Assignment Specification School of Computer and Engineering Sciences Module Code CO7100 Module Title Research Dissertation Assessment No

Assignment Specification
School of Computer and Engineering Sciences
Module Code
CO7100
Module Title
Research Dissertation
Assessment No
2 of 2
Weighting
85%
Title
Dissertation Report
In-Year Reassessment Offered
No
Generative Al
Allowed / See Below
Summary
The dissertation is a report on a complete piece of 09/10/25 at 13:00 (Oct 2024 cohort)
academic research, typically involving production
of an artefact, carried out independently by the
student. This task is designed to help students
apply knowledge to a new and unexplored area or
extend understanding by investigating a topic in
significant depth. It develops critical thinking, and
the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the
student’s chosen field. The dissertation reflects
real-world research and development projects,
where independent problem-solving and
innovation are essential.
Submission Date
05/02/26 at 13:00 (Feb 2025 cohort)
7-day Submission Window Allowed
Feedback Due
06/11/25 (Oct 2024 cohort)
05/03/26 (Feb 2025 cohort)

Summary 

The dissertation is a report on a complete piece of academic research, typically involving production of an artefact, carried out independently by the student. This task is designed to help students apply knowledge to a new and unexplored area or extend understanding by investigating a topic in significant depth. It develops critical thinking, and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the student’s chosen field. The dissertation reflects real-world research and development projects, where independent problem-solving and innovation are essential.

CO7100 Instructions

For more information on the details of this module, please see the teaching materials, module forum and other files and information posted on the CO7100 Moodle space. These will include (among many other useful things) details that change from year-to-year, such as lists of supervisor and student allocations, information about the Department and Faculty seminar series, and links to information about the University’s study skills web pages and training events.

You are required to undertake an approved dissertation in an area relevant to your programme of study (i.e., Cybersecurity, Computer Science or Advanced Computer Science). This must involve a major study on an area not covered by previous modules, or the application of something that you have already learned to a new situation. You will be allocated a member of staff to supervise your dissertation work, who will offer guidance and expertise. However, a level 7, master’s dissertation is an independent piece of work, and you will have to do a substantial amount of work on your own initiative.

A dissertation is a report, written in a set academic style, describing work undertaken to solve a defined problem. It should be approximately 10,000 words (± 2000 words) in length, excluding all appendices, illustrations, and software. All citations and references must be in APA style. For further details, see the CO7100 Moodle page and Academic Skills Provision for Students (ASk) pages on Portal.

Dissertation reports are graded out of 100 marks, which is then converted to a percentage.

British Computer Society Accreditation

MSc Advanced Computer Science and MSc Cybersecurity students please note that your degrees are accredited by the British Computer Society (BCS), who have specific requirements about what kinds of project are acceptable. In their words:

“Projects must include the students undertaking practical work of some sort using computing/IT technology. This is most frequently achieved by the creation of an artefact as the focus for covering all or part of an implementation lifecycle. Dissertations based solely on literature review activity and/or user/market surveys are not acceptable.”
This does not mean that your project must be highly technical, but it does mean that it must at least include, for example, detailed software designs and/or prototypes, using a recognised software development methodology. Students on other courses should note that although the BCS requirements do not apply to you, in practice it is very difficult to produce a dissertation of the standard required to pass at master’s level if you do not include any practical computer science work.

The Structure of a Dissertation Report

A dissertation is normally made up of three main parts:

Preliminaries    [Do not count towards overall word limit] Main Body    [10,000 words (± 2000 words)] Appendices    [Do not count towards overall word limit]

In a dissertation, each of these main parts may consist of several sections; the addition of appendices and the division of the main parts into sub-parts requires common sense and should be aligned with the key stages of your research. Each chapter should focus on a distinct aspect of the study and follow a logical flow, ensuring coherence and clarity. Most of the content and detailed discussion about the work you have done will feature in the Main Body section, with the Preliminaries and Appendices typically providing supporting and contextual information. To get a feel for what is required, read as many academic papers and academic textbooks as you can. Your supervisor can help you with advice about layout and formatting, as can staff from the Academic Skills Provision for Students (ASk) team.

The Preliminaries

The preliminaries may be subdivided into:

Title Page	Use the standard title page document for this year, which is available later in this document.
Abstract	The abstract is normally included with, but not numbered with, the preliminaries and no page numbers are displayed. The Abstract is a statement of the aims, methods, and results of your research. In other words, it is a short summary of the dissertation, designed to help the reader know whether the rest of the document is likely to be useful to them.
Disclaimer	The following statement must be included on the page after your abstract: “This work is original and has not been previously submitted in support of any other course or qualification”. This must be signed and dated.
Dedication	An optional element. When present the dedication should be no more than a few lines and should be placed upon its own page.
Acknowledgments	This is an opportunity to thank the people who have made your dissertation possible. Acknowledgments should be placed upon their own page and may take up several paragraphs but should not be too effusive.
Table of Contents	This should illustrate the document structure as well as providing pointers into the document. After the abstract, the Table of Contents is one of the first things your reader will look at. It should help them to understand what information your dissertation contains, and how it is structured.

