PROJECT MANUAL
INTRODUCTION
The project paper is aimed at making the teaching-learning process a purposeful activity. It is a form of self-learning activity or independent study which may be undertaken by an individual student or a group of students over a period of a few weeks. It is concerned with the investigation or study of a situation, problem, theme, behavioral patterns, policies and so on. An outcome, such as a report, design, model or construction of something is usually expected and very often there is an intention to contribute towards solving a problem.
The activity may be theoretical, practical, community-based, subject-based or interdisciplinary in nature. Differences in the activity and style may arise due to disciplines or subject areas. In the physical sciences, project work may take the form of problem-solving, or experimentation usually carried out in the laboratory. Field work, involving the study of natural phenomena, may also be considered as a form of project work in other branches of science. In the social sciences, field work of a different kind, usually involving the study of individuals, groups, organizations, communities, etc. may be taken up for project work. Surveys and case studies may similarly be undertaken.
The project paper provides an excellent opportunity for independent thinking by the student. The student has occasion to define the problem, plan his work, find appropriate resources, collect and evaluate data, draw conclusions and present them effectively.
In brief, project work is intended to encourage commitment and responsibility, offer students the opportunity to make decisions and plan and follow through what amounts to a piece of personal research, provide satisfaction through work of relevance, interest and value to students and others, facilitate cooperation rather than competition amongst students, and provide the opportunity for improving communication skills.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The Working Party set up by the Society for Research into Higher Education to study teaching methods, and particularly project methods, has identified the aims and objectives of Project Work to be as follows:
(a) To encourage students to make their own choice of a subject study and thus encourage a sense of commitment and personal responsibility for the task, rather than the ritual performance of a task where the only responsibility is seen as meeting the tutor's requirements.
(b) To give students practice in learning to learn by undertaking a piece of personal research involving activities such as planning the work, hunting out sources, collecting material, selecting from it and deciding on presentation, rather than set exercises requiring a minimum of personal initiative and organization on the students' part.
(c) To enable students to experience the satisfaction of working on a complex task over a period of time with the possibility of producing a result of permanent value and interest to themselves and others, rather than the performance at regular or irregular intervals of unconnected exercises which, however conscientiously performed, rarely lead to anything but throwaway results.
(d) To provide scope for a degree of cooperation among students rather than purely private work in which competition with others takes precedence over the intrinsic character of the work itself.
(e) To provide opportunities for the practice of communication skills in a framework where language is used in a number of ways for real communication: seeking information, oral and written reporting, discussing, synthesizing, revising and editing, etc. rather than the straightjacket of a "dummy run" where language is being used not to communicate information, but to tell the tutor what he already knows merely in order to demonstrate that the student knows it too.
IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
a) Time Schedule
The topic for the project is to be selected and finalised in Semester V and the report is to be submitted in Semester VI.
The last date for admission being 20th July, the total time duration for the project shall be from 21st July to 31st January next.
The time schedule shall be as follows:
1 |
General Orientation by Principal /Head of the Department /Supervisor |
Between 21st and 31st July |
2 |
Announcement of supervisors and topics for projects |
Not later than 31st July |
3 |
Selection of topic/supervisor by the students |
Not later than 15th August (15 days may be given for changes, if any) |
4 |
Final registration of students (Registration should be in the Format as specified in Annexure I) |
Not later than 31st August; No change of topic after this date |
5 |
Submission of form in Annexure II to the Controller of Examinations, GU |
Not later than 30th September |
6 |
Orientation of students by concerned supervisor, assistance in planning the project, preparing questionnaires, bibliographies, etc. |
Not later than 30th September |
7 |
Field/Library/Laboratory Work, on-the-job training, etc. |
To be completed by 30th November |
8 |
Submission of report |
Not later than 31st January |
9 |
Evaluation by internal examiner (supervisor) and external examiner |
By end of February |
10 |
Viva Voce |
By 15th March |
11 |
Submission of results to Goa University in the result sheet supplied by the University |
Not later than 31st March |
b) Student Orientation Programme:
i) There shall be a general Orientation of all Third Year students between 21st and 31st July. The Principal of the College, the Head of the concerned Department and/or the Project Coordinator may conduct the orientation. Outside experts may be invited, if necessary. The objective of the orientation shall be to give all students a general idea about projects, the type of projects available, the procedural formalities, etc.
