Assignment 1: Survey Report

You will identify a specific area and conduct literature survey on this area. Then you will write a comprehensive survey report based on the literature survey.

Submission: You must submit an electronic copy of your assignment either in Acrobat (.pdf) or Microsoft Word (.doc) via CloudDeakin.

Delays caused by student’s own computer downtime cannot be accepted as a valid reason for late submission without penalty. Students must plan their work to allow for both scheduled and unscheduled downtime.

It is the student`s responsibility to ensure that they understand the submission instructions. If you have ANY difficulties ask the Lecturer for assistance (prior to the submission date).

Copying, Plagiarism:

This is an individual assignment. You are not permitted to work as a part of a group when writing this assignment.

Plagiarism is the submission of somebody else’s work in a manner that gives the impression that the work is your own. For individual assignments, plagiarism includes the case where two or more students work collaboratively on the assignment. The School of Information Technology treats plagiarism very seriously. When it is detected, penalties are strictly imposed. Deakin University uses Turnitin as the program that allows you to check whether there is any unoriginal material in your work, please refer to http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/clouddeakin/help-guides/assessment/plagiarism.

Additional Requirements and Notes

1.Any text, table, figure, and code adapted from any source must be clearly referenced.

2.All assignments must be submitted through CloudDeakin. Assignments will not be accepted through any other manner without prior approval. Students should note that this means that email and paper based submissions will ordinarily be rejected.

3.Submissions received after the due date are penalised at a rate of 10% (out of the full mark) per day, no exceptions. Late submission after 3 days would be penalised at a rate of 100% out of the full mark. Close of submissions on the due date and each day thereafter for penalties will occur at 11:59 pm Australian Eastern Time (UTC +10 hours) with Daylight Saving.

4.No extension will be granted.

Guideline

What is a literature survey?

A literature survey is a description of the literature relevant to a particular field or topic. This is often the starting point of a research project. A critical literature survey is a critical assessment of the relevant literature. You will only be able to conduct your research unless you complete the literature survey.

How does a literature survey differ from other assignments?

The literature survey, like other forms of academic writing, has an introduction, body and conclusion, well-formed paragraphs, and a logical structure. However, in other kinds of academic writing, you use relevant literature to support the discussion of your research; in a literature survey, the literature itself is the subject of discussion.

What counts as `literature`?

‘Literature’ covers everything relevant that is written on a topic: books, journal articles, technical reports, theses and dissertations, etc. The important word is `relevant`. Informal reference from website such as Wikipedia is normally not recognised as literature in academic writing. Check with your Lecturer when in doubt.

Why do a literature survey?

A literature survey gives an overview of the research field: what has already been said on the topic, who the key writers are, what the prevailing theories and hypotheses are, what questions are being asked, and what methodologies and methods are appropriate and useful.

How many references to look for?

This depends on what the literature survey is for, and what stage you are at in your studies. The minimum number of references for this assignment is 20 titles.

How to write a literature survey? 1. Choose research topic

Selecting a topic is possibly the most difficult part of doing research. Is it too big? Is it too narrow? Will I be able to find enough on it? Start by choosing a topic that you like or are curious about. You are going to be working on it for quite a while.

A few broad topics are listed in DSO:

1.Network and System Security

2.Security and Privacy in I.T.

3.Machine Learning and Data Mining

4.Cloud Computing

5.Mobile Computing

6.Resource and Service Discovery and Selection

7.Services Computing

8.Optimisation and Modelling

You are recommended to consider your major/specialisation when choosing your topic. You are

free to choose any topic. However, please refine and refocus your topic before you finalise it. You should have a topic that is interesting and that you can reasonably cover in the time available. That is, you should have a more focused topic than the broad topics given above. Concentrating on a specific aspect of these broader topics will make for a much more interesting research project. You need to identify a few keywords to precisely define the topic that you choose. Remember that choosing an appropriate subject is a critical step in the success of your assignments of this unit.

2. The literature search

Literature search is to find out what has been written on your topic. Using as many bibliographical sources as you can to find relevant titles will be good but for this unit, IEEE and ACM journals and magazines are adequate. You will use the keywords that you have identified to start your search. As mentioned above, the minimum number of references for this assignment is 20 titles.

3. Record the bibliographical details

Write down the full bibliographical details as soon as you find a reference to it. You can use EndNote to manage your bibliographies; the Deakin library link to EndNote is at 

IEEE and Harvard are preferred. Please prepare your references according to the guidance at http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study-support/referencing

4. Read the literature

Before you begin to read a book or article, make sure you written down the full details (see above). Take notes as you read the literature. You are reading to find out how each piece of writing approaches the subject of your research, what it has to say about it, and (especially for research students) how it relates to your own thesis. Consider the following questions:

•Is it a general textbook or does it deal with a specific issue(s)?

•What is its theoretical basis?

•What definitions does it use?

•What is its general methodological approach? What methods are used?

•What are the evaluation methods?

•What kinds of evaluation results does it use to back up its argument?

•What conclusions does it come to?

5.Write the literature survey

Having gathered the relevant details about the literature, you are now ready to write the literature survey. Like all academic writing, a literature survey must have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The introduction should include:

•the nature of the topic under discussion

•the scope of the topic

•the significance of the topic

The body paragraphs could include relevant paragraphs on:

•historical background, including classic texts

•current research studies

•current discoveries about the topic

•principal questions that are being asked

•methodologies and methods in use

•general conclusions that are being drawn

The conclusion could include:

•A summary of major agreements and disagreements in the literature

•A summary of general conclusions that are being drawn

•A summary of future research directions

Samples

You may find sample papers from:

•ACM Computing Surveys

•IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials

The papers from those journals can be just used as samples. They give you the ideas about the structure of a literature survey. You are not expected to write a literature survey with same technical details as those papers.

Marking Criteria

The literature survey will be marked using the following marking criteria:

1.(1 mark) The topic of the literature survey is clearly specified.

2.(1 mark) The scope of the literature survey is well justified.

3.(1 mark) The significance of the literature survey is clearly specified.

4.(6 marks) An adequate literature review (in particular, you have read and properly cited at least 20 references) is conducted and such review is clearly shown in the literature survey. Please do not use informal reference from website such as Wikipedia.

5.(8 marks) Adequate analysis and/or investigation on the literature of the selected topic have been conducted and the conclusion is clearly shown in the literature survey. You need to understand the references and classify them into different sub-topics. You may use figures and/or tables to summarise your findings from the references. Please note the analysis and/or investigation are based on the literature, but not your own research.

6.(3 marks) The literature survey is clearly structured (title, introduction, main body of the literature survey, conclusions, and references), nicely presented, and well written. The length of the literature survey is within the scope given in the guideline.

7.(2 marks) * Bonus points: The literature survey points out future research direction such as development of new system architecture, method, algorithm, technique, etc. The bonus points are not affected to the penalty from late submission. The bonus points could be given regardless how many marks you receive according to the marking scheme. That is, you could reach 22 marks in total for this assignment if you get full mark based on the marking scheme, if you are working really hard! :-)

Table 1. Marking Scheme.