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This  checklist  can be used by the research students, especially in engineering disciplines,  to carry out the literature review assignments in their research.  However, the  list actually has a much broader scope. It  provides criteria  for reviewing any kind of  technical documents as well as whitepapers.

For a  comprehensive checklist about engineering research, interested readers may please refer -   Research Method for Engineering Research Students – Part II: A Checklist for Reflective Self-assessment of the Research Work

I invite the learned community of researchers and professional engineers to suggest further improvements to this checklist.

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A.   Broad Introduction

1)      Current state of research

2)      List of open and current problems

B.   Reference selection for critical review

1)      Clarity of the criteria of selection

I.      Relevance criteria wrt to proposed research

II.      Quality criteria for selection of references

III.      Diversity criteria of approaches

   2)      Selection

C.   Quality of review of selected sources

  1)      For each reference

I.            Summary

i.             Approach

ii.             Method

iii.            Result

II.            Identification of novelty

i.            Problem identification

ii.           Problem formulation

iii.           Solution

a.   Applying a known theory/approach known within a specific discipline in a new context within the same discipline

b.   Applying a known theory/approach known within a specific discipline in a new context outside the discipline

c.   Theory enhancement/integration/building

III.            Validation of results and claims

i.            Analytical

ii.            Empirical

IV.            Your criteria for evaluation of the work

V.            Identification of strengths and weaknesses wrt

i.            Problem

a.   Clarity

b.    Significance

c.   Relevance

d.   Theoretical background and framework

e.   Empirical background

f.   Assumptions

g.   Author’s criteria of claimed strengths

ii.            Literature Review 

a.  References – Identification of important missing references

b.  Critical evaluation of  main references

                          iii.            Solution

a.    Time/ resource/energy requirement

b.    Wastages  and/or Pollution

c.    Performance efficiency

d.   Consistency, completeness, generality, scalability, open ended-ness,

e.     Reliability, elegance, usability, maintainability

f.      Safety, health, dignity

  iv.            Findings and discovery

a.   Evidence

b.   Inference, interpretations, theory formulation, conclusions

c.   Relevance to your research

         2)      Integrated review

I.            Consolidation/comparison  with table(s) and/or diagram(s)

II.           Potential implications for your research

D.      Writing

I.            Content oraganisation, Coherent paragraphs, Effective transitions,  citations

II.           Tone, clarity,  spelling, punctuation, grammar, style, writing conventions

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This  checklist  can be progressively used by the research students, especially in engineering disciplines,  to carry out a reflectively assessment of their research work.  Different elements of this checklist can help them to find the potential gaps in their work and opportunities of further improvement.

I am highly thankful to Dr. Mukul K. Sinha, my guru for the last 23 years, to have helped me experience most of these elements.   I am also thankful to Harkesh Singh Dagar,  for numerous  discussions on various issues related to engineering in the last seven years.

I invite the learned community of researchers and professional engineers to suggest further improvements to this checklist.

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A.      Reflecting upon your research/project problem

1.      What problem have you tried to solve?

2.      What is your motivation for taking this problem?

3.      Why is this problem significant?

a.       Have you validated the significance of the problem through external feedback from diverse sources – domain experts, potential users, peer community?

4.      Have you checked the feasibility issues?

a.       Do you have any prior experience with this or similar problem or underlying domain?

b.      In case of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary problems that require engineering R&D wrt some other application domain, are the application domain related aspects of the problem sufficiently documented and understood?

c.       Have you considered the availability of required resources, domain expertise, and permissions?

5.      Have you considered the alternate decomposition strategies for your problem?

a.        What functionality will you consider to allocate to hardware, software, and human element? Justify your partitioning?

6.      Is there any novelty in your problem identification and/or formulation?

7.      Have you surveyed and critiqued existing approaches for solving this problem?

B.    Reflecting upon your Literature Review

Please see the first article in this series –  Research Method for Engineering Research Students – Part I: A Checklist for Literature Review

C.     Reflecting upon your solution, results, and future scope

1.      Did you identify the causes of the problem?

2.      How did you do constrain the problem?

a.  What is the need to constrain the problem in this manner?

3.       What is your solution?

a.   What alternate strategies did you consider? What is your justification selecting your strategy?

b.   Have you considered the alternate decomposition strategies for your solution?

4.      What are the main results?

5.      How reliable are your results?  Have you validated your results and claims?

a.   Analytically

i.      Have you checked the theoretical consistency?

b.    Empirically

i.     Did you collect enough size and variety of data?

ii.    Are you confident about the accuracy and reliability of your data collection method?

iii.    Did you collect data from multiple sources?

6.      Is your solution novel in terms of:

a.   Applying a  theory/approach known within a specific discipline in a new context within the specific discipline of engineering

b.    Applying a theory/approach known (outside the specific discipline of engineering)  within a specific discipline in a new context

c.    Theory enhancement/integration/building  about some aspects of engineering: theory,  application, or education of engineering activities – planning,  design, realization, evaluation, and client interface activities, and also some ubiquitous and over-arching activities?   For example, wrt software engineering, for a detailed catalogue of software development related activities, interested readers may refer  Software Development Activities: A Catalogue of Technical and Technically Oriented Activities.  The other disciplines of engineering  also have similar activities.

d.    Providing a new framework or paradigm for thinking about some aspects of engineering (as indicated in ‘c’ above).

