Resources
Handbook
The
Course Handbook is the guide to the course. It contains the details of what is expected of students in their Honors project. This year, some significant changes have been made to the assessment items, and the handbook is being updated to reflect these changes. The handbook therefore will be released in three volumes:
- Vol - I (available here) covers the Timeline and the Preliminaries.
- Vol - II (available here) covers Preliminary Report.
- Vol - III (available here) covers the rest of the chapters.
Templates
Project Proposal
Project proposal template is available in
Word and
. We recommend using the latter as it generates more professional typesetting due to its better justification and hyphenation algorithm.
When you submit your proposal, you must also fill up the Proposal Information Sheet (text file) and submit it to the ECS Submission System. Note that all information from this form should come from your proposal, so fill this up after you have completed the proposal. You can download the information sheet
here.
Preliminary Report
You can use the project proposal template to write your preliminary report. Use either
Word or
template. We recommend using the latter as it generates more professional typesetting due to its better justification and hyphenation algorithm.
Final Report
The new final report template uses a two-column format derived from the IEEE journal style. Use either
Word or
template. We recommend using the latter as it generates more professional typesetting due to its better justification and hyphenation algorithm.
Marking Rubrics
You may refer to the following marking rubric when preparing your reports, presentation, and artifact demonstration:
Health and Safety Documents
Once you have been allocated a project, you will need to consider the health and safety aspects of your project at the time you are writing your proposal. Please take a look at the following forms and fill them up accordingly once you have clarity about the activities that you would be undertaking during your project:
For projects with medium or high risk, please get in touch with the School Safety Officer (Roger Cliffe <roger.cliffe@ecs.vuw.ac.nz>) as soon as possible. You will need to submit the appropriate forms to the ECS Submission System on or before 31 Mar 2023 23:59 (passed).
Ethics
The university has a
Human Ethics Committee that governs research and teaching with people as participants. If you plan to do any structured work involving people, you need to comply with the policies and guidelines.
Application
Applications are made in
ResearchMaster using your VUW credentials (not ECS). If you still do not have access, then download the
Access to Ethics Online Applications form (Word), complete the details and email it to
ResearchMaster-Help@vuw.ac.nz or
ethicsadmin@vuw.ac.nz
Due to the potentially long approval process, you are encouraged to submit your ethics application as early as possible (i.e., at the moment you and your supervisor have agreed about the need to involve human participants in your project.) Note that this process is outside ECS and is at the university level.
Ethics Approval for Software Usability Testing
ECS has approval for Usability Testing across a range of 300- and 400-level courses from 2021 to 2024 inclusive. Any usability testing under this approval must meet all the conditions in the following application, and use the following approved information sheet:
If you wish to do more extensive testing, conduct surveys, interact with children, recruit external participants, implant electrodes, or publish your results outside the project, you will need to make your own application to the committee.
Agreements
Industry Project Collaboration Agreement
If your project has external/industry collaborator(s) (entity outside VUW), you will need to submit the external collaboration agreement. Please use this
template. You will need to submit a soft-copy of the completed agreement to the ECS Submission System (under Agreement) on or before 31 Mar 2023 23:59 (passed).
Standard Student IP Agreement
If your project would likely lead to the creation of intellectual property with commercial value, you are encouraged to sign the student IP agreement. Please use this
template. Please consult your supervisor before signing this agreement. Your supervisor will have to witness the agreement. Softcopy of signed IP agreement should be submitted to the ECS Submission System (under Agreement) on or before 31 Mar 2023 23:59 (passed).
