Essay Handbook for Master of Science – Computing and Information Systems

The essay route provides an opportunity for an MSc CIS student to focus on an investigation that is of interest to that individual and that culminates in an original contribution to the discipline of Computing and Information Systems. With respect to the implications of this choice for the student, the essay route consists of foundation courses (3–12 credits), core courses (15 credits), three elective courses (9 credits), and an essay (3 credits). The essay is carried out under the supervision of a faculty member and would normally be completed near the end of the student's program. To complete the credit requirements for the essay, the student must complete the following courses:

• COMP 600. The student may register for this course and start the essay only after completing the required foundation and core credits. This course serves as both an orientation to research as well as an opportunity for completing the initial tasks of the research essay.
• COMP 696. The student can enroll in COMP 696 any time after they have successfully completed COMP 600. By the end of this course, the student should produce the final essay report and submit it to the review committee.

Note: The essay courses are not conventional courses; however, they are treated similarly for administrative purposes. The student must register for these courses in sequence and will be given a mark of Pass or Fail according to the essay review committee’s decision after completion of COMP 696.

Master’s Essay Requirements

It is expected that a research essay be based on an identified research problem and well-defined research question, so most of the research work focus on the following tasks:

• Providing a comprehensive critical survey of a selected research topic.
• Applying and synthesizing the competencies acquired during the program of study to analyse the research problem of the topic.
• Recommending solutions or improvement recommendations to existing solutions for the studied research problem.
• Producing an essay report according to the specified guidelines in this handbook.

After completing COMP 600, students taking the essay route should have completed the research scoping, the research initialization, and a good part of the literature review that helps with grasping different aspects of the research question and problem. So, during the COMP 696 course, the student will focus on completing the critical analysis of the reviewed literature and will either design a solution for the investigated problem or detail recommended improvements for existing solutions. COMP 696 also includes writing the essay report and completing the essay review.

Essay Writing

In this phase, the student documents the methods, findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the student’s research consistent with the program learning outcomes. The produced essay should clearly describe the research problem, articulate the research questions, describe the research methodology, include a critical analysis of supporting literature, and provide either the design of a solution for the investigated problem or recommendations for improving existing solutions. The student should produce the essay report in accordance with the Essay Style Guide and Template (see Appendix A) following either APA or IEEE style. The length of the essay will vary depending on the type of essay and the amount of evidence collected. Students should make every effort to write concisely. The main body of the essay (excluding front and back matter, such as acknowledgement, appendices, and references) should be between 50 and 80 pages in length.

The student should consider the following quality issues when producing the essay report:

• Does the student properly identify the research problem and research question?
• Are the research question, hypothesis, and verification mechanisms defined?
• Does the literature review consider all appropriate sources of information?
• Does the essay adequately describe the research methodology?
• Does the final essay report clearly describe the student’s contributions in terms of recommendations or solution design?
• Does the essay conform to the research ethics policies of AU?
• Will the essay stand up to rigorous academic scrutiny?

Important: While writing the essay report, the student, with the help of the supervisor, should ensure that all copyright issues have been resolved. For more information about intellectual property, please refer to the FGS intellectual property guidelines. Also, once the essay report has been submitted for review, the student must not make changes to the essay report unless requested to do so by the review committee.

Review Committee Formation

A review committee must be established for essay review. The supervisor works with the student on selecting the review committee. A master’s essay review committee is normally comprised of a minimum of two people, one being the supervisor.

• The chair of the committee shall be the supervisor, normally from the student’s faculty or centre/school.
• Another member shall be at arm’s length, with expertise in the essay topic.

The committee members must meet the eligibility criteria requirements and must not be in a position of conflict of interest (AU Policy), such as having been or being currently associated with the student, supervisor, or co-supervisor as a close friend or relative, or be in a commercial, business, or financial relationship.

Essay Review and Assessment

After the essay report has been completed, the supervisor will distribute it to the review committee for review and assessment.

Occasionally, the student may be required by the committee to defend their essay online through an oral presentation in any of the following scenarios:

• The committee cannot reach consensus in its assessment of the essay.
• The committee needs to verify the ownership and authorship of essay content.
• The committee needs clarification about the findings and claims reported in the essay.

During the oral examination, the student conducts a formal presentation of the essay to the committee, normally within a closed session (no one besides the student, the review committee, can be present). The presentation is followed by an oral examination, in which the committee will ask questions related to the essay.

In case of technical difficulties in running the oral examination, the chair of the committee may ask for adjournment.

The essay and the oral examination are adjudicated at the same time and can result in one of the following decisions:

Pass

The committee members agree that no revisions are needed. The student receives a clear Pass.

Pass, Subject to Minor Revisions

Minor copy-editing revisions may be needed. The student cannot proceed to graduation until the supervisor has approved the revisions. In some cases, the supervisor may also want another committee member to approve the revisions.

Pass, Subject to Major Revisions

The essay report requires substantial revisions. Unless otherwise stated in their assessment, the committee members must review the revisions and determine whether the revisions are adequate and that the student can receive a Pass. The student cannot proceed to graduation until the committee members have approved the revisions.

Fail

The essay report is unacceptable (e.g., is poorly written, does not adequately address the research question, contains inadequate proposed solutions or recommendations, contains other significant omissions, or displays evidence of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism).

Depending upon the reason for the Fail, the review committee may recommend to the program director that the student be allowed a second and final resubmission of the essay report. It must be made clear to the student what will be required to achieve a Pass, and any assistance the student may expect from the supervisor and committee members in performing the required revisions.

Any student who receives a Fail at the second attempt may be required to withdraw from the program with a Fail appearing on the transcript.