7.      Compare your solution approach with other existing approaches-

a.     In what way is your solution approach better/different than other existing approaches? Consider multiple dimensions –

i.      Time/ resource/energy requirement

ii.      Wastages  and/or pollution

iii.      Performance efficiency

iv.      Consistency, completeness, generality, scalability, open-endedness

v.      Reliability, elegance, usability, maintainability

vi.      Safety, health, dignity

b.    What are main shortcomings/limitations/weaknesses of your approach? Consider multiple dimensions –

i.      Time/ resource/energy requirement

ii.      Wastages  and/or pollution

iii.      Performance efficiency

iv.      Consistency, completeness, generality, scalability, open-endedness

v.      Reliability, elegance, usability, maintainability

vi.      Safety, health, dignity

8.      List the problem statements for future research/projects as extension or improvisation of your research.

a.       What kind of new inter-project collaboration possibilities can you now propose with any of the other ongoing research/projects within your department?

D.      Reflecting upon your research method

1.    What were the main steps in your research methods?

2.  What were the main challenges?

a.   How did you address these challenges?

3.    What was the task division among group members, if any?

4.    Did you cooperate/collaborate with any other project group? How?

5.    What did you do to get external feedback from (potential) users and others?

a.  How did your revise your solution in order to respond to the feedback?

6.   What mistakes did you make with respect to your research method?

7.   If you were to start again, how would you modify the method?

E.       Reflecting upon your report writing

1.       In the thesis/report, have you clearly explained the problem domain and research questions, significance of the problem, motivation, critical review of  existing literature, theoretical and empirical background, constraints, solution approach, research method, design of experiment, data collection method, data analysis method, results, comparative evaluation with existing  approaches, inferences, theoretical contribution, conclusions, and summary.

2.     Did you take care not to copy the material from elsewhere without paraphrasing/ quoting and appropriate citation?

3.      Is the material structured, presented, and interlinked properly?

a.     Have you structured the text into cohesive and consistent chunks at multiple levels of text hierarchy – chapters/annexures/appendices, sections, subsections, paragraphs?

i.       Were tedious details organized in annexures and/or appendices?

ii.      Have you labeled long pieces of text, graphics, tables, and equations?

b.   Are the key ideas summarized in a chapter, and also at the end of sections and chapters?

c.   Have you given a glossary of key terms?

d.   Does the thesis/report title and abstract convey the essence of problem and solution approach?

e.     Is the presentation of the material sequenced in the logical order?

i.      Were the inferences drawn logical and supportive?

ii.      Were floating objects like table and figures collocated with the relevant text?

f.       Have you given backward and forward internal inter-linkages between scattered but closely related material?

g.       Are the table of contents, list of figures, list of tables consistent with the main body of the material?

4.   Have you exploited the opportunities of non-textual representations?

a.   Have you exploited the opportunities of graphical representation in the form of figures, tables, charts, concept maps, etc?

b.   Have you considered representation of key ideas as mathematical models?

c.    Are the textual, graphical, and mathematical representations consistent in terms of presentation, terminology, typography and layout?

d.     Have appropriate typographic convention been used for inline and displayed mathematical material?

5.  Have you taken care of spelling, grammar, and punctuation?

6.   Are the references as per the format, and cited?

F.     Reflecting upon your learning

1.     What new things did you learn through your engagement in this research/project?

2.     What technical and other professional competencies have you been able to strengthen by your engagement in this research/project? How?

Our successful teams with Chief Technical Mr. K. Sundaresh & Mr. T. Udhaya Shankar were gladly prepared to reach the college at the morning 10 AM. With the full of innovative ideas and cheerily mind we reached the seminar hall at 12.30 AM.

We are amused to see the staffs and student of various colleges entering into the seminar hall with full of eagerness and excitement. The seminar starts at 1 PM, at first one of our senior technicians Mr. T. Udhaya Shankar gives a speech about our company and spectacularly explained about the various achievements achieved in the past years. After that our chief starts his seminar that took about 2 hours. The Spontaneous flow of speech given by our chief grabs the attentions of all viewers. During that time we never find a single distraction in the face of the viewers. As many of them not have a deep idea about the NS2, we can able to notice a full-fledged involvement in this seminar.

The amazing moments continued with valuable topics such as WLAN, Ad-hoc Network, MANET, Sensor Network, Mesh Network, WiMax and MobileIP. The information is mostly related to the up to date technology.  To enrich the seminar we not only discussed about the simulators that we are using at present. He gives her valuable speech about the simulator and how to simulate the expected results such as NS/2, OPNET, OMNET++, QualNet, Glomosim, SSFNET, Jsim, PDNS, and OpenWNS including the easy tricks with modern ideas.

The incredible support and extraordinary successful feedback by the staffs and students gives us encouragement for conducting more seminars.

To make the seminar unique and more interesting we also handle the advanced topics like Wired Model, Wireless Model, and MobileIP Model. Our technicians clearly explained about the various processes in these models and gives number of tips for successful evaluation and implementation. After an excellent morning session the college officials invites us for the lunch. We had a delightful lunch and enter into the seminar hall for the practical session.

To download the Work Shop’s Power Point Presentation

To download the Network Simulator’s Software

To download the Source Code

This episode discusses the various offers available to users who want to get started using Windows Azure. Bill and the whiteboard will show users how they can get started with Windows Azure for free.

With the help of his whiteboard, Bill shows users the benefits of the Front Runner program for the Windows Azure platform.

This episode shows users how to use the TCO and ROI calculator. Bill and the ever present whiteboard walk users through this online tool, and how users can use it to calculate how much it will cost them to move to Windows Azure, and what kind of savings they can anticipate.

Bill and his cheeky whiteboard friend are back, illustrating some of the issues users may encounter when moving existing applications to Windows Azure, and more importantly, how to mitigate potential issues.

The pacing is too slow and the animation looks like it was done by Michael J. Fox.