Course Catalogue

Workplace Assessment Year 4 COMPSCI4085P

  • Academic Session: 2026-27
  • School: School of Computing Science
  • Credits: 60
  • Level: Level 4 (SCQF level 10)
  • Typically Offered: Full Year
  • Available to Visiting Students: No
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No
  • Curriculum For Life: No

Short Description

By the time they have reached Year 4, students will have a huge breadth of experience in the workplace and should be capable of taking the lead on their own projects or being a mentor in a particular software engineering domain. They should use these skills to develop a substantial piece of work which solves a given problem, documenting their progress and rationale throughout the duration of the project. This course, and the equivalent courses in each of the previous years of the programme, is intended to create reflective life-long learners.

Timetable

None

Requirements of Entry

Workplace Assessment Year 3

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

Portfolio of competencies (25%) and accompanying reflective essay (10%), dissertation (60%) reporting on a workplace project conducted independently and accompanying presentation (5%). Report components will be submitted and assessed at logical stages over the duration of the course. The precise breakdown of the stages will be at the discretion of the lecturer.

Main Assessment In: April/May

Are reassessment opportunities available for all summative assessments? No

It is the default expectation that all courses will offer opportunities for reassessment or deferred assessment. Where it is not possible to offer this in some assessment components, the grade achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade, and any exceptions for this course are described below.

[No exceptions]

Course Aims

This project aims to give the student an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to plan and manage a significant piece of software development work. They should be able to make decisions rationally and justify these decisions convincingly based on research. They should also display their technical writing ability by presenting their work as a dissertation.

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Independently plan, deliver and evaluate a substantial project with industry relevance, demonstrating competency in software engineering 

2. Manage and apply technical, professional, and research skills effectively to address a challenging problem in software engineering 

3. Compose and present a dissertation that documents the software engineering project and critically evaluates decisions made within a professional software engineering context 

4. Provide evidence of professional development as a software engineer 

5. Reflect critically on their workplace learning and relate it to theoretical knowledge gained at university  

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

No exceptions