Adjournment

In the case where an adjournment was requested following a scheduled oral presentation, the student is given a second opportunity for the oral presentation. Under extraordinary circumstances, the student may obtain an Adjournment on the second attempt.

Assessment Form Submission

Once the essay review is completed, the supervisor must inform the student of the assessment result and work with them in implementing any requested revisions. Once the final assessment is done and the requested revisions completed, the supervisor needs to make sure that each committee member completes and submits their assessment using the assessment form in Appendix B. All assessment forms should be forwarded to the graduate program advisors at fstgrad@athabascau.ca no later than one month after the student’s completion of COMP 696. The student will be able to apply for graduation after receiving a PASS grade for COMP 696.

Final Essay Report Submission and Application to Graduate

Essay Report Revision

The student is responsible for revising their submitted essay report according to the supervisory committee’s requests. The student will not be recommended for graduation if the revised essay is not validated by the supervisor.

Final Submission of Essay Report

The essay report must be formatted in accordance with the Essay Style Guide and Template (see Appendix A).

A copy of the .pdf version of the approved essay report and supporting materials must be submitted to Athabasca University before students can be authorized for graduation. These essay report files should be submitted to the graduate program advisors at fstgrad@athabascau.ca, who will check the report file and arrange to have it stored in the Athabasca University Digital Thesis and Project Room (DTPR).

Application to Graduate

Once the program requirements have been met and the final essay report submitted, the student must contact the graduate program advisors at fstgrad@athabascau.ca to apply for graduation.

For guidance on using AI in your research process, refer to the Research Orientation Handbook.

There have been a number of problems with previous essay reports that have occurred so frequently that it is worth identifying them explicitly. Some of these are major problems that will typically require major revisions to your essay, while others are less serious but make your reviewers’ tasks difficult.

The following are the most common serious problems seen in previous MSc CIS essays:

• Failure to identify and clearly state a specific problem or research question that you are investigating.
  Your essay must clearly state what your research is about. A good guideline is that you should be able to specify what it is you are trying to do in a single sentence, perhaps with a couple of sentences of clarification afterward.
• Failure to clearly describe the methodology used to complete your work.
  While the essay may not provide a full solution or implement a working system, you should be able to describe the methodology used for conducting the research.
• Failure to properly organize your essay report.
  If you do not organize your essay in a logical fashion, it is extremely difficult for the review committee to tell that you have a good understanding of the area. Most importantly, your essay report itself, and each section within it, must have good flow. This means that each statement must logically follow the one preceding it. You must always present complete trains of thought. There should be no leaps of faith required to understand what you are writing about. This reflects the process of scientific reasoning. Ideas should carefully follow from one step to the next as in a mathematical proof. It is also a good practice to look at each paragraph in each section individually and ask yourself, “Does this paragraph correspond to the title of this section?” If your answer is “No,” then you need to consider removing or refocusing that paragraph. A common example of this occurs when related work is discussed in a different section. (This is often easily identified by the presence of many citations in the paragraph in question.)
• Failure to make a critical analysis and comparisons between related work.
  It is insufficient to simply enumerate work related to your research. You must logically organize and discuss the related work, so it is clear to the reader how the various previous research efforts relate to each other and, especially, how they relate to what you are proposing.
• Failure to remember that you are writing to a general CIS audience.
  You cannot assume every reader is an expert within your specific chosen area of study. Consequently, you must always define all acronyms and explain terms before you use them. You may assume only a general, undergraduate-level of knowledge and must, in your essay, explain everything beyond that. Always follow the adage, “Know your audience!”

The following are some common, less serious, problems often seen in MSc essays:

• Grammatical and spelling errors.
  The prevalence of such errors speaks negatively to your concern for detail and your industriousness. These are characteristics that are fundamental to success in scientific research and higher-level study such as the MSc degrees. You should remember that negative impressions of your written work will often be reflected later in, for example, reference letters written for you. As a first step, you should always spell-check your essay. Remember, however, that spell-checkers are not perfect and will fail to detect certain errors. Further, grammatical checkers are notoriously bad in certain situations; technical writing, such as that in a MSc CIS essay. The bottom line is that automatic checking must be only a first step. Careful, human proofreading is also needed. If necessary, it might be useful to arrange to have proofreading of the essay done by a professional editor or at least a highly proficient English speaker. A report which has obviously been poorly proofread may be returned for improvement prior to review.
• Inadequate and/or dated citations.
  Whenever you refer to the work of others (including figures you may have reproduced), to specific systems, and/or to specific claims that you do not explicitly justify within your essay, you need to provide a citation to the related work. Further, such citations should always be made on the original reference to the corresponding system or piece of work. There are no exceptions to these two rules. Further, when selecting citations, you should always pick the best possible reference, where best is judged in terms of direct relevance, quality of the source, and recentness of the citation. Always try to avoid the use of old citations that might have been superseded by more recent work.
• Incomplete and/or inappropriate references.
  Each reference you provide should be as complete as possible. This means that it should include such elements as page numbers and date of publication. Sometimes getting this information requires a little extra work (especially if you find the paper online), but this information should be included so that it is easy for the reader to locate the reference if they need to. (Note also that this will be even more important for your essay itself since a larger audience will likely read it.) It is also increasingly common to see references to web-based documents, such as technical reports, that are not refereed and are thus of dubious quality and value. Such references should be used extremely sparingly in your report and certainly should not be used alone to argue for any key point that your work depends on. Always try to find references from recognized journals, books, and top-tier conferences whenever possible. An essay that obviously makes little or no attempt to provide complete and consistent bibliographic entries may be returned for improvement prior to review.

• Essay Style Guide and Template

• Essay Assessment Form