Lab notebooks

Students must provide themselves with a lab notebook for their projects. It is essential best practice in project management to use a lab notebook to record all day-to-day activities, as a sketch book for conceptual design work, to record calculations and experimental results etc, dating every entry. For some types of project, such as software projects, electronic records and documentation may be more appropriate. Project leaders may ask for notebooks to be produced at meetings or submitted with reports to check that the books are used correctly, with entries properly laid out and dated.

Interim and final reports

Most projects require 3 reports to be submitted, i.e. 2 interim reports and a final report. If report submission is not electronic, all interim reports must be appended to your final report when you hand it in. The maximum total length of all reports taken together (typed or handwritten on A4 pages) must not exceed 14 sides, plus calculations and drawings.  Students must adhere to the page limit, and keep the volume of appendices to a minimum.

Virtually all reports will be produced electronically, and students MUST take responsibility for retaining their own electronic copies as backup. Most project leaders will also expect reports to be submitted electronically (via Moodle).

Format of reports

The format of reports will vary from project to project, and the project leader will tell you what is required.  Some general guidelines for design projects are as follows:

Interim reports (2 sides each, excluding appendices)

• Introduction: overview of project and aims
• Project specification
• Summary of preliminary design work
• Conclusions and programme of future work
• Appendices (include important sketches, drawings, computer listings, etc)

Final report (not greater than 10 sides of A4, excluding appendices)

Suggested section headings plus guide lengths are:

• Introduction (1 side)
• Summary of overall design decisions and outline of project management (1 side, possible team material)
• Description of design/computer code (2-3 sides)
• Problems encountered in development and their technical solutions (1 side)
• Test procedure/software implementation (2 sides)
• Conclusions and recommendations for improvements (1-2 sides)
• Appendices (possible team material):
• Important design details, including mechanical drawings, circuit diagrams, software code
• Interim reports 1 and 2 (where applicable)

See the Report writing guide for further guidance.

Report cover sheets

At the front of each report (interim and final), every student must include a signed IIA project coversheet  (to be downloaded and printed from this link, as required). The sheet contains:

• A declaration stating that the student is submitting his or her own work.  (Work which has not been done by the author must be identified clearly. It is recognised that there will be some common elements between the work of students in a pair or group, for example in drawings and diagrams.)
• Space for markers to provide written feedback (but not marks) on your reports.
• Space for you to indicate suggestions for improvements to the project.

The online survey should be completed at the end of the project period. 

Return of reports

Physical copies of reports, drawings, etc. (where not handed in electronically) will be kept until after the Tripos results have been published. Such project work will NOT automatically be returned to students. Some project leaders may recover reports from the Teaching Office.