Surviving B.Tech project !!!!!

B. Tech is a four-year engineering course in India. I completed my B.Tech in 2009. Generally, the B.Tech project is the last year. It is very important. It can change your life if you do it wholeheartedly. Apart from that, you can score marks easily in the B.Tech project. There are few things to be remembered for B.Tech projects.

1. Choosing a guide or guide choosing you

Doing the project under the right guide is always essential for you. A guide directs you and keeps you in the right direction with valuable insights and timely advice. It is still important to consult your guide on important things. This might look useless to you but frankly speaking, the guides are experienced people, and they have probably gone through such things many times earlier. They can point redundancy and shortcomings which might come handy. While choosing, one needs to remember his domain. If his domain does not match the project you are working on, then you are destined to be disheartened. So, you are to check his domain through his profile on various social media platforms such as research gate, google scholar, academia, etc. where his publications are listed. The wisest decisions would be in-person consultation. Because, sometimes people try to change track and want to work in a different field. In the case of IIT and NIT, one should also look at the number of M.Tech and PhD students one has produced during his tenure successfully. Some people work in a certain field and have M.
Tech and PhD students with him. Then, the guide prefers to assign a small portion of work to B.Tech students. In such a case, you can consult your seniors and get benefitted in many ways, such as scientific paper writing, workshops attending, etc. You have to look at what suits you. But, you always keep in mind that the guide whom you are choosing is easily accessible and guides you in the right direction without any motive. You to keep in mind that the guide is not your nanny. He cannot fix everything for you. You have to fix things and have a word with him. Take his opinion and proceed.

2. Choosing your project group

Generally, the B.Tech project is in the last year or fourth year of every engineering course in India. A student has to do a project on a specific project either in a group or alone depending upon the policy of the department of the college or university. B. Tech project is commonly done in the group since the student’s number in colleges is large. Five or more than five people are accommodated in a group. These students are either driven by the same interests or mutual interest only. Sometimes, students make groups from the same hostel for ease of doing the project. All are not that lucky. Some people are incredibly devoted and driven by passion. Such students are the prize for the guide. While forming a B.Tech project, one should keep in mind that the group companions are at least interested or the leader of the group can mobilize others in the group. Otherwise, only a few students end up working, and the rest end up resting. This should not be taken lightly since the ones who are not taking part are wasting the precious resources of the country by not learning. I have experience of 7 years of guiding. I have seen students coming to me in tears for choosing the wrong group. Students always complain about the nonparticipation of fellow members after passing most of the project tenure. In such a situation, you cannot change your group or leave your group. If you are in such a group, it will suffocate you. The project does not only teach you to do something but also to manage things. But managing the most unruly ones may bring down your performance as well.     

3. Choosing a project

Why do you need to do a project? What are you going to learn? These questions may come to your mind. The need for a project is to learn practical aspects and developing managerial aspects in students. In a project, there are many levels such as deciding the project, cost estimation of the project, risk assessment of the project, designing from scratch, learning to develop something from the beginning, familiarisation with the existing manufacturing or engineering processes or applications etc. When you go through yourselves and be a part of the process, unlike classroom study where you are an audience, you do not forget the things. You learn to do things practically. Therefore, one should soak as much as possible during the project. The quality time spent in the workshop and laboratories might benefit you in different ways. Once you spend time in laboratories or workshops for the project, you learn to operate machines, use instruments and start doing manufacturing processes. This might help you later. A vast section of engineering students either do not like or do not know how to operate instruments or machines. This hesitation might cause you dearly in later years. If you hold the engineering post, the juniors will look up to you. If you are not capable enough to lead them, your credibility goes down and reputation as well.

