CMP3265 – Professional Issues and Research Methods

May 22nd – May 24th

CW2/17

Module Leader: Lee McCluskeyOther Tutors: Rob Lloyd-Owen, Julie Wilkinson,

Dave Wilson, Hugh Osborne, Diane Kitchin

CMP3265 – TimetableMonday 22nd May: 9.15 - 11.30: Lee McCluskey: - Introduction to short course, explanation of assessment etc - Introduction to research methods, introduction to scientific research 11.30 - 12.00: Rob Lloyd-Owen: - Professional Issues, an introduction 12 - 1.15 lunchtime 1.15 - 4.15: Rob Lloyd-Owen: - Professional Issues

Tuesday 23nd May: 9.15 – 11.00: Lee McCluskey: - How to write and evaluate scientific papers and research

proposals 11.00 - 12.00: Julie Wilkinson: - Postgraduate projects 12 - 1.15 lunchtime 1.15 - 4.15: Julie Wilkinson: - Information Systems research methods

Wednesday 24th May: 9.15 - 10.30: Dave Wilson: - The MSc project module handbook + the practicalities of doing MSc

projects 10.30 - 12.00: Diane Kitchin: - Tips for writing MSc project reports 12 - 1.15 lunchtime 1.15 – 3.00.: Hugh Osborne: - How to avoid Plagarism + good Time Management 3.00 - 4.15: Various: - Wrap-up Session - Hand-out of Assignment 2

CMP3265 – Assessment 1 - PortfolioOverall Specification1. Students will be given exercises by individual tutors on

professional issues and research. Students will then build up a portfolio of items in answer to these exercises. The subject-matter will be related to the Learning Outcomes of the module specification.

The portfolio of items will be an opportunity to reflect on and theorize about real-time incidents that take place during the course.

2. As the second part of your portfolio, you must write a report which synthesizes and critically evaluates the learning gained from the portfolio of exercises, and from lectures in the seminar series which you attended in Term 2.

This analysis should display an appreciation of professional/ ethical / methodological practice / research in IS and computer science.

CMP3265 – Assessment 2 – Research ProposalOverall SpecificationYou should prepare a research proposal of approximately 1500 words. This

will allow you to prepare for the research project that may be undertaken during the dissertation phase of the degree and also to achieve the Learning Outcomes (2.1 and 2.2 (also partly 1.1-1.3)) of this module.

General IdeaYour Masters project has to be founded in some research area of informatics.

To complete the Masters project, you have to solve “a self-selected problem”. During this coursework you should examine an area of research that underlies (or may underlie) the problem you intend to solve for your project. Your proposal should include an overview and context of this area, together with a description of the appropriate methodologies or methods of enquiry you expect to use during the project. This should reference the bodies of knowledge, sources of information, and standards and professional organizations that you may have to draw on to complete the research part of your proposal.

CMP3265 – Overview

SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE

RESEARCH

APPLICATION

PROFESSIONALISSUES

•Informatics / IS / IT / Computer Science is moving very fast•The application of IT needs to be rooted in professionalism (no cowboys!)

Why do I need to understand / do Research?

- IT Fast moving area => - Must anticipate future developments- May need to adapt research results- May need to understand new standards, notations

and languages- May want to contribute to research

You may have to conduct research, or lead a research team, or evaluate someone else’s ..

Recent Example of Research- led development => practice

New semantic – web languages

The international standard language called ‘OWL’ for encoding web-accessible ontologies.

OWL Need of Web-relatedindustries

Research in areas Such as DescriptionLogic

W3C standard

What is Research?

.

"Systematic investigation towards increasing the sum of knowledge"

(Chambers 20th Century Dictionary)

"an endeavor to discover new or collate old facts etc. by the scientific study of a subject or by a course of critical investigation."

(The Concise Oxford Dictionary)

Types of research

the scientist (computer science?) the social scientist (information systems?) the historian the journalist the politician’s assistant industrial R & D

Scientific Research

Dominated by the Natural Sciences –

1. Make Observations(eg watch asteroids through a telescope)2. Read accounts of similar work in scholarly journals(eg see what trajectory equations planets follow)3. Form hypothesis (theory) using 1. and 2.(eg asteroids move in an elliptical fashion)4. Test and evaluate hypothesis(measure the actual movement and check. Long term evaluation: What does the hypothesis predict? Is

the prediction true?)