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The Main Body

The Main Body of a dissertation report is divided into chapters. Each chapter should begin on a new page and have a clear title. Every chapter should have its own short introduction section, which explains how it follows on from the previous chapter, as well as a paragraph at the end which summarises the contents of the current chapter and explains how it relates to the next one.

Within a chapter, sections, subsections, and sub-subsections are given titles called sub-headings, which are designated respectively First-, second-, third-level, sub-headings.

The different levels of sub-heading are usually visually differentiated from one another, e.g. using the different formatting levels available in MS Word. Commonly, this involves systematically changing the size and style of the font used for each (sub)section header to produce a consistent effect. The purpose of subsections (and sub-headings) is to help both you and your reader see and understand the structure of your document, and to make the document easier to read and understand.

You need to make use of in-text citations, as part of good referencing practice, throughout your dissertation. You must follow the APA Guidelines, or you will lose marks.

The common chapter structure for a dissertation is (Chapters may be added or adjusted in consultation and agreement with your academic supervisor):

Introduction	An introduction to the dissertation. It should include brief descriptions of the following: · Why was the work undertaken? · What scope was given? · What were the limits imposed? · What work has already been done in the field (without duplicating your literature review, which comes later)? · An outline the problem being investigated, leading up to a statement of your hypothesis. · A summary of the remaining chapters of your dissertation, with a brief description of the contents of each.
Literature Review	Must be clearly relevant to the dissertation topic, its hypotheses, and cover your research methodology as well as the technical background to your project. Depending on your topic, you may need to include literature from other fields, covering social, legal, ethical, business, or psychological aspects, for example.
Methodology	Explains what methods you will use to prove or disprove your hypotheses. You need to provide evidence that the methodology you have chosen is appropriate for your type of project and will be effective in allowing you to test your hypotheses.
Implementation	This chapter describes the artefact (the thing) you have created may be split into several chapters, if necessary. This could involve programming, scripting, databases, web technology, or a more analytical/human-centred approach such as systems analysis or user-centred design. It should contain a clear description of what you have built / created and how, along with references back to the information in your literature review. You must make it clear how your artefact is relevant to your hypotheses. It is also important to demonstrate how you have used the course-specific you have learned during your MSc. Do not rely only on a literature review or survey without first consulting your supervisor, as these approaches are not allowed for BCS accredited courses and are extremely difficult to carry out to level 7 standard.

Testing and Results	You can only prove or disprove your hypotheses if you have carried out testing and/or theoretical analysis of some sort. This will allow you together data which can be used as evidence for your overall outcomes and conclusions. It is common to use structured forms to present the data and results. These typically involve the use of graphs, figures, tables, and so forth. Your testing methodology, test plan, results, and analysis of those results, are very important.
Discussion and Conclusion	This chapter ties together your whole dissertation. You should remind the reader of the reasons why you undertook the project, your hypotheses, as well as key points from your literature review and methodology chapters. You should summarise the work described in your implementation chapter and refer to the results described in your testing & results chapter. You can then discuss whether you have completely proved your hypotheses, partly proved them (or proved part of them), or completely disproved them. The chapter should be completed with a reflection on the importance of your results, what you have learned, and recommendations about what next steps should be taken by other researchers building on your work, often referred to as ‘future work’.
References	A list of all the references used in your dissertation report, formatted, and presented according to the APA referencing guidelines, otherwise you risk losing marks. Do not include references which have not been cited in your text. General guidance on referencing is on Moodle: https://moodle.chester.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=8125.

The Appendices

The appendices should be reserved for detailed material that would spoil the flow of the presentation that is found in the main text of the report. The appendices provide additional, supplementary material that supports and complements the main body of the dissertation. They are traditionally labelled using letters e.g. Appendix A, Appendix B, …, Appendix K, or roman numerals, e.g. Appendix I, Appendix II, …, Appendix XI. As usual, follow the APA referencing guidelines.

Examples of the kind of material usually put into appendices include (this list is not exhaustive):

• Program code listings
• Additional figures or diagrams
• Ethical approval documents
• Copies of any questionnaires or surveys
• Large Tables of data or information (these may include raw results, statistical analysis, original qualitative analysis, or extensive quotations from other authors, interview transcripts, relevant correspondence, etc.)

It’s important to ensure that everything included in the appendices is relevant to your research and enhances the overall quality and transparency of your work.

