Programme guidelines and rules

1.1 Programme guidelines and planning your programme

1.1.1 General guidelines

We repeat the following guidelines for your master’s programme:

·	If your programme contains a traineeship, then Philosophy of Engineering has to be a part of the programme as one of the Philosophical and Societal courses. This will be the case for almost all students except international and post HBO-students.

·	Elective courses can be chosen from all available courses in the department and some neighbouring departments in Twente or elsewhere, provided the programme is coherent and relevant in the opinion of your programme mentor. All elective courses are 5 EC.

·	The final course programme will have to be approved by your programme mentor and by the Board of Examiners. You should register your course programme not later than six months after you started your master’s programme.

·	You should have finished your bachelor’s programme and 45 EC of your master’s programme courses before you are allowed to start your traineeship.

·

The master’s thesis project is almost always carried out in the research group of your specialization. External periods can be part of the thesis work. These will be organised by the responsible supervisor. You may only start your master’s thesis, after having finished your traineeship. If a traineeship is not part of your master’s programme then you should have gathered 45 EC of your master courses plus your possible individual project to start your master’s thesis project.

1.1.2 Important rules regarding examinations and project assessment

Examinations

Many courses are finished with an examination. You should register for the examination in advance. Registration opens 40 days before the examination date. Registration closes 14 days before the examination date. For more information about registration see the webpage at: http://www.utwente.nl/ee/programmeinformation/rules_documents/rules/examinations.doc.

Registration and assessment of the traineeship

Six months before you plan to start your traineeship you should contact the traineeship office (mobility-eemcs@utwente.nl) tot start up preparations. Ms. Belinda Jaarsma will make an appointment with you for an intake.

Not later than two months after you finished your traineeship, you should deliver your report of the traineeship to the UT-supervisor together with the assessment you received from your company supervisor.

See for more information about the traineeship section 1.3.4.

Limitation of the duration of the master’s thesis

The study load of the master’s thesis is 40EC or 28 weeks full time work. It is expected from the student that indeed the master’s thesis is finished after this period. This should happen according to a planning which has been agreed upon beforehand with the supervisor. At the end of the period, the supervisory committee will give an assessment, based on the results, available at that moment. If the grade is insufficient (less than 6) then the student may use two additional months of work to improve the result. After this extension the supervisory committee will give a new assessment, which will be considered as a re-examination.

See for more information about the master’s thesis section 1.3.5. Also planning and time management are elaborated there.

1.1.3 Procedures for planning your programme: “regular” students

The Electrical Engineering master’s programme offers the student a large freedom to make choices and to setup an individual programme. Some of these choices will have to be made right after the start of the programme which may not be easy. Therefore some guidelines are given below to support you. This plan is for students who obtained their bachelor’s degree at the University of Twente. Students from elsewhere can use it with some adaptations.

Step 1: making a start with your master’s programme

During the last phase of your bachelor’s programme, you will choose your master’s specialization. Every specialization has its own compulsory courses. The first semester of your programme will contain quite a number of courses. Besides compulsory courses, free electives can also be added to your programme. You can ask your bachelor’s programme mentor for advice about you master’s programme.

Step 2: choosing your research group (chair)

It is very important to make a choice for the chair where you would like to carry out your master’s thesis as soon as possible. As stated previously this determines your specialisation and it will be a starting point to create your course programme. It is possible to reconsider you choice later. However you should realise that if you do this in a late stage, you may have to take additional courses leading to a longer course programme.

Step 3: creating your course programme

Contact the programme mentor of the chair of your choice. You will be assigned a staff member of the research group, who will take over the tasks of the bachelor mentor. With him/her you can discuss your interests and preferences that finally should lead to a course programme:

·	Your mentor/master’s thesis supervisor will choose the compulsory courses. Often these will be the compulsory courses mentioned under the specialization. However a different choice is possible.

·	You are free to choose your electives yourself, but you are supposed to discuss your choice with your mentor/supervisor. If you and your supervisor cannot come to an agreement about your elective courses, the board of examiners will have to judge about this.

Step 4: Registering your course list

You should register your course list by filling in the intake form that you can find at the EE master website and delivering it at the Educational Office (BOZ). It should be signed by your programme mentor, by the chair holder (the leader of the chair) and by yourself.

You should do this not later than six months after the start of your master programme.

If you started in September then you should register the course list before the start of the second semester at the end of January.

1.1.4 Forms to be completed during your master’s programme

During your master’s programme you will have complete a number of forms.

Registration form of the chair of your specialisation

This form should be completed at the moment of the start of your master’s programme. It should be signed by the programme mentor of the chair en delivered to the educational office (ms. Marjan Tibben).

Final course programme form

This form should be completed not later than six months after the start of your master’s programme. It should be signed by the programme mentor of the chair en delivered to the educational office (ms. Marjan Tibben).

Traineeship

Please register at the Student Mobility System (SMS) half a year before you plan to start your traineeship. You can find SMS in your student portal. This system contains all forms to be completed during your traineeship. You can contact ms. Belinda Jaarsma (mobility-eemcs@utwente.nl) for an appointment for an intake.

Master thesis intake including the planning

This form should be completed when you start your master’s thesis project. It will contain a description of the project you are going to carry out and a planning. It should be signed by your supervisor-professor and delivered to the educational office (ms. Marjan Tibben).

Registration form master examination

This form should be completed two months before the planned date of your master’s thesis presentation. Please deliver it to the educational office (ms. Marjan Tibben). Based on this form, your study results will be evaluated by the Examination Board.

1.1.5 Specifics for students who finished a premaster’s programme

In general you can follow the guidelines from section 1.4.1. You don’t have a bachelor’s programme mentor. Instead the premaster’s coordinator is available for advice. During the first semester of the year, when you are following your premaster courses, you should choose a specialisation and contact the corresponding programme mentor. At least you should agree with your mentor about the programme of the second semester, consisting of homologation courses and an individual project.

Programme coordinator

The pre-master’s coordinator is dr. M.J. (Maarten) Korsten; room Zilverling 1022, phone 053 489 2763; e-mail m.j.korsten@utwente.nl

1.1.6 Specifics for international students

Procedures for planning and advice