Guidelines for Preparation of Dissertations

BSc (IT) and BSc (ITM) Hons.

Prepared by

Prof. Asoka S. Karunananda

Faculty of Information Technology

University of Moratuwa

2006
 Guidelines for preparation of Dissertation
BSc (IT) and BSc (ITM) Hons.
Your dissertation must be prepared according to the following instructions. This includes
general guidelines, assembling of pre pages, and structuring of body of the text.

1. General Guidelines
Submission: Three (3) hard-bound copies of the dissertation must be submitted to the
Faculty of Information Technology. You must also keep a copy for your personal use.

Colour: Brown for BSc (IT): Blue for BSc. (IT) Hons.

Paper: The dissertation should be printed on good quality A4 size paper, on single side

Lettering: Times New Roman. Size will change as per chapters/sections, etc. Cover and
Spine should be in GOLD lettering.

Printing: A laser quality printing, do not use colours.

Spacing: 1.5 line spacing must be used for the body of the text and the list of Reference
entries. Only footnotes, quotations, table and figure captions, may be single spaced.

Margins: Left, 1-1/2 inches; top, bottom, and right, 1 inch.

Chapters and Sections: All chapters must be numbered (Arabic). Chapter names and the
headings of the chapters must be 18pt and bold. Each chapter should have a section called
Introduction at the beginning and a Summary at the end. Sections through Introduction to
Summary must be structured with subsections, if necessary, and numbered accordingly.
Headings of sections and subsections must be 12pt and bold. See the sample for chapters
and sections (Appendix A).

Tables and Figures: All Tables and Figures must be named with captions, and cited inside
the text. See the sample for using tables and figures (Appendix B).

Reference and citations: The list of Reference must be arranged in alphabetical order of
the name of the first author, and numbered in square brackets. The corresponding number
of a reference must be used to cite the particular work inside the text. All items in list of
reference must be cited inside the text. See the sample for reference and citations (Appendix
C).

Appendixes: Appendixes must be named in alphabetical order (Appendix A, Appendix B,

….), and also give a name for each appendix. All Appendixes (except Appendix A) must
be cited inside the text through its name. Appendix A must be named as ‘Individual’s
Contribution to the Project’, and include a full page description by each student about his
contribution. Sample for Appendix A is shown below (Appendix D).

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Cover page: Print the following information by leaving appropriate line spacing
• Title of the Project (16pt, bold, centered)
• Group name (12pt, centered)
• Index numbers and names of group members (in a centered table, no
borders)
• Faculty of Information Technology (12pt, centered)
• University of Moratuwa (12pt, centered)
• December 2006 (12pt, centered)

Spine of the dissertation: The following information should be printed from top to the
bottom of the spine. The Degree must be BSc (IT) or BSc (IT) Hons. as appropriate.

Title Degree Year

Page numbering: All page numbers must be centered at the bottom of each page. Roman
numbering must be used for pre pages. No page numbers for the title page. Arabic
numbering must be used for the body of the dissertation.

Title Page
• Title of the Project (16pt, bold, centered)
• Group name (12pt, centered)
• Index numbers and names of group members (in a centered table, no
borders)
• Type the following (12pt, centered)
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Information Technology,
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka for the partial fulfillment of the
requirements of the Honours Degree of Bachelor of Science in
Information Technology.
• December 2006 (12pt, bold, centered)

2. Assembling of Pre pages

The pre pages includes: Declaration, Dedication, Acknowledgements, Abstract, Table of
Contents, List of Figures and List of Tables. These headings must be centered. Use the
Roman numbers to number the pre pages.

Declaration: Type the information given in the sample below (Appendix E) .

Dedication: Optional, but nice to have it

Acknowledgements: Thanks to those who helped (supervisor, friends, parents, etc.) you.

Abstract:
This should be one page description that comprises of problem that you address,
your approach (users, input, output, and process), analysis & design,
implementation, evaluation and conclusion. Write more about your work. Do not
use citations, abbreviations and further works in an abstract.

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Table of Contents
Here you should list headings of chapters/sections/subsections with page numbers.
See the sample for table of contents (Appendix F).

List of Figures/Tables
Here you should list Figures/Tables captions followed by names, with page
numbers. See the sample for list of figures and tables (Appendix G).

3. Body of the Dissertation

Dissertation must be structured with reference to the following chapters. Depending on the
project the structure may slightly change. Note that the names of the headings given below
are too generic and you must rename them to reflect about your project. All headings must
be numbered (12pt, bold), and body of the text in must be in 12pt. Do not use any
decorations on headings. See the sample for chapters and sections.

Introduction
This may have two-three sections. In the first section you should write brief
introduction including background and motivation for the project. In this you must
also show the importance of the problem with the support from literature. This
section should have citations to refer to items in the list of reference. Then write
Aim and Objectives of the project under a separate heading. In the next section,
briefly state about your solution in terms of users, input, output, process,
technology, features, and system requirements. As the third paragraph, you should
also add a section about the structure of the dissertation. For example, Chapter 2
describes the problem domain. Chapter 3 is on …….

Review of others’ work

Give a suitable name for this heading. For example: Current issues in MIS. This
section should give a full description about background information of the project.
Based on a literature survey, you should state about others’ approaches to solve
similar problems and highlight your problem. Try to provide a table for comparison
of different approaches. This section should necessarily have citations to refer to
items in the list of reference.

