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How to choose a project

Honours degrees at UWC are by coursework and a project. In South Africa, an Honours degree follows on a 3-year BSc in Computer Science. The Honours project takes one year and consists of the following steps: write a project proposal consisting of user requirements and requirements analysis; design a software solution with UML and code a proof-of-concept prototype; implement the code; and test the code.  At each of the four steps, the student must give a presentation to the department in addition to writing a report for each step culminating in a complete project report. Click here for a list of project ideas. We tend to align an Honours project as a lead-in to an MSc, or at least to prepare the student for pursuing advanced postgraduate studies. Have a look at the suggested projects, and also at related BANG publications. Honours projects are chosen in January. Talk to the project supervisor about the project. If you are serious about a project, you formally select a project by filling out a form (see the postgraduate administrator).

 

MSc and PhD degrees at UWC Computer Science are by research thesis only. There is no coursework. An MSc is supposed to take two years and a PhD takes three. Both degrees consist of the following steps: write a research proposal, defend the proposal to the department, carry out the research by coding a prototype with which to collect data, and finally write up a thesis. We expect and encourage all MSc and PhD students to submit papers based on their work to local and international accredited conferences and journals. A PhD thesis has the additional requirement to be original and innovative work. We expect both MSc and PhD students to generate their own research topic/proposal in line with the research group ongoing activities, and take ownership of the entire process.

 

Funding

We expect Honours, MSc and PhD students (and post-docs, too) to attract funding for  research activities, including bursaries. For example, South African and SADC citizens can apply for SA government (NRF) bursaries well in advance of intended studies, see www.nrf.ac.za for information and deadlines. Provided we have external funding, and we usually do, we can top up those NRF bursaries by 50%, e.g. an R80k NRF bursary can be topped up by R40k meaning R120k/annum. It's all tax free, and with no strings attached.  That's R10k/month in pocket (well, once fees are covered). You can even send money home! One can also search for 'loaded' bursaries from SA corporates, e.g. Telkom, or other government agencies. Try the dti, DST and/or Meraka/CSIR, for example. The bottom line is that you are responsible for your academic career, and you must find ways to fund it.

 

If you are interested doing postgraduate studies, e.g. MSc and PhD with us:

Have a look at related BANG publications. Many of the papers we have published are available for download through the publication source, via Google scholar and/or the UWC Research Repository.

Read our brochure and follow links to projects that show completed theses and also ideas for new projects. That will give you an idea of the kind of work we do.

  • Align your own interests to one of these projects.
  • Do some serious background reading on the topic
  • Write a preliminary research proposal to accompany your application. We recommend you either get a copy of UWC's research proposal guide and/or Olivier's most recent book on the same topic.
  • Then contact a prospective supervisor and initiate an email conversation about the topic providing that research proposal along with your CV.
  • We also recommend you tell us why you want to do a postgrad degree, and why with us. Google the terms "positionality" and "intersectionality". That's what we want to know.

 

UWC now accepts MSc and PhD applications throughout the year. However, we prefer that students commence studies at the beginning of the calendar year. Note that we are especially interested in South African students that studied at other universities, here and abroad. We want fresh ideas to influence the way we conduct research, publish about it and perform technology transfer. The same goes for post-docs. Of course, we will consider qualified international students, as well.

 

 

 

project ideas can be found here

 

 
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