            There are different types of projects such as fabrication of something, product development, analysis through a software of something, research-based where you do experiments on something for a desired goal etc. You need to choose depending on your interest or after consulting your project group. When you do a fabrication type of project & product development type of project, you learn the complex manufacturing processes starting from machine design to fabrication process. When you do an analysis type of project, you learn various computational processes. You take the help of software packages like Matlab, Pro E, Katia, Ansys, Comsol etc. You learn to operate them. Knowing these software packages are added advantages in CV for future prospects. When you do research-based projects it may not be limited to a certain field, you have to accommodate anything and everything which helps you. Suppose you have a steel bar. You are to use it for a particular application. Then you have to find its strength through various experiments in different conditions. You can take help from software also after physical experimentation for further verification. This way, it is multidimensional. You can take it in any direction according to your needs. While choosing the project one should consider whether you can complete or not in a specified time. You need to check whether laboratories with instruments and a workshop with facilities are there or not. You also need to consider the cost. It needs to be in the budget.  
4. Making your project appealing    

Sometimes you may feel that I want to showcase my talent through the project. In that case, your project should have these qualities innovative or totally new.  Innovative means that you are trying something in the existing system. Suppose you have a machine. You have done something that not only works efficiently and produces a better product. On the other hand, you can make a totally new and novel system for a particular cause. This may be a trendsetter or market disruptor. Suppose you have invented a new drug and drug delivery system to the human body through nanoparticles. You can take your projects to completion organized by various state and central government and earn laurels not only to yourself but also to the institute. Such, projects are a great advantage to your career. 

5. Funding and project budget     

Generally, colleges do not provide funding for B.Tech projects. But TEQIP funded institutions may provide funding. For that, you have to plan ahead and give your proposal to the authority. This helps to undertake the project without any cost. In the case of IIT and NIT, there is a number of externally funded project (DST, AICTE, UGC etc.). Students carry out a small portion of the work. Therefore, he does not need to put the fund into the project. The student needs to learn how to make a budget. It helps to reduce unnecessary expenditure. Moreover, budget-making is very important as this skill will be used in future life. 
6. Things to be remembered for competitions
Sometimes you would like to enter various completions organized by Indian Government. For this, you have to prepare beforehand. Unless you have a good plan prepared in the third year of the program, it is very difficult to take part. One of such completion is Hackathon these days. You need to check online through various portals to be aware of these completions. To succeed in any completion you have to have some secret sauce in your project. These ingredients are
(A) Novelty: The project should be new. It should offer something fresh 
(B) Society: It should offer something beneficial to society
(C) Innovation: It should be innovative. It should do something very new in the existing framework.
(D) Impressive: It should be impressive. Sometimes, a very burning problem occurring in your neighbourhood could lead to a good project. Suppose you have some unique solution to reduce Delhi pollution drastically. This type of thing is eye-catching.
In India, You need to get the people emotional with your presentation. Address the problem smartly. Show the cost-effectiveness. You are done. We are obsessed with cost-effectiveness. 
7. Work Ethics 

Now a day a lot of projects are found and done online. Doing other projects does not yield anything important. It is only repeating the same things done by others. You can only confirm whether it can be done in that way or not. If you are taking inspiration from others, you have to put your own ideas to look unique. That will be your innovation.  Copying others for the sake of copying should not be done. Such projects become redundant and easily forgotten. Marks obtained are also average during the final evaluation. Some go one step further, they get the things done by others. This is called buying and such things don’t contribute to your knowledge. In the viva, you will face difficulty to defend your project as you have never touch anything actually. 

8. Pressure & Peer Pressure 

Generally, the project duration is one year. Students do it in the final year. In some cases, you can do the project having six months' tenure. But, in most cases, it is of six months duration. As a teacher, I have noticed that students lack proper planning and ultimately, it is always an eleventh-hour preparation. Sometimes one completes practical work and does not get enough time to write the report which is the most important part. This leads to nothing except pressure and tension. For that matter, one should plan things beforehand. One should stick by the deadline in order to complete the project on time. Another thing is the peer pressure that you get when you see the progress of others' work. There is no need to compare your work with others. The only thing you have to do is plan the project in a full proof manner. Why is that important? Well, I have seen people doing last-minute work and some important component is not working. All the work goes down the drain. To cover uncertainties, one should always prepare himself with a full proof plan. Keep that in mind slow and steady wins. 

