Bill Gardner / Thesis vs. Project
During a student's undergraduate years, most have completed one or more projects, perhaps as part of a "capstone" course. Upon arriving at graduate school, it may be difficult for students to understand what makes a thesis different from the projects they are accustomed to. I have managed to identify 8 differences:
1. A
thesis
usually requires getting familiar with a particular specialized area of theory and/or application, which seems abstract, complex, and/or quite narrow. It may be covered by a textbook, but often is so specialized and/or recent, that you have to read journals and conference papers. Supervisors often use Reading Courses for the purpose of bringing new students up to speed. The supervisor will be familiar with the area and act as a "tour guide," otherwise the students will be more on their own. A co-supervisor may be brought in if the area of interest crosses boundaries. In contrast, a
project
may be based on things already learned in coursework or slightly beyond.
2. The decision on
thesis
topic attempts to advance the state of the art (in minor way = MSc, major way = PhD), often in line with the supervisor's research thrust. Activity #1 (above) helps to identify "open problems" that can be worked on, to inform the topic choice, and to avoid repeating existing work, thus improving publishability. Background reading in #1 may not be enough, so there will be the need to do a fresh literature review, which is summarized and analyzed under the "related work" section of the thesis. A
project
, on the other hand, doesn't have to have any novelty at all, and publication expectations are low. The project is done more for the individual's learning experience.
3. Both build on existing work, in the sense that a
project
probably uses COTS/open components/tools, and a
thesis
incorporates and leverages techniques/tools resulting from published research, including the supervisor's previous students. The thesis especially must give credit to that prior work.
4. A
thesis
typically tries to claim that the work is either
novel
(in some way) or
improved
(to some degree). A PhD must be really novel and/or greatly improved. Establishing improvement often involves running tests against recognized (from #1)
benchmarks
, carefully collecting performance data, and doing meaningful statistical analysis. But a
project
may be done for its own sake, or even just for the experience (though it may in fact result in a useful system), and it stands on its own.
5. A
thesis
places itself in a
research continuum
by looking back and around at "related work" (see above), and also ahead to "future work" that the student wishes there were time for or now seems advisable given what's been achieved so far. Future work may have the nature of "Now that we've done A, we can more clearly see our way to solving open problem B." A
project
will often have features that were not implemented due to time constraints, and may identify areas for improvement, but, again, it primarily stands on its own.
6.
Thesis
work continues until "enough" has been achieved to be worth a degree, therefore the duration can be difficult to predict. Since it is "research" and not just turning a crank, dead ends may be encountered, necessitating redirection or restarts. A
project
, on the other hand, ends when the student's time runs out, and thus the work is better able to be scheduled.
7. A
thesis
requires a high-quality writeup (MSc "thesis", PhD "dissertation"), recording all of the above for future reference, and is "defended" against probing examination by a panel of researchers. Usually there is no demo. If the examination committee is not satisfied with the writeup, it has to be revised until they are. But a
project
probably requires a demo and a report to document the system, and possibly a public presentation and/or poster. Formal committee examination is rare, and revisions are not demanded.
8. If time allows, the supervisor will involve the student in disseminating the
thesis
research by writing up results for publication, including sending the student to present a conference paper. If the student has moved on, the supervisor will do this, giving credit to the student. A
project
, however, has light or no expectations of publication.
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