MRes RP Assessment

MRes Research Project Assessment

The assessment of the MRes project will be undertaken by the supervisor and a second marker in the first instance.

The basis for the assessment will be project report (i.e., the awarded marks for the MRes project should be fully justifiable based on the quality and significance of the submitted project report).

The assessment of the report will be done after a viva has taken place, in which the student presents their research project to the assessors and demonstrates broad and deep understanding of the research work. The student should prepare a formal presentation for the viva, which will be followed by a Q&A session about the project, the submitted report and its research area. 

A selection of projects, in particular borderline cases between pass and fail or projects with significant disagreement between the assessors, may be assessed or moderated by other qualified persons selected by the MRes project coordinator, and by an external examiner.

Projects are awarded numeric marks in the indicated ranges below. Unlike for the individual projects, the different project classifications (i.e. pass/merit/distinction/distinguished) bear no significance, only the numeric value of the mark counts. Assessors should, however, pay special attention to projects at the boundary between the fail and pass marks.

• 0 - 39: A failed research project

• 40 - 59: A pass-level research project is one that displays an ability to solve well-defined, moderately low-risk research task competently. However, the project may lack ambition or fail to overcome the more difficult challenges associated with the problem area. The resulting software or hardware should be broadly functional, although it may be limited in scope.

• 60 - 69: A merit-level research project is one that displays both breadth and depth and should demonstrate a high level of individual technical competence and professionalism, although the final output might lack elements of ingenious novelty or sparkle. There should be at least a moderate level of risk in the research project's objectives, in that the research topic was not completely specified at the outset or that the work presented some difficult challenges that needed to be overcome. All implementation work should be solid in terms of design and correctness, although there may be scope for improvements.

• 70 - 84: A distinction-level research project is one that demonstrates significant breadth and depth. The project should have resulted in a significant research contribution that could lead to publishable results with some additional effort. It involves a combination of sound background research, an outstanding implementation or an outstanding piece of theoretical work, and a well-structured and well-presented report detailing the project's background, objectives and achievements.  

• 85 - 100: A distinguished-level research project is similar to a distinction-level research project, but in addition contains a more substantial and significant original research contribution coming from the student. The submitted research report should be publishable with almost no additional effort. There should be no weaknesses beyond those reasonably expected given the project timescale. The quality of the report must be excellent. The report must display a comprehensive understanding of the relevant related work, and must include detailed evaluation of the project's contributions with respect to this.

Three aspects of each research project will be assessed.

1. Research Achievement: This assesses the objectives and the technical research contributions of the project. It addresses specific issues such as the design, correctness, completeness, elegance, usability, and so on, of the final project results, the approach and techniques employed, and the significance of the achievements relative to the state-of-the-art.
2. Background Research: This assesses your awareness of relevant previous research work, and how the project builds upon or exploits existing techniques or results. 
3. Quality of Report: This assesses the selection, organisation, and presentation of material, the quality of prose, the clarity of explanations, discussion of related work, spelling, punctuation, legibility, clarity, relevance of diagrams, and so on.