Dissertation front covers are available from the MSc Courses Administrator.

The first page comprises a standard form obtainable from the MSc Courses Administrator. It lists:

- The title of the dissertation

- Student Name

- Student Number

- Submission date,

- Module number

- Supervisor

- Course Title

Approximately 600-word summary of report.  The purpose of the abstract is to give the reader of the report a quick overview of the dissertation.

If you wish to make any acknowledgements (or to dedicate your work to someone) then the page following the summary or abstract is the most appropriate place for this.

This follows the acknowledgements page and is a list of the sections, subsections, etc. Page numbers must be given for each section. You may use as many subdivisions of sections as are necessary.

These should be listed in the order in which they occur in the body of the report, giving page numbers

Body of report organised into numbered sections for instance

1. Introduction

   Project rationale

   Outline of the problem

   Objectives of the project

2. Research

   Survey of related products and literature

   Theoretical Study

3. Method

   Methodology

   Description of how problem was defined

   Initial work schedule

   Design process and decisions

   Implementation and testing

4. Conclusion

   Critical appraisal of the project

   Lessons learnt

   Product/Deliverable evaluation

   Work plan review, including deviations necessary

    

All references cited in the text must be listed in the reference section.  The purpose of citing references in the text is to acknowledge the ideas and work of other authors and to enable your reader to find the source of your information if they should wish. Reference should be cited using the Harvard System.

Guidance on how to reference your work correctly using what is known as the Harvard Referencing System may also be found on the Brookes website at

http:/www.brookes.ac.uk/services/library/resources/harvard.doc

The Library produces a very useful free handout on citing bibliographical references.

Some people include one or more appendices. An appendix is "an addition subjoined to a document or book having some contributory value, but not essential to completeness" (OED). For example you may have collected 7,500 items of data in your project, the result section could contain a series of tables or graphs to summarise the data; the raw data could be held in an appendix.

It is quite common for software tools to automatically generated programming code which you might then customise with code which you yourself have written. When providing documentation for your dissertation make sure that you are clear which code is your own work and which code has been autogenerated.