Scientific Research - Relativity

Eg Albert Einstein

1. From PAST observations the following were believed:

(Special Principal of Relativity,

Law of Light Propagation)

2. Read accounts of similar work in scholarly journals, use already accepted science

(Albert used proven mathematical theorems and basic tensor analysis)

3. Form hypothesis (theory) using 1. and 2.

(E=MC2, special relativity equations)

4. Test and evaluate hypothesis

(what does the hypothesis predict? .. Black Holes etc)

Example in Computing Research

In computing, experiments are (generally) done by running programs and observing their results

Example - My PhD thesis: ‘machine learning’ can improve the performance of intelligent programs

1. I wrote an automated planning program called FM, which automatically generated solutions to planning problems.

2. then I designed a ‘learning algorithm’ that learned from analyzing the solutions of planning problems.

3. then I implemented the learning algorithm within FM,4. then I tested it by getting FM to solve randomly generated planning problems,

and let the learning algorithm learn ‘heuristics’ from the solution trace.5. I observed that FM’s plan generation speed increased dramatically with the

addition of the learned heuristics. NB Experiments must be such that they can be independently re-constructed and

validated.

Types of (computing) research project

Compare methods Discover / invent new Method or Algorithm Discover / prove new invariant / Law / theory Extend / repair an existing method Formalise / make precise an existing theory

Research can be

“ground breaking” or

“bump on a log”

The form of research projects

MAIN PARTS:

Aim/Objectives

Method

Evaluation

We will look at Aims/Objectives today, and method and evaluation tomorrow

The form of research projects

Research projects aims and objectives must be CLEAR (there should be a way to show that

objectives have been met) SIGNIFICANT and TIMELY in that they deliver a

valuable result (that’s currently needed) ORIGINAL in that they are doing something new FEASIBLE in that they can be achieved by

specified resources

BREAK….

..and do

Exercise: write down the aims/objectives of ANY (imagined) IT research project you can think of. Try to make one which is clear, significant and original.

Example of research project

“We are going to show that Object-oriented databases are better than Relational Databases”

? Clear ? Significant/timely ? Original ? Feasible

Example of research project

“We are going to show that Object-oriented databases are better than Relational Databases”

? Clear: No - ‘Better’ - too vague - NOT MEASURABLE

? Significant/timely ? Original ? Feasible

Example of research project

“We are going to show that Object-oriented databases are better than Relational Databases”

? Clear: No - ‘Better’ - too vague - NOT MEASURABLE

? Significant/timely: Yes, maybe – many industries are considering changing to OODB’s as they are more compatible with OOPLs so some kind of answer to this question would be of value

? Original: ? Feasible

Example of research project

“We are going to show that Object-oriented databases are better than Relational Databases”

? Clear: No - ‘Better’ - too vague - NOT MEASURABLE

? Significant/timely: Yes, maybe – many industries are considering changing to OODB’s as they are more compatible with OOPLs so some kind of answer to this question would be of value

? Original: we would have to consult the literature to check

? Feasible:

Example of research project

“We are going to show that Object-oriented databases are better than Relational Databases”

? Clear: No - ‘Better’ - too vague - NOT MEASURABLE

? Significant/timely: Yes, maybe – many industries are considering changing to OODB’s as they are more compatible with OOPLs so some kind of answer to this question would be of value

? Original: we would have to consult the literature to check

? Feasible: – too vague to comment

Better Example of research project Aim: OODBs are an advance on RDB Objective 1: We are going to show that using

Object-oriented databases leads to more reliable implementations than using Relational Databases

? Clear – better than 1st attempt. Reliability is measurable ( = mean time to failure) but the ‘using .. leads to’ is still vague

? narrower aims so less significant ? Feasible – difficult to ‘prove’ as it involves the use

of teams of people

Example of research project

“We are going to discover / invent a program that can identify all the bugs in any given program”

? Clear ? Significant/timely ? Original ? Feasible

Example of research project

“We are going to discover a program that can calculate the number of bugs in any given program”

? Clear - yes ? Significant/timely - very ? Original – no one else has done this ? Feasible – absolutely not!

Conclusions

As a computing/IT professional you should be able to access, understand and evaluate research.

They are many forms of scientific research Research proposals should contain Aims + Objectives, a proposal

method, and a route to evaluation. Aims + Objectives should be clear and measurable, significant, timely

and original. Tomorrow – we will look at research methods and evaluation

Portfolio Exercise

1. Look for the description of a large computing research project on the web (eg there are many such EU Framework 6 projects).

2. Identify the project’s aims and objectives.

3. Comment on whether you think they are clear, significant, timely, original, feasible