People involved in a project (new in 2025/26)
Various people have some involvement with the student at various stages of their project:
- The Day-to-Day Supervisor can be almost anybody: a PhD student, a postdoc, a UTO, a member of research staff, or an external professional.
- The Marking Supervisor must be a University Teaching Officer (UTO) in the Department, or someone of comparable experience approved by the Department. If the Day-to-Day Supervisor is a UTO, the same person can also be Marking Supervisor.
- The Director of Studies (DoS) formally appoints the Day-to-Day Supervisor and the Marking Supervisor for their students. The student’s DoS can also be the Day-to-Day Supervisor, but they cannot be the Marking Supervisor.
- A Proposal Checker appointed by the Department may review the project proposal and get involved in case of any concerns, but they do not normally provide feedback to the student.
- The Examiners only get involved after dissertation submission and are responsible for assessment, along with the Marking Supervisor.
Each student needs to find their own Day-to-Day and Marking Supervisors, for example from the Part II project suggestions page, by contacting suitable people directly, or by recommendation from their Director of Studies or the lecturer of a related course. If the Day-to-Day Supervisor is a PhD student or postdoc in the department, it is common for the Marking Supervisor to be their PhD supervisor or PI, but this is not required.
This page gives guidance for Day-to-Day Supervisors, Marking Supervisors, and Directors of Studies.
Guidance for Day-to-Day Supervisors
Expectations
Supervising a Part II project is a slightly more involved process in comparison to supervising a course.
You will be working on a 1-to-1 basis with your student, usually by meeting every 1–2 weeks. The student will need to follow supervisors guidance on their research as well as the Part II project instructions. You should make yourself very familiar with these guidelines. Part II Projects provide 25% of the total marks awarded in Part II. Therefore, it is important that students receive careful attention from their project supervisor. If a project looks as though it might be headed towards any issues, you should inform the Marking Supervisor and the student’s DoS straightaway.
Students vary enormously in the level of project supervision they require, and the load is never even throughout the duration of the project. You should make regular progress enquiries even during periods when not much supervision is needed. If a student has more than one Day-to-Day supervisor, please be sure, at all times, who is responsible for monitoring progress and reporting to the DoS and the Marking Supervisor.
Project Structure
Supervisors will be the main person to give feedback to the student about their work. This feedback will need to be given prior to each submission. Supervisors should be aware of the important dates page.
It is helpful if a basic version of the project is working as early as possible. A really-basic version could form part of the preparation for the main project. It is important that the main deliverable is working during Lent Term since students need time to conduct their evaluation and write their dissertation. Supervisor feedback on a working demonstration would be of benefit to the student and would be helpful when the students write their progress report due at the beginning of February. The evaluation is an important component of a successful project so please help the student by suggesting ways that the project can be evaluated and ensure they structure their work towards a good evaluation, rather than merely producing a working project.
Experiments with Human Subjects
If a student’s project interacts in any way with human subjects the student must request approval from the Laboratory’s Ethics Committee by submitting an online application for ethics approval. See the project proposal page for details.
Non-disclosure
A supervisor may, if they wish, sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in a personal capacity in order to help supervise a project with confidential content. However, please ensure that everything that is submitted for examination is unrestricted. The Examiners will not sign NDAs. The source code for the project that is created or substantially modified must be submitted along with the dissertation itself. However, libraries or other bodies of code that would be required to make the project run do not need to be submitted and could be subject to NDA. Please note that both the supervisor and the student sign any NDA in a personal capacity and that this does not impose any liability on the University.
Dissertation
Please make sure that the dissertation meets the required structure and has sufficient material in each chapter to match the expectations of the marking scheme. It is expected that you read drafts of the dissertation and provide feedback to the student before it is submitted. However, feedback should not be so detailed that it would make you a co-author – the dissertation must be primarily the student’s own work. Please ensure that the student allows sufficient time for you to read the dissertation and for the student to make changes before it is submitted.
CamCORS Supervision Reports
Day-to-Day Supervisors are formally appointed by the student’s Director of Studies at their College. You should register on the CamCORS supervision reporting system and file a report at the end of each term that includes the hours of supervision given. Payment for supervision will generally be approved by the DoS or Senior Tutor at the College shortly afterwards. Colleges generally pay for contact time with the student, but not for non-contact time such as reading drafts and marking.
For more information, please watch the recording of the Supervisors of the Part II project guidance session May 2024
Guidance for Marking Supervisors
If you are the Marking Supervisor for a project and someone else is the Day-to-Day Supervisor, you will have a less detailed involvement in the running of the project. However, you nevertheless carry the overall responsibility for the project: if the student is in difficulties, for example if they have problems with their Day-to-Day Supervisor, it is your responsibility to get the project back on track.
Despite the name “Marking Supervisor”, you need to do more than just mark the dissertation. You are expected to be involved at the following points in the process:
- Giving feedback on drafts of the student’s project proposal before they submit it, helping them refine it into a project that is likely to be successful (taking into account the project proposal guidance), and signing off on the final project that the student submits to the Department. It is your job to veto proposals that are too risky, for example by being over-ambitious, not ambitious enough, relying on resources that might not be available, lacking a clear evaluation plan, or having intellectual property problems (everything in the submitted dissertation must be publishable without IP restrictions).
- Checking in on project progress twice a term. If all is going well, it is sufficient to check in with the Day-to-Day Supervisor, but in case of any concerns you need to speak to the student directly as well.
- In case of problems with the Day-to-Day Supervision, be available to step in as needed, including taking over Day-to-Day Supervision if necessary.
- Reading and providing brief feedback on the student’s progress report, and attending their progress presentation.
- Viewing the working artifact that the student has developed, to confirm that it really exists and works.
- Giving high-level feedback on one dissertation draft. The dissertation feedback should not be so detailed that it would give the student an unfair advantage.
- Providing a mark for the final dissertation according to the marking guidelines. You must do the marking yourself; it is not acceptable to delegate this to another person. One of the Examiners will provide a second mark, and moderation will take place in case of a significant discrepancy between the two marks. During moderation you must be able to justify your marks according to the marking guidelines.
If all goes well with a project, you as Marking Supervisor might typically spend a total of two hours on each project over the course of the whole year, but this could be much higher in case of problems. You may claim payment for contact time with the student from the student’s college, but colleges will generally not pay for non-contact time such as reading drafts and marking.
UTOs at the Department are automatically eligible to be Marking Supervisors. Anyone else requires approval from TMC to be a Marking Supervisor for a project.
Guidance for Directors of Studies
If you are the Director of Studies for Computer Science Part II students, it is your responsibility to help your students find a project and Supervisor(s) that are suitable for them, if they are not able to do this independently, and ensure they submit a project proposal that is acceptable to yourself and the Supervisors. Since you know your students best, we need you to gauge whether the proposed project is a good match for a particular student.
Please help the student develop their project proposal and give them feedback to maximise their chances of success, according to the project proposal guidance. You must sign off on the final project proposal submitted by the student, and formally appoint the Day-to-Day and Marking Supervisors.
After the project proposal is submitted and signed off, you are not required to be closely involved with the project. You should receive termly supervision reports from the Day-to-Day Supervisor, and a progress report from the student about halfway through the project. We suggest that you give the student feedback on one dissertation draft.
If you wish, you can be the Day-to-Day Supervisor for your students yourself. However, you cannot be your own students’ Marking Supervisor.