9. What does your project guide want? What do you actually do? 

Your project the guide could be an exceptionally busy person who forgets to take the report from you in a timely fashion or your guide may be the demanding person asking report very frequently. In both cases, you need to apprise him which recent advancements regarding your project. This helps you to keep yourself in the track. One thing you can always do is that you send a progress report by email at an interval. This has a certain significance. It shows that you are a serious candidate who reports to your guide. There is a mark for a positive impression. You can easily score it with this gesture. 

10. Writing your project report or thesis 

At the end of each semester, the 4^th year students have to submit a project report. While writing a project reports one needs to be careful. This is a written document you submit in your department that you have done so far. The facts and figures need to be checked over and over again for authenticity. Now let us discuss how to write the report. What should be the proper way to start? In a thesis, you find these main sections abstract, introduction, literature review, materials and methods, results & discussions, conclusions, and finally references. You can include the appendix also. That is according to the demand of the report. At the outset of the project, you have studied literature review and have checked the novelty (new) of your project with gap analysis with proper references. After completion of the project, first, try to write materials and method section and then go to results & discussions and conclusions accordingly. Generally, these chapters contain a few references since these are your content. Note down references if you have. Then write the introduction part according to the requirement of the thesis. Here you state the facts, figures, and statistics related to your topic. After completion of these chapters, you write the abstract. You cannot write the abstract at the beginning though it is at the beginning of the report.  You have to have complete knowledge of everything to write the abstract because it is a kind of summary.   Let us see each section one by one. 

10.1 How to write the abstract? 

When we write an abstract, we need to take into account the following few things one by one. 
(1) At first, we should give a very brief introduction in one or two lines.
(2) State the research problem very briefly linking the first step.
(3) State what you are going to determine during the project or paper.
(4) State the salient results or findings. 
If you integrate all these items you can write abstract like professional. Now, what should be the keywords in the case of a paper? The main words of your project are your keywords. Suppose you are working in diesel engine modification, the keywords would be diesel, engine, CI engine, etc. 
10.2 How to write the introduction part of a report? 
The introduction part generally contains the general introduction of the topic. You can write briefly its origin, development, advantages, and disadvantages. Then you should define our research problem. After setting the research problem, we can write the objectives. The objectives should always start like this “To identify”, “To determine” etc.  Always keep the language simple. Don’t use complex sentences too much. The introduction should be planned in such a way that you are telling a story and you are steering the readers to your objectives of the project. The paragraphs should have continuity. Then, you can use various software packages.
(1) Grammarly to check punctuation, spelling, and grammar.
(2) Any paraphrasing software if certain sentences in paragraphs are redundant.
(3) Text compactor if you want to reduce the size of the paragraph without losing its meaning.
(4) Hemingway editing software if you want to check whether your texts are easily intelligible or not.
I have shown how to format the introduction part. This should be the last phase. 
10.3 How to write a literature review? 
The literature review of a report is very important. Generally, people make mistake thinking about their extension of the introduction of the report. It is not like that. It is a deep analysis of the previous related same type of topics to reach a logical decision avoiding redundant mistakes by thousands of new researchers. Let us consider a machine product you are trying to make by a method or trying to develop a method. In that case, you have to study the various methods which are in the use already. You have to study the various aspects of the methods and their advantages & disadvantages as well. Apart from that, you have to study recent development in a particular method so that you can find the gap for new research. Random acts of research neither good nor add anything. Moreover, while writing while addressing the works of others, you are to write like “Borah et. al. reported that the efficiency of the machine was found to be good compared to that system”. This should proceed like this. Also, you have to give reference to that statement as per requirement such as
“Borah et. al. reported that the efficiency of the machine was found to be good compared to that system [1].”
This reference should be arranged either in chronological order or alphabetical order as per the requirement of standards of a university. You need to make as many paragraphs as required by your topic. Do not try to compress the matter. The video below shows how to write a literature review. I am taking a Ph.D. thesis of PRABHAHAR M which available in Shodganga. 
10.4 How to write material and method? 
The material and method section of your report is very important. People generally make mistakes by putting general and vague things here. But it should be properly structured starting from materials used, the methodology of experiments to be done in the project with details plan of execution through flow diagrams. Moreover, you are to include instruments used during the experiments. There some examples