Report Presentation

It is strongly suggested that your report document is formatted according to the following conventions:

• Set the margins of the document to between 2.3cm and 2.5cm on all sides.
• Use Times New Roman or a sans-serif font (e.g. Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, Source Sans Pro) of point size 11 or 12 for the main body text content of your report. Do not use Comic Sans MS. Appendices may be exempt from this rule if the original materials are in different formats or converting them would be arduous.
• Use larger and/or bold fonts for chapter, section, and sub-section headings, and apply them consistently.
• Justify align paragraphs within the main body of the report and apply line spacing of between 1.2 and 1.5.
• Ensure page numbers appear at the bottom right corner of all pages in the main body and appendices.
• Elements in the report should be numbered and referenced accordingly. This includes chapters, sections, subsections, formulae, tables, diagrams/figures, and other artefacts.
• Formulae should be added using an equation editing tool, such as that found in Microsoft Word. For example, the third equation in Chapter 4 of a report would appear as follows:
  𝑀𝑇 = 𝑘 ∙ log2 ( 𝑆 )    (4.3)
• Tables and diagrams/figures need to include a numbered caption and should be referred to and described in the body text. All tables and figures/diagrams should be centred horizontally on the page and not have elements placed alongside them. For example, the following sample text, figure, and table might be found in Chapter 5 of a report where they are the first figure and sixth table shown so far in that chapter:

Figure 5.1: Performance Scores of Existing System and Experimental Approach Over Runtime

Figure 5.1 shows overall architecture of the approach as a block diagram, which follows what is established by Williams (2017), in addition to the inclusion of the innovate LSTM feedback loop around the Kipling transform. The data shows greater consistency in performance as time increases, with higher performance scores than existing work being attained after 125 milliseconds (ms).

Table 5.6: Comparison of Top Five Ranking Performance Scores after 200ms

Source	Performance after 200ms
Young (2020)	100.00
This Approach	100.00
Johnson (2021)	98.61
Williams (2017)	88.95
Rudd (2008)	76.08

This demonstrates that the proposed approach returns high levels of performance within approximately 200ms, placing in the top three methods encountered in the literature, summarised in Table 5.6, which shows that only the work of Young (2020) and Johnson (2021) obtain comparable outcomes to this one.

• Direct quotes are placed in quotation marks, italicised, and must be immediately followed by a citation.
• Do not use footnotes or endnotes in the report.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• Do I have to add a code base into my dissertation report?
  In addition to the PDF document of your program code, which is required for similarity checking, you must include any program code in digital form, should the staff marking your work want to look at the code in detail. You should include snippets (short sections) of the code in your dissertation report wherever relevant, either in the main text or in appendices. However, code included in the main text must only be short snippets, and you must explain what is interesting about them and why they’ve been included.
• Do I have to include my ethical approval form in my final report?
  The University staff can (and will) check whether you have received ethical approval by getting a list from the Faculty Ethics Committee. But it is still a good idea to include your ethical approval form and approval letter in an appendix. It is an even better idea to refer to it in the text of your dissertation (likely in the methodology section), explaining how you made sure you met all the ethical requirements agreed with Faculty Ethics Committee as part of the approval process.
• Is there any specific cover for my report e.g. with the University logo?
  Yes. You can find an example front cover later in this document.
• How many hard (printed) copies of my dissertation report are required to be submitted?
  No. Hard copies are not required.
• Do I need my supervisor’s signature before I submit my dissertation?
  No – the only time when you need a signature from your supervisor is before you submit your Research Ethics application. You should consult your supervisor frequently, and take their advice on your dissertation project, but you don’t need their approval before submitting your work.
• Where do I submit my dissertation report files?
  See the covering pages of this document for full details of what files you need to submit, and how. Please note that your TurnItIn link for this module will be on Moodle.

Additional Information

Learning Outcomes Assessed

LO1: Investigate and specify a substantial problem in the domain of study, place it in the context of related work and produce a plan to address this problem.
LO2: Make use of transferable skills necessary for the conduct of the project: (i) the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility, (ii) decision making in complex situations, (iii) risk identification (including, as appropriate, commercial and scientific risk), assessment and control, and (iv) the independent learning ability required for continuing professional development.
LO3: Critically evaluate research and advanced scholarship relevant to the project and evaluate their own work. 
LO4: Demonstrate the capability to make a high quality research contribution to the domain of study.
LO5: Critically evaluate the project with due regard to relevant professional, legal, social and ethical frameworks.

Assessment Support

General support about the dissertation and poster processes are available from the module tutor and/or module leader, during the taught dissertation sessions and via their Office Hours.
However, in most cases, the allocated supervisor should be the first point of contact. The assessment components, and underpinning work, can be discussed with the student’s supervisor during a scheduled meeting or via the supervisor’s Office Hours.

