Communication Skills and Professional Issues

Important: Team Allocation Please join a team on this page. Team allocation will then be frozen at noon on Friday week 2. For details on teams, see here.

Content of the module

This module deals with two separate important areas: professional issues and communication skills. The first half of the lecture series will be dedicated to guest speakers from various well known and local organisations, who will present their experiences and knowledge of related topics, such as:

• Communication
• Ethics
• Collaborative working
• Project Management
• Legal aspects
• Security

The second half of lectures will be allocated to student team presentations.

Lecture Venues and Times

• Tuesdays at 3pm, G33, Mech. Eng.
• Fridays at 2pm, G33, Mech. Eng.

Assessments and Important Dates

This module is 100% continuously assessed, based on three pieces of coursework:

• Monday Week 5, noon: ASSESSMENT DEADLINE [worth 10%]: Job application including CV to a real job advert in computer science or a related area of your choice the form of a single PDF file with three parts: (i) a covering letter, (ii) a CV, (iii) the job advert itself (you must include this). See here for some advice on job applications.
• Monday Week 5, noon: PROPOSAL DEADLINE Propose your individual essay topic relating to this module (see below) by emailing a title and a short paragraph describing your intended report to Jim Yandle, making sure to prefix your email subject with "COMM SKILLS ESSAY PROPOSAL [STUDENT_ID]", so it can easily be spotted and responded to. Upon receiving approval of the topic from Jim (to make sure it is sufficient), you may then proceed to work on the topic.
• Friday Week 11, 5pm: ASSESSMENT DEADLINE [worth 55%]: 50% - Write an essay (of 2000-2500 words) based on the topic you proposed earlier to Jim.
  5% - Write a series of short (i.e. one paragraph) reviews for each guest and student lecture in the term, you may exclude your team's own lecture. Your reviews should give your opinion of the lecture as a whole (e.g. content, style, good bits, bad bits, etc.)
  Submit these two files in a zip file (or equivalent) via the BOSS system.
• 3 weeks before your team presentation: PROPOSAL DEADLINE Team leaders propose team project topic, emailing a report title and a short paragraph describing your intended work to Nick Blundell
• 1 week before your team presentation: PROPOSAL DEADLINE Team leaders email a flyer of your presentation to Nick Blundell, so that it may be published and circulated. This should grab people's attention, so that they will want to find out all about your investigations.
• Friday Week 11, 5pm: ASSESSMENT DEADLINE [worth 35%]: Teamwork: As part of a team (which will be formed in the first week of term), write a joint report (2-3 pages by each member, but fluid as though written by a single author) on a topic again related to the module (but other than the topic of your individual report) and give a 40-minute presentation of the report in your allocated lecture slot.

All submissions must be made via the BOSS system. Please see here for more informantion on BOSS. Documents must be submitted in a PDF format, so they can be easily read and archived.

There will be a penalty for late submissions of 10% for any 24 hours or parts thereof. No submission after 10 calendar days.