Technology adapted
Sometimes, you may have more than one chapter for this topic. Give a suitable name
for this heading too. An example title could be Expert Systems - beyond MIS. Here
you should state about the technology that you adapt to solve the problem. Clearly
point out how/why these techniques are appropriate to solve your problem. This
should not be a description of some technologies, without referring to the problem
that you address. This section should also have citations to refer to items in the list
of reference.

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Your Approach
Again give a name to reflect what your project is about (e.g. Using expert systems
for expanding MIS). Here you write on how you adopt the technology to solve the
said problem. This description may be presented with reference to users, inputs,
outputs, process, technology that implements the solution.

Analysis and Design

This contains details of design (or analysis and design) of your solution. Here you
should necessarily include a diagram to show at lest the top level deign of the
proposed system. Describe the modules in the diagram stating WHAT each module
does and its interaction with other modules/components. When ever you introduce
a Figure/Table remember to name Figures/Tables with a caption, and cite Figure
(using the caption) in the body of the text.

Implementation
In the interim report, this section was not be very descriptive. However, here you
provide implementation details of each module that is stated in the design diagram.
Remember to maintain the consistency between design and the implementation
sections. In describing the implementation, you should state about, software,
hardware, flowcharts, algorithms, pseudo codes, code segments as per each module
in the design. All these flowcharts, algorithms, etc. may be defined as figures or
listing and cite them inside the text. Extra details of implementations (e.g. source
codes, screenshots) should go to an Appendix.

Evaluation
Report on how you evaluate the solution to see whether objectives have been
achieved. Experimental design, selection of participants, control experiments,
interview techniques, design of questionnaire, etc. must be stated here. Here you
should also present the results from the evaluation in graphs, charts, tables, etc.
Additional details about the evaluation may go as an appendix.

Conclusion & Further work

Here you conclude the overall achievements quantitatively in the first place. After
that you should state about the achievement of each objective. Also mention about
problem encountered, limitations of your solution, and some further work.

Reference
Here you should give details of citations that you have used in the text. An entry in
list of reference generally includes information such as Author, Year, Title of the
Article, Name of Journal/conference, page numbers. There are various reference
and citation styles, but you should use the one shown in the sample.

Appendixes
You may have several appendixes to refer to further details related to chapters
like: Technology adapted, Analysis and Design, Implementation, evaluation, etc.

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 Appendix A - Sample for Chapter and sections/subsections

Use the following chapter format together with the prescribed font sizes.

Chapter 3

Artificial Intelligence – The State of the Art (18pt)

3.1 Introduction (12pt)

Briefly report on what you said in the previous chapter. Then report on what this chapter
is about.

3.2 Major Areas of AI

You must always write something under sections/subsections. Do not limit such a
description to one line, but write at least few lines.

3.2.1 Expert Systems

3.2.2

3.10 Summary
Summarize key points that you have presented in this chapter. Write also one-two lines
on what the next chapter is about.

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 Appendix B- Sample for Using Tables and Figures

Whenever there is a figure/table you must cite it as follows. Note that the caption Figure
3.1 reads as figure 1 of the chapter 3. As such, a caption must be defined with reference
to the respective chapter number.

………………………The top level architecture of the proposed system comprises of there

modules, namely, user interface, student database, and expert system. Figure 3.1 shows the
interaction among these modules. Then write more about these modules.

User Interface Expert System

Student Database

Figure 3.1: Top Level Architecture of the Proposed System

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 Appendix C - Sample for Reference and citations

Inside the body of the text, you should refer to items in the list of reference in the following
manner (using square brackets). This is a process of citing of others work.

…………………..Semantic web has been identified as a major application area of

ontological modeling [2]. At present, there are many sources to obtain information about
the state of the art of semantic web research [1, 3]. Silva [2] has identified five issues in
ontological modeling.

In order to cite inside the text in the above manner, the list of reference must be arranged
as follows. Note that this list is prepared in accordance with the alphabetical order of
names of authors. The list of reference appears after the chapter on conclusion and further
work.

References

[1] Perera, A. B. (2003), Applications of ontological modeling, Journal of Ontology, 3(2),

pp 120-145

[2] Silva, A (2004), Using Semantic Web, In proceedings of the 8th International
Conference on Ontological Modelling, pp 150-170, Tokyo, Japan

[3] www.sematicweb.org/sources.html

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 Appendix D - Sample for Appendix A

Appendix A

Individuals Contribution to the Project

Name of student: A.B. Karunathilake

Write your (individual) contribution as a one page description. This should include you
contribution (write more), what you learned by doing the project, problem encountered,
and how you address those problems. This will be used for the final assessments of
individuals.

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 Appendix E - Sample for Declaration page

Declaration
We declare that this thesis is our own work and has not been submitted in any form for
another degree or diploma at any university or other institution of tertiary education.
Information derived from the published or unpublished work of others has been
acknowledged in the text and a list of references is given.

Name of Student (s) Signature of Student (s)

Date:

Supervised by

Name of Supervisor(s) Signature of Supervisor(s)

Date:

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 Appendix F - Sample for Table of Contents

Contents
Page
Chapter 1 – Introduction 01
1.1 Introduction 01
1.2 Background 02

Chapter 2 – Others’ works 10

2.1 Introduction 10

Chapter 3 – Technology Adapted 30

3.1 Introduction 30

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 Appendix G - Sample for List of Figures

Below is the format for List of Figures. Use the same format for List of Tables too.

List of Figures
Page
Figure 2.1 – Comparison of optimization techniques 30
Figure 3.1 – Benefits and limitations of AI techniques 40

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