From time to time, I receive emails and concerns of students regarding Final Year Project (FYP). And we even get request for organizing events on FYP. At the start of the year, it’s mostly NEDians that ping us and in summer, students from FAST-NUCES, University of Karachi, Bahria University send us their queries.
And mostly these queries are related to
- What we should do in the FYP
- Can you give us any idea?
- What if we want to participate in Imagine Cup?
- We want to do something good in FYP.
- Tell us the technology on which we develop Final Year Project
So I thought maybe its good time to write a detail post on blog about what I feel about FYP and answer to some of the common concerns student raise.
Why Final Year Project Matters?
I always emphasize on the importance of Final Year Project (FYP) and we can say it’s one of the most important aspects of your degree. It is the point where you can apply knowledge or what you have been learning in the past few years. It is the point that creates an ordinary graduate vs. an entrepreneur. It is the point that creates meaning of your degree and your existence as an engineer. It is the way of getting exposure and experience of what real world problems are, if done properly. It will inevitably be used as a gateway to industry and to discriminate YOU among your peers.
What you can do in FYP?
Final year project usually span across 6 months to 1 year. I recommend you to take it seriously and do something hard, so don’t do just simple websites or simple ABC management system. Do something which you are passionate about and that makes you exciting, don’t get afraid, and accept big challenges. Utilize technology and go beyond what was not achievable before time.
Make a meaning: Try to solve real life issues, it might be big or small, but at the end of the project it must contribute in some manner to the society. Also, don’t delay it till the end of semester/year to work on FYP because in that case it will be nearly a piece of garbage not creating any meaning.
From my experience, I have observed that mostly highly praised projects are somewhat
- An implementation of research paper (after all computer scientist/engineer)
- A combination of hardware + software to solve a real world problem
- Project following Imagine cup theme and level
- Newest trend/buzz word/paradigm in the industry
- Working with organization to solve a problem, more than just an ordinary ABC Management System (Make sure you deliver them your project at the end)
- Integrate with online platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Code, Live etc to solve a great problem
- Unleash computing/storage power by utilizing cloud platform and achieve something that was not possible before Cloud/Grid
Also make sure the material and guide related to your project in available online, you may also refer to IEEE or ACM libraries and digital content.
Which Technology/Platform you should use?
Now this is very famous question. Computer Science/Engineering students keep asking about what technology/platform we should use such as Sun Java, Microsoft .NET or C++ etc. and it is pretty interesting question.
The answer to this question is that it depends on what you want to do in future. Perhaps at many occasion, I have instructed students to taste several platforms before graduation and let final year project be on platform which you like most. For example, Starting from a procedural language in first semester such as C, move to learn OOP in C++ and then in third year make a project such as networking and database using .NET and Java.
So what I mean from “It depends on what you want to do in future” is basically number of factors that you want to
- Continue your career in particular platform (probably because you like it or there are more job opportunities in it)
- Participate in any Software competition that might have some requirement. For example, if you want to participate in Imagine Cup you probably should go for .NET platform
Whatever reason be it for selecting platform, it’s always better to have your interest in it :)
I guess that’s all for this post. I will write few more posts on FYP such as participating in Imagine Cup, about FYP Presentation and some other FYP ideas you can work on. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask I will include them in upcoming post.
Till then, have a great time!
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7 comments:
Well Thanks A lot for this kind a post. I hope it will be helpful for those who are woried about choosing FYP like we were in last semester. !! I hope the senior buddies can be of great help. So there must be ongoing sessions specially on FYP ideas and Career Plannings....
Good Luck Bro :)
Good attempt but I would encourage students to write their own research paper based on their FYP, publication matters a lot in the CS community and unfortunately our students don't realize the worth of a publication so it's not just implementation of someone's paper that should be encouraged, in fact students should be motivated to themselves write papers: just a little tweaking on some old idea or some innovative approach and that can lead to a good publication. My publication on basis of which I got scholarship for MS was actually from one of my Final Year projects. So don't encourage students for the traditional work but something research-oriented and that can really boost Computer Science in Pakistan.
@Arjumand: Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate that. Those were for students who want to do some project and implementation in Final Year. But one point, if any student selected Final year project instead of thesis, are they allowed to publish paper in that? I don't think so. Also implementation is also important.
Thank you once again.
Adil Ahmed Mughal
Well I am talking about FYP too, there is currently a group in final year in UBIT working on ns2 for their FYP and yes FYP and not thesis, you can read that again.They are making a paper too so there goes your answer. Thesis is meant to have some part published as paper, what do you mean by allowed to publish: look Adil if you consider in particular about the case in our universities nothing will be allowed, one has to make his/her allowances himself or herself :).
Lastly for your info, my paper didn't come from thesis, but the Mutlimedia project of Sir Asim so yes FYP can be made into research publication and I don't think implementing some one else's work bears any significance at all for those researchers have already done that so why reinvent the wheel. Instead building and improving upon someone's research is what the science is all about. There is a term peer-review in the CS research community, do check out what it implies and how researchers do it.
I commented since you talked about science :) and you're welcome anytime bro.
@Arjumand: Thank you Arjumand (Scientist) :)
Thanks for the big compliment but not yet bro :(, just trying to become one.
Anyways your article is really good, I am gonna suggest it to some students of final year I know.
@Adil well same case is with us. Our FYP is research oriented, I mean we are working on FYP and also at the end will produce a Research Paper out of it. :)
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