28.11.2013: Dear colleagues and students, based on some very helpful comments from Bose-da, Kushal and Madhusudan, the following are some changes with immediate effect: 0.As per the Head's directive, 26 July, 2016: All EndTerm reports should have a scanned turnitin certificate of the first page, signed and approved by the supervisor(s). 1. All reports will now be links to PDF files of reports, on the evaluation schedule webpage. For students: - They have to upload the PDF (before the submission deadline) on an IITD internal webpage or in the worst case, a public site such as a Google drive account and send the project coordinator this link. The project coordinator will place a link to the downloadable PDF on the project webpage along with the date of submission and a flag (late/on-time). For those with privacy concerns (which are quite valid, indeed), please feel free to password-protect your PDF. IITD has on official version of the full Adobe suite. Please do not bombard the coordinator's/chairperson's email. For faculty members: - To check for plagiarism: a report reader/supervisor/any other faculty member can use TurnItIn for this purpose. - All faculty members should have TurnItIn accounts. I believe there is a mechanism in place for those who do not have one, to acquire one through their LDAP accounts. - Having the student put the report up on a website will enable faculty members to pick up a copy even if they are out of station. If the link is an IITD internal link, faculty members can use their VPN accounts to access it from any computer or web-enabled device, anywhere in the world. - Having a student put a link to their report will save the burden of emailing huge PDFs. Reports at times are huge. - As for the report, if anyone wants a hard copy, he/she may download it from the web page, and print it out. I store all email IDs of students with me: if a reader needs a hard copy to be printed out, I will forward this to the student, who will give a hard copy to the reader. 2. Till the Department evolves a policy on plagiarism (which will possibly be crystallised in a suitable DFB meeting), the intereim policy will be to have the Evaluation Committee take a decision on this, and have this communicated to the project coordinator. 3. Bose-da's report-writing guidelines are up on the course webpage, through a link (obviously credited to him!) If any other colleague has such a set of rules, I will collate all of these, and put them up, with credits (and of course, lots of thanks as well!) 4. Template for the Stage 1 report: in the form of an IEEE journal paper, whose template is availabel on the IEEE website. This will give students some practice in putting something in the form of a paper of the world's oldest and largest technical society. Template for the Stage 2 report: The IIT Delhi PhD thesis/M.Tech thesis format. Students can find out about this from the PG Section. 5. To discourage the problem in points 1 and 2 above, and encourage the concept in 3 and 4 above, the M.Tech evaluation will have the Stage 1 evaluation have the same evaluation percentages as Stage 2, as agreed on in the DFB meeting on the same. http://poorvi.cse.iitd.ac.in/~sumantra/courses/mtech_project/schaudhury_mtech_evaluation.pdf 6. X grade: the X grade is a committee grade. The supervisor's concurrence is essential for this, and the committee evaluates the student in a short presentation, and awards the grade on the basis of the promise shown by the student, dwelling on valid reasons for the work being incomplete thus far, and a clear work plan of what is to be done. The X grade is to be converted to a regular grade, evaluated by a suitable 3-member committee convened by the supervisor, so that the grade can be sent out latest by the 10th day of the next Semester. Dr. Sumeet Agarwal's guidelines: Students, please prepare exactly THREE SLIDES, as follows. Slide 1: Overview of your problem. Slide 2: What you have done so far, and what are the issues you faced that compelled you to apply for an X grade. Slide 3: What is your plan for the next few weeks to enable you to complete this part of the project, by the start of the next Semester. 7. The basic passing grade for any stage of the M.Tech project is a `C'. Cheers, Sumantra.