Supervisors are permitted to review Interim Reports before submission and provide feedback to the students.

Interim Report

The interim report is primarily focused on the project formulation, background, literature review, initial work and project planning. The word count for the Interim Report should be as outlined in the Assessment Information & Deadlines table.

Interim Reports should include the following:

• Background to project. A brief summary of the subject area, why it is important, should broadly explain the motivation behind your project.

• Introduction, aim(s) and objectives. A general idea of what the project is about. Objectives should be more specific actions that you expect to do (e.g. simulate, test, compare). At the end of the project it should be possible to assess which objectives have been met.

• Literature review and work progress to date. The balance between literature review and technical work progress will vary between projects and this should be discussed with the supervisor. The literature review should provide a summary of relevant work for the project and provide motivation for the proposed work. A good literature review will demonstrate academic input through critical appraisal and a logical grouping of, and demonstration of links between, the literature.

• Current status of the work. To include preliminary simulations, experiments etc. The balance between literature review and technical work progress will vary between projects and this should be discussed with the supervisor. Where experiments have been conducted include a full methods section as you would for your final dissertation.

• Self-review. A short self-review of your progress to date. This should be a critical evaluation of your progress, your development and how the project is going. This should also be used to highlight any issues with the project. No longer than one page.

• Project management. This should include a programme of work to be completed for the rest of the project. This will often link to the original objectives of the project but will provide more detail on what work will be done. The programme of work should also be supported by a detailed Gantt chart included as an appendix and referred to in this section. This Gantt chart should be an updated version of the one submitted at the end of week 4 and should indicate the progress to date against the original plan.

You can use the interim report as a basis for the final report. It is expected that to a greater or lesser extent, material from the interim report will be used in the final report. However, it is also expected that students will have significantly built upon the interim report when writing the final report. In particular you should be continually developing the literature review that formed the basis for the interim report. You will not be penalized for self-plagiarism for reusing text from the interim report in the final report, but a final report that does not significantly expand on the interim report is unlikely to get a good mark.

Supervisors will provide overall guidance on the final report and comments on a single draft of the report. They will not provide detailed editing and their comments will be more general about the overall structure and content. It is strongly recommended you discuss the proposed report structure with your supervisor before starting writing.

If you would like formatting guidelines, please refer to the Final Year Project Templates section, however this is not compulsory for the Interim Report.

Your Interim Report should be submitted through Turnitin on the FYP Blackboard page.