An extensive range of support materials, videos, and interactive materials are provided via the module Moodle site.

CO7100 Assessment Criteria Postgraduate

Assignment Task (LOs Covered)	Lower Fail (0 – 24%)	Higher Fail (25 – 49%)	Pass (50-59%)	Merit (60-69%)	Distinction (>=70%)
Report Presentation and Academic Writing (10 marks) (LO2)	Severe deficiencies in spelling, grammar and expression undermine meaning. Structure is incoherent and/or weakly presented.	Recurring errors in spelling and grammar. Ideas communicated with limited clarity. Structure or presentation have scope for enhancement.	Predominantly accurate in spelling and grammar. Ideas communicated appropriately and satisfactorily.	Observes appropriate academic form and is near professional in quality. Fluent & persuasive.	A high degree of skill. The academic form shows exceptional standards of presentation or delivery.
Engagement with the Literature, Context and Referencing (20 marks) (LO1, LO2, LO3)	Inadequate coverage of relevant issues. Weak understanding with inaccurate or missing knowledge. Reading material inadequate and may not cover core or basic texts. Inaccurate, limited, or missing referencing.	Unsatisfactory or insufficient engagement with relevant knowledge pertaining to discipline and key issues. Insufficient range of source reading from core and basic texts. Sources not acknowledged in line with academic conventions of referencing.	Engagement with relevant knowledge pertaining to discipline and key issues. A satisfactory range of core and basic texts, referencing current research in the discipline.	Consistent involvement in relevant research/practice. Strong, diverse reading with sustained reference to key texts. Very good referencing demonstrates high intellectual rigor.	A high degree of engagement with research and/or practice pertaining to field(s) and disciplines of study. Substantial range and sophisticated use of sources.
Intellectual performance, originality, and independence (25 marks) (LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4)	Very weak analysis, possibly limited to a single perspective. Episodes of self- contradiction or confusion.	Inability to deal with complex issues. Judgements not substantiated. Weak interpretation of research, showing lack of understanding and/or supporting evidence.	Able to deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively. Able to devise a coherent critical/ analytical argument which is supported with evidence.	A developed conceptual understanding that enables the student to find new meanings in established hypotheses. A developed and sustained argument with the possibility for new insights.	A high degree of analysis and evaluation. A sustained argument with strong potential for new insights.
Engineering, Professionalism, and Methodology (25 marks) (LO1, LO2, LO3, LO5)	Very weak understanding of established methodologies and those applied. Substandard research, with inappropriate choice of methods. Substandard	Unsatisfactory application of research techniques within the discipline. Undertaken research is weak, leading to underdeveloped and poorly executed work. Exhibits unsatisfactory	Consistent use of research techniques for knowledge creation and interpretation. Systematically planned research with adequate scale and scope, ensuring the gathering of appropriate evidence. Ample	Demonstrates comprehensive grasp and continual application of established methodologies. Well-planned research with scale and scope, ensuring robust evidence. Good	Outstanding interpretation, application, and evaluation of methodologies used by the student and key scholars/practitioners in the field. Methods may contribute new insights. Demonstrates very high

	professional and/or personal standards of engagement and conduct.	professional/personal standards consistently.	professional/personal standards consistently.	professional and personal standards consistently.	professional/personal standards consistently.
Quality of Results and Findings (15 marks) (LO1, LO3, LO4, LO5)	Minimal effort to replicate or extend published work or apply theory to a real problem. The solution lacks relevance to realistic problems, with no adherence to standards. Weak analysis and data lead to ineffective outcomes.	The report indicates intent to replicate or extend published work or apply theory to a real problem but falls short. The solution lacks readiness, with standards misapplied. Insufficient data or analysis compromises valid outcomes.	The report showcases skill in replicating and extending published work or applying theory to real problems. Some elements of the solution are near readiness for real-world application, considering all relevant standards, with findings supported by suitable testing and analysis.	The report is near academic publication standards, displaying commendable content, originality, and presentation. The solution is close to ready for real- world application, meeting relevant standards with effective analysis and defined outcomes.	The report not only meets academic publication standards with original and well-presented content but also produces a solution ready for real-world application, demonstrating compliance with standards and contextualisation against relevant literature.
Supervisor Assessment of Student (5 marks) (LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5)	Little to no contact or meaningful engagement over the dissertation period. Lacking time management skills.	Occasional engagement, typically demonstrating limited or inadequate progress. Weak time management.	Consistent engagement, providing satisfactory development. Acceptable progress made under guidance. Satisfactory time management.	Sustained and meaningful engagement, with good preparation. Able to make independent progress for much of the work. Good time management