Independent Study Guidelines

I love supervising undergraduate students in independent studies. I've found it useful over the years to develop some guidelines, and here they are. Please feel free to contact me with any questions: ferguson@cs.rochester.edu.

Before You Start

So you've got an idea that you think would make a good independent study. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself:

Registration Requirements

In order to sign up for an independent study, we need the following items:
  1. A title for your project: While this seems trivial, in fact it is important. Since it appears on your transcript, it's a chance to say something that will really catch a recruiter's or admissions committee's attention. Speaking from personal experience, Agent Team Coordination or Robotic Musical Chairs really sticks out amid the sea of Calculus I and Intro to Programming listings.
  2. A short description of your project: On the order of a paragraph. Anything longer can also be attached, but you should be able to be pithy.
  3. A timeline with milestones: You need to develop a reasonable schedule for your work. Milestones along the way (at least monthly) help us make sure things are on track and detect problems in a timely manner. Milestones can be changed, but by having a schedule at least we'll be forced to talk about it before the end of term. Be realistic! Your last milestone should be turning in a final report for the project on the last day of classes.

I can help you with these, but you should probably try to sketch them out before coming to me. If you answered the questions above, you should have no problem doing it.

You also need to register for the course and do whatever paperwork is required by the department. Check with the CSC Undergraduate Coordinator well ahead of time.

Writing Your Final Report

For the report, it doesn't have to be too detailed, but it should read like a research paper or technical report. You can find samples of these on my website or on the department website. Be professional.

The overall structure should be something like the following:

It is very important to include properly formatted references where applicable.

Using LaTeX and BibTeX makes things look nice and is worth learning anyway if you don't know it, but it's not a requirement.

This may sound like a lot, but you will have already done some of the introduction in the proposal. The whole needn't be more than, say, 10 pages, but less than, say, 6 would probably indicate lack of effort.

Deliver a PDF via email. If your project involves developing programs, make arrangements to give a demonstration and get me the code (both before the deadlines).

Self-Assessment

At the end of the project, I will ask you to give yourself a grade for your work. You can provide a short justification as well. I try not to look at that before reading your report and deciding on a grade myself. The final decision is mine, of course.


Last change: 21 Feb 2019