Q&A Thesis project

No, formally you don't need such a form, but the external organisation uses it because of labor regulations and insurance purposes. It is a bilateral agreement between you and the external organisation. If we sign, then it is only because of these regulations and after we have verified that your and our IP rights are secured.

Plan the mandatory meetings via the secretary of the professor, who has the best overview and can also reserve a meeting room for you. The kick-off and mid-term meeting can be planned in advance, but the greenlight and final presentation are too uncertain. You can of course plan these meetings in your own agenda as deadlines. Ask your supervisors if they think you are ready for these meetings. Sometimes students wait too long or they are too early.

Try to have the regular supervising meetings every 3-4 weeks with both supervisors. Alternate only if it suits you, because these supervisors rarely communicate. In the final stage of your thesis project you can ask for a shorter lead time and then have a few shorter meetings.

Planning meetings in the summer break is very difficult. Many supervisors are away in July or August. Take a break yourself and use the time left for tasks that do not need direct supervision.

You may miss 5 EC from your Specialisations and 5 EC from your Electives (before 2019-2020 also 1 EC from the Seminars). If you miss other EC because a lecturer has not finished his/her correction of an exam, then contact the lecturer and explain the urgency. Wait with sending in TIL-1 and TIL-2 until you have the required EC.

At the start of your study, the specialisation can be incorrect due to an algorithm mis functioning. Later on this will be corrected by the software. Free electives are always put into the category "to be arranged" until TIL-2 is received by SPA. Then SPA staff will manually check and correct all entries.

Formally it is the day of your kick-off meeting. In practice it will be the day when you receive the signature from your professor. Both days can of course be the same.

The Board of Examiners does not check if your topic matches with your specialisation. You can fill in either of the two.

Not anymore. You can send him an email if you need his advice concerning your free electives. This advice is used to make your choices definitive.

If one of the Thesis Assessment Committee members, not the chairman, is not in The Netherlands at the planned date of your defence and postponing the date leads to a major delay due to congested agendas, then the Board of Examiners has decided that he or she must prepare an assessment document, which he or she shares with all Committee members before your final defence meeting. Working with Skype is always problematic. For such a decisive meeting we cannot allow its use.
Situations like sudden illness are regarded as force major. The Chairman of the Committee should contact the missing Committee Member and try to find the same solution as mentioned above.
Changing the date of the Final Defence meeting remains the preferable option, although it is not always feasible.

According to  Article 24 1b of the R&G BoE MSc TIL 2019-2020 "Before the actual presentation date, the student must have completed all the other examination programme obligations."

Contact one of the TIL Graduation Coordinators for a meeting.

The assignments mentioned on Brightspace are offering part of what is actually available. You can also contact our lecturers and professors. Read the information in section 1. carefully before you do that.

Prevent such a situation by having at least a few leads in your pocket.

Contact one of the TIL Graduation Coordinators to discuss your situation and hopefully find a way to proceed.

Commonalities:

• Deal with a challenge from practice;
• Develop concrete solutions;
• Balance between science and practice;
• Attainment level is comparable;
• Assessment is similar;
• Tasks to be carried out (overall).

Differences:

• A thesis project takes at least twice the time;
• A thesis project is individual work;
• A thesis project does not have to be based on systems engineering. A limited number of lecturers is familiar with SE;
• You have more time for a thesis project. You plan your work differently. You can dive deeper into certain topics and results. This holds in general, because you cannot control all conditions, like data availability;
• In a thesis project there is a higher risk of floating. This is why we advice to spend one month at the external organisation and then have your kick-off meeting based on a good kick-off document;
• A final thesis report contains your scientific paper.

The differences are relative and depend on many factors. How concrete is the goal of the project? What is your ambition level? What do the external party and your supervisors demand from you? How do you operate under stress? Do you match with your supervisors? etc.

Yes, as long as he or she works at CiTG, 3mE or TPM and fulfils the other mandatory criteria for a committee member.

You can change your supervising team before the kick-off and as long as TIL-1 is not signed and sent to the Board of Examiners,

Possible reasons could be: 

- You attracted supervisors before you had a contract with a commissioner;

- You changed commissioner, field, topic, focus;

- Your can't agree on direction with your supervisors;

- Personal mismatch.

You have to communicate the reasons for change to them of course.

If you want to change your supervising team after the kick-off/TIL-1, do this after you have consulted one of the TIL Graduation Coordinators. There is the special TIL-1a form to arrange that formally.

Within TIL we work on the basis of communication and trust. 
We do not sign your form, because we see an NDA as a bilateral agreement between you and the external party.
You can decide to keep your report confidential up to 2 years, as mentioned in our standard TIL NDA document or to black out confidential text or data in your public document only, but not in the final version for your Committee.