which was used to compare three of the leading clone techniques at the time. This data has been criticized due to its validation subjectivity and its relatively small size. Bellon et al. [1] compared a set of code clone detection tools using a single researcher to manually verify the clones, but never publicly released all the discovered code clones [10].

[1] S. Bellon, R. Koschke, G. Antoniol, J. Krinke, and E. Merlo. Comparison and evaluation of clone detection tools. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 33(9):577–591, 2007.
[2] E. Burd and J. Bailey. Evaluating clone detection tools for use during preventative maintenance. In Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Workshop on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM ’02, pages 36–, Washington, DC, USA, 2002. IEEE Computer Society
[4] R. M. Krawitz. Code Clone Discovery Based on Functional Behavior. PhD thesis, Nova Southeastern University, 2012.
[10] C. K. Roy, J. R. Cordy, and R. Koschke. Comparison and evaluation of code clone detection techniques and tools: A qualitative approac

Deliverable 3: Proposal Draft

While you will be working through a research topic that you may or may not ultimately pursue experience report, you will write a research proposal draft for your chosen topic. You will submit an initial draft for this deliverable, and the final draft at the end of the term. All drafts will be typed, and written in the appropriate style.  Also don't forget to use an appropriate format (ACM/IEEE).  The final draft should be maximum 10 pages, minimum 5 pages, in ACM/IEEE format.  Initially the SE faculty will be your audience for your capstone or thesis work, but you should write for a general technical audience that is familiar with SE but perhaps not all of the low-level issues that you will be researching.  Be detailed, and be sure that the scope of your proposed work is clearly defined.  The required sections are: 

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Research Objective
4. Research Question(s)/Hypothesis
5. Literature Review. This can be similar to the prior submission, but should not be a copy and paste of this submission. For example, you will want to make sure that you format the literature review to be much like the Related Works section of the publications that you've been reading.
6. Limitations and threats to your work
7. Significant challenges you will need to overcome
8. Detailed Plan to conduct research. This may also be thought of as your data collection process.
9. Detailed Plan to evaluate your research. This may also be thought of as your data analysis process.

Deliverable 4: Final RP Package

This deliverable, consisting of the most up-to-date version of the proposal and the poster, will be graded as a unit at the end of the course. While drafts of materials were due earlier in the term, it is expected that you continue work on your portfolio until the due date. Your proposal should be in ACM/IEEE format, with proper citations and should be at least 5 pages, not counting citations.

Research Poster Presentation

At the end of the term each student will present their proposed project in the form of a poster and a brief (3-5 minute) presentation.

It is expected that your advisor has reviewed and approved your proposal and signed the signature sheet.