1. Suppose, you are fabricating a machine: First, you need to give, machine drawing with proper labelling. Then, you should go part by part of the materials to be used with proper dimensions. Also, you need to state the methodology of fabrication with flow diagrams. You can say that the plan of working. If you want to do experimentation, then according to parameters which you would like to change and instruments which will be required to measure the variations are to be included with the proper specification. You can show the procedure also.
2. Suppose, you are doing a research project with some material: In this scenario, please mention the material and method of synthesis of the material. After the synthesis, you will do some experimentation on the material. Then, with a flow diagram mention the methodology. State the experiment procedure one by one.
3. Suppose you are doing an analysis project: These projects are done with software. In that case, you describe your idea of the analysis and the parameters which you want to change. Then the software package which you have taken along with its specification. Then, you include the flow diagram of your project according to the aim.
For, this the section you should include good flow diagrams, schematic diagrams, configuration diagram or line diagrams whichever suits you. Some software packages can be used for drawing diagrams.
1. Autocad for machine drawing.
2. Draw.io for line diagram, flow diagram or any kind of configuration diagram.
3. Concept drawing for schematic diagrams for elaborating chemical process, chemical engineering flow processes, various manufacturing process, flow diagrams, etc

4. Microsoft Visio for flow diagrams

5. There are lots of software packages for analysis such as Ansys, Comsol, Pro E, Katia, Scilab, Wintherm, Lisa, etc. 
10.5 How to write results and discussions? 
For B.Tech project, there could be various scenarios.
(1) Fabrication type of project. Here, you are fabricating some machine, and then you should show some simple experimentation by changing various parameters such as speed, loading rate, load on the machine, etc. You are required to show the effectiveness compared to the existing system both in terms of performance and cost consideration.
(2) Research type of project: Here, if you are synthesizing some material and doing some experimentation on the material under different conditions by varying various parameters, you need to link the effect of these parameters with the material with proper graphs for ease of understanding and proper explanation as well.
(3) Analysis type of project: Here you consider something and then you analyze virtually by changing various boundary conditions. You need to establish a link with the parameters and resultant effects with proper software diagrams and proper explanation as well. 
10.6 Conclusions 
The conclusions are the last part of the report. Here one should include key findings. You can write in bullets or number them. 
10.7 References 

The references could be any form. There are specific styles. According to journals, the reference styles change. These are APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and IEEE. I am showing three predominant types.

1. APA:  Alibali, M. W. (1999). How children change their minds: Strategy change can be gradual or abrupt. Developmental Psychology, 35, 127-145.

2. Chicago: Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network,” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 411, accessed February 28, 2010, DOI:10.1086/599247.

3. IEEE: J. U. Duncombe, "Infrared navigation - Part I: An assessment of feasibility," IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices, vol. ED-11, pp. 34-39, Jan. 1959.   

11. Research paper writing for conference or journals 

For this section too, I will be repeating the same thing over and over again so that it remains in your mind. Scientific paper writing is very important these days. Many people can write easily but for some, it becomes a bad experience after many rejections. Without preaching much, let’s go discuss one by one each part of the research paper. Generally, there are some significant parts of a paper such as abstract, introduction, material & method, results& discussions, conclusions, and finally, references. 