ii) Students must also be informed that as per Goa University ordinances, they are required to carry out work for the project during Semesters V & VI, but the assessment for this paper will be at the end of Semester VI.
iii) After students have selected the topics for projects, been assigned to their supervisors, and the registration procedure completed, the concerned supervisor shall conduct an orientation of the students assigned to him/her. 5 to 8 lectures may be devoted to this orientation, which shall cover all details of the project, including field work to be carried out, records to be maintained, periodic meetings, final report, etc.
c) Number of Students per Teacher
As per Ordinance OC-45.4.7, “Project work shall be assigned to students in groups of five”. This Ordinance is common to the B.A., B.Sc. and B.Com programmes.
Guidance provided by a teacher to a batch of not more than 5 students and not less than 3 students for project work shall be deemed to be equivalent to 2 periods of instruction per week. If the number of students is 1 or 2, the guidance provided by a teacher shall be deemed to be equivalent to 1 period of instruction per week.
A teacher shall normally be assigned not more than 15 students for project work. Within a department, project work may, to the extent possible, be allocated equally to all teachers.
The pattern for assigning students in the project paper shall be as under:
Batch No. No. of students
1st Batch 1 to 5 students
2nd Batch 6 to 10 students
3rd Batch 11 to 15 students
4th Batch 16 to 20 students
5th Batch 21 to 25 students
6th Batch 26 to 30 students
7th Batch 31 to 35 students
8th Batch 36 to 40 students
9th Batch 41 to 45 students
10th Batch 46 to 50 students
11th Batch 51 to 55 students
12th Batch 56 to 60 students
d) Responsibilities of the Principal, Head of Department, Project Coordinator and Supervisor:
i) PRINCIPAL: The Principal shall have the overall responsibility of supervising the project work and submitting timely reports and results to the University. The Principal shall appoint one teacher from the College as the Project Coordinator.
ii) HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT: The Head of each Department shall have the following responsibilities in respect of the supervisors and students in his department:
a) Allocating project lectures among the teachers in the Department, ensuring that the lectures are, to the extent possible, distributed equally among the teachers
b) Confirming registration of students
c) Ensuring that the students and teachers in his/her department adhere to the time schedule detailed earlier in this manual
d) Monitoring the progress of the projects in the Department and maintaining the relevant records.
e) Overseeing the project work
iii) PROJECT COORDINATOR: The Project Coordinator shall be responsible for the following:
a) Ensuring that the timetable given above is strictly followed in the College.
b) Ensuring that every candidate is assigned to a Supervisor.
c) Supervision of the administrative work pertaining to the project paper in the College.
iv) SUPERVISOR: The supervisor shall be responsible for the day-to-day monitoring of the project work of the students assigned to him/her, and shall perform the following tasks:
a) Identification of project areas and titles
b) Receiving proposals from students in the prescribed format
c) Conduct of weekly meetings of students assigned to him/her, to assess their progress and to give them the necessary guidance and assistance.
d) Maintenance of records of attendance, discussions held, reference material / sources of data, field work, placement, etc.
e) Monitoring of work records / diaries / journals of students. These records must be maintained in the format as shown in Annexure III.
f) Evaluation of completed project reports
g) Receiving reports from external examiners
h) Combining results of internal and external examiners immediately after the viva voce and submission to the Principal as per prescribed format in Annexure IX for onward submission to the University
REPORT-WRITING GUIDELINES
a. PRESENTATION GUIDELINES
The project report has three distinct parts:
I. The Preliminaries
II. The Text
III. The End-Matter
I. The Preliminaries:
These are the pages that precede the actual report, and must be included in the following order:
a) The first page of a formal report is the Title page. It should be in the format prescribed by the University (Annexure IV). The title should be brief but descriptive and comprehensive.
b) Declaration Certificate signed by the student(s) in the format prescribed by the University (Annexure V)
c) Certificate signed by the Supervisor in the format prescribed by the University. (Annexure VI)
d) The Preface or Acknowledgement.
e) Table of Contents: It contains all the preliminaries, the chapter titles, References/ Bibliography, Appendices, Annexures, etc. [The numbering and the titles of chapters, and punctuation (if any) of chapter titles should be exactly the same as they are in the text]
f) Table of Illustrations: It contains a list of tables, charts and figures (if any)
II. The Text:
The text may contain
a) Introductory Chapter – this chapter must lay out the background, the objectives of the study, its scope, the methodology adopted and the chapter scheme.
b) Data and its Analysis Chapter(s)
c) Findings and Conclusion – this is the last chapter, which must summarise the key findings of the study, present the conclusions based on the findings, indicate the limitations of the study and suggest areas for further study.
III. The End Matter
a) Reference Notes – if footnotes are not used, this section would contain notes of all the references made in the report
b) Bibliography - Proper citation, style and formats are important. The bibliography must always be in alphabetical order. The preferred format is as follows: Name of author(s), date of publication, title, place of publication, name of publisher.
c) Appendices and Annexures (if any)
B. GENERAL GUIDELINES
1. The Report shall be written in English, except for other language subjects for which the medium may be the language concerned.
2. The Report may be either handwritten or typed.
If handwritten, it should be approximately of 45 pages and should be submitted in a hard-bound long note book. On no account should it exceed 60 pages.
If typed, it should be on A4 size paper, with top, bottom and right margins of 1 inch each. The left margin should be 1.2 – 1.4 inches to allow for binding. In the case of drawings, graphs and maps there are no restrictions on paper size. The project report should be approximately of 35 pages. On no account should it exceed 50 pages.
3. Candidates must write or type the report only on one side of the paper. If typed it should be typed with 1.5 line / double line spacing.
4. Every page, except the title page, should be numbered. The candidate must use small roman numerals for the Preliminary pages and arabic numerals for all subsequent pages.
5. If not submitted in the form of a hardbound long book, the copies of the Report are to be securely bound.
6. Candidates should submit two copies of the Project Report. The second copy may be a photo copy or carbon copy of the original.
INSTRUCTIONS TO PROJECT SUPERVISORS
i. Students should be made aware that while assessing the report, the correctness of the language in the report will also be taken into account.
ii. Supervisors should make it very clear during the orientation itself, that different components such as identifying and conceptualizing the problem, design, methodology, analysis, discussion and manner of presentation will be taken into account while assessing the report.
iii. Supervisors must provide proper guidance to the students assigned to them in the matter of writing of Reference Notes and Bibliography, so that students present these in the appropriate format.
iv. Students should be taught the value of intellectual honesty - any matter taken from articles, books or any other sources should be properly acknowledged in the report.
EVALUATION
1. EXTERNAL and INTERNAL EXAMINERS
a) Each project report will be assessed by one external and one internal examiner. Normally the supervisor will be the internal examiner.
b) The external examiner shall be appointed by the University from the panel of examiners prepared by the respective Boards of Studies. The names of the external examiners shall also be communicated to the Principals of the Colleges where he/she is appointed external examiner.
c) The allocation of marks will be as follows:
Internal Examiner’s assessment
Total marks: of which 50
Project Report 20
Field / Library / Practical work 20
Attendance of the student for Lectures
and discussions / meetings 05
Maintenance of the record by the student
of library/field/practical work done 05
External Examiner's assessment
Total marks: of which 50 Project Report 25
Viva - voce 25
Guidelines for assessment are given in Annexure VII.
2. VIVA VOCE
a) The viva voce will be conducted by the external examiner in the presence of the internal examiner/project supervisor.
b) The viva voce is primarily meant to test the understanding of the candidate of the topic and methodology employed, his/her competence in the general field of study and to verify the actual involvement and participation of the candidate.
c) The Principal shall prepare the schedule of the viva voce in consultation with the concerned external examiners and notify the same for information of the concerned students and internal examiner.
d) A copy of the project report shall be sent by the concerned college to the external examiner so as to reach him/her at least 20 days before the conduct of the viva voce. The report shall be collected by the concerned college from the external examiner after the conduct of the viva. Both the examiners must sign the report, under the comment “Examined”.
e) The external examiner shall conduct the viva for not more than 20 minutes for each candidate. The questions asked should pertain to the project work done by the student so as to assess the knowledge gained or the skills acquired by the student, the difficulties faced, etc. as per Annexure VIII.
f) Based on the performance of candidates examined by him/her at each centre, the external examiner shall submit a brief general report regarding the quality of project work.
3. RUBRICS
a) The Supervisor/Internal Examiner and External Examiner will consolidate the mark sheet and assign appropriate letter grades to each candidate as described in Ordinance OC-45.4.13. This consolidated marksheet (See Annexure IX for format) shall then be forwarded along with the general report mentioned at 2(f) above, to the College Principal for onward submission to the University.
b) A candidate shall be required to obtain not lower than ‘C’ grade in the project paper in order to be declared as Passed.
c) There will be no revaluation for the Project paper.
4. INSTRUCTIONS TO EXAMINERS
a) A project report should be judged on the basis of content and presentation. It should not be assessed only on the strength of the overall impression gathered during the perusal of the work. Attention should be paid to the various components of the project report. The external examiner may also call for the work records / diaries / journals of individual candidates at the time of the viva voce.
b) The examiner should pay attention to the correctness of the language in the report.
c) No additional weightage should be given to computerised reports.
5. APPOINTMENT OF EXAMINERS
l. The Board of Studies in each subject shall prepare a panel of examiners for projects which may include persons (even non-teachers) from outside the University i.e. Institutions like N.I.O., Industry, Professions, etc.
2. The external examiners should preferably have at least 3 years experience of guiding projects or have a Ph.D. or M.Phil Degree.
3. The External Examiner shall be paid Rs. 50/- per candidate (for the Evaluation of the Report and conduct of Viva). He/She shall also be entitled to TA/DA as per University rules.
4. No honorarium will be paid to the Supervisor / Internal Examiner.
REFERENCE BOOKS
1) Bell, J. (1993): How to Complete your Research Project Successfully, New Delhi, UBS Publishers Distribution Ltd.
2) Chandra, A. and Saxena, T.P. (1979): Style Manual, New Delhi, Metropolitan Book Co. Pvt. Ltd.
ANNEXURE I
REGISTRATION FORM FOR PROJECT WORK
Name of the College: _________________________
1. Name of the Candidate: _____________________
(As per University Registration Card)
2. Class: _________ Div: ____ Roll No. : _______
3. University Registration No.: _________________
4. Subject: _______________________
5. Topic for Project work: ______________________
__________________________________________
7. Name of the Supervisor: ____________________
8. Signature of the student and date: ____________
9. Signature of the supervisor and date: _________
Signature Signature
Principal Head of the Department
N.B.: Change in the topic will not be permitted
ANNEXURE II
STATEMENT REGARDING THE NUMBER OF CANDIDATES
REGISTERED FOR PROJECTS
[To be submitted by the Principal of the College to the Controller of Examinations, Goa University by 30th September]
Name of the College: __________________________
Class: T.Y. B.A. / B.Com. / B.Sc.