11.1 Abstract

 Generally, try to write abstract after completion of the work and writing other parts mentioned above. Then, you gather a proper idea about the whole affair. The abstract should be brief precise having 300-500 words. You need to avoid unnecessary introductory vague sentences. The very effective way is to write in one or two lines your topic and the requirement of it. Then write what you are intending to do in the work. Then, include key findings. If you include these points, you are almost done. After doing so, you need to try to revise the language many times. Complex sentences are difficult to understand. Hence, the use of simple sentences should be focused on. Moreover, one such refrain from the use of too much conjugation such as ‘and’. The keywords are to be selected based on the main theme of the work so that it becomes easy to search online.

11.2 Introduction

 Some journals ask for brief introduction while others don’t. So, one should keep that in mind. While writing this section, at first you write a few sentences on the topic of the problem gradually narrowing down to the research problem. During this process, also mention the findings of the various previous authors in this regard with proper citation. Always one should take the latest citations. Very old citations are not regarded very much. This shows your lack of engagement with the latest work. For that matter, you can take help of ScienceDirect, Tailor & Francis, IEEE, Emerald, Nature, Springer, and Wiley journals. For Indian writers, UGC care list is very helpful. At last, try to establish your research problem through the gaps of the previous authors’ works. Finally, you write the aim of the work in this section clearly.

11.3 Material and Method

 This section includes the materials and methods adopted during the work. The materials used during the work should be mentioned in details with specifications in table form. The methods adopted for the process is to be discussed in details with flow diagrams if necessary. For that matter, there are lots of software packages available. Moreover, if someone is using standard methods, he should mention standards in tabular form. Go to 10.4 also. 

11.4 Results and discussions

 This section shows the findings of the research. You need to analyze the findings. One should take help of the graphs to communicate the readers. Also, one should know the art of linking the effect of parameters with your study so that it becomes meaningful.

11.5 Conclusions 

This section includes the key findings of the research. You need to write the key findings briefly.

References: The references could be any form. There are specific styles. According to journals, the reference styles change. These are APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and IEEE. I am showing three predominant types.

1. APA:  Alibali, M. W. (1999). How children change their minds: Strategy change can be gradual or abrupt. Developmental Psychology, 35, 127-145.

2. Chicago: Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network,” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 411, accessed February 28, 2010, doi:10.1086/599247.

3. IEEE: J. U. Duncombe, "Infrared navigation - Part I: An assessment of feasibility," IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices, vol. ED-11, pp. 34-39, Jan. 1959. 

12. Preparing for B.Tech presentation 

The presentation after completion of the project is an evaluation stage. Generally, the concerned department organizes a final seminar where you present your findings scrutinized by the departmental research panel in the presence of an external. While preparing for presentation one should be careful and prepare well. You have to convince the external with your findings. Let us discuss one by one what you are expected to do 
(1) Presentation with these headings; title, submitted by whom, contents and sections such as introduction, literature review, materials & methods, results & discussions, conclusions, and finally references. The presentation ends with a “thank you” note.
(2) The presentation should be crisp and precise. Use minimum description in slides. Explain by yourself. Use diagrams, charts, tables, figures wherever necessary. 
(3) The background should be white for better visibility. Font size & spacing should be adequate too for better visibility.

Now, let us discuss how examiners evaluate. They evaluate on the basis of presentation skill, the novelty of work, report, and paper. 
13. How to prepare for project viva? 
You have to prepare for the questions to be asked in the seminar. Prepare the definitions well. In the materials & method section, prepare the questions regarding methods used. In results and discussions, you should be ready to explain any findings relating to various parameters. 

 

B.Tech Project Presentation Tutorial

 

 B.Tech Project Thesis Drafting Tutorial

 

 

 Editing Text in Reports & Thesis

 Learning to use Excel for simple data calculation

 

Learning to draw multiple curves in Excel

 

Plagiarism check in Plagiarism checker X

 

 

Download the software here: External Link 

Tutorial to make a flow chart

 

 

Tutorial to draw a schematic diagram in Draw.IO

 

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