Subject: _______________________
No. |
Title of the project |
Name of the Supervisor |
No. of candidates registered for the Project |
Remarks |
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Separate Course-wise lists (for B.A., B.Sc. & B.Com) may be prepared and sent. Within each course, project details may be arranged subject-wise.
ANNEXURE III
WORK RECORD / DIARY
Name of the College:________________________
Name of the candidate: _____________________
Course: _______________
Year: _________________
Title of the Project: ____________________________
____________________________
Library/ Laboratory Field work |
Description of work |
Date
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Time spent |
Signature of Authority |
Counter Signature of Guide & date |
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(Additional sheets may be used)
1) Signature of the student:
2) Signature of the Guide:
3) Signature of H.O.D.:
ANNEXURE IV
TITLE PAGE OF THE PROJECT REPORT
Title of the project:
Name(s) of the student(s):
Course: B.A. / B.Sc. / B.Com.
Year:
Name of the Project Supervisor:
Name of the College:
GOA UNIVERSITY
ANNEXURE V
DECLARATION BY CANDIDATE(S)
I/We declare that this project report has been prepared by me/us and to the best of my/our knowledge, it has not previously formed the basis for the award of any diploma or degree by this or any other University.
Roll No. Name Signature
ANNEXURE VI
CERTIFICATE BY SUPERVISOR
Certified that the Project Report is a record of work done by the candidate himself/herself/themselves under my guidance during the period of study and that to the best of my knowledge it has not previously formed the basis of the award of any degree or diploma by this or any other University.
Name & Signature
Project Supervisor
ANNEXURE VII
GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSMENT
Examiners are requested to keep in mind the following guidelines regarding the assessment of the Project work
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COMPONENT |
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INDICES |
A
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The Problem /Topic
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1 |
Clear and concise title |
2 |
Importance of the topic recognised |
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3 |
Background Information |
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4 |
Objectives and /or Hypothesis/Research Questions & Statement of the problem |
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5 |
Scope of the Topic |
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B
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Methodology
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6 |
Appropriateness of the Sample and/or sources of Data/Information, Relevance of the Data |
7 |
Information-gathering Tools / Techniques |
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8 |
Appropriateness of data/ information collection procedures |
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9 |
Appropriateness of Presentation of Data and/or Data Analysis procedures followed |
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C
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Findings And Conclusions
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10 |
Clear and concise interpretation of results and discussion |
11 |
Appropriate conclusions drawn |
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12 |
Recommendations/Suggestions (if any) |
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D
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Report
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13 |
Structure/ Organisation/ Format |
14 |
Style of Presentation, use of graphics, photos, tables, print media (if any) |
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15 |
Neatness |
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16 |
Proper language used |
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17 |
Proper typing rules followed |
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18 |
References (adequate and properly cited) |
ANNEXURE VIII
GUIDELINES FOR THE CONDUCT OF VIVA VOCE
The External Examiner may ask questions for the Viva based on the indices given below:
INDICES
1. Reasons for selection of the topic
2. Knowledge and understanding about the topic
3. Explanation of the topic (objectives, definition of terms, scope etc.)
4. Description of data gathering procedures
5. Reasons for selecting the sample/sources of data
6. Justification for data collection tools/techniques /procedures
7. Justification of the Interpretation and Conclusions drawn
8. Suggestions for further work in the area
9. Difficulties encountered during the project work
10. Experience/Benefits gained from the project work
ANNEXURE IX
CONSOLIDATED MARKSHEET FORM
Name of the College: __________________________
Name of Examination: ____________ Year: _______
No.
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Exam. Seat No. (as allotted by University)
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Names of Candidates
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Marks awarded by Int. Examiner (/50) |
Marks awarded by Ext. Examiner (/50) |
Total marks awarded (/100) |
Letter Grade awarded
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External Examiner Internal Examiner/Supervisor
Place:
Date:
Checked and Countersigned Signature
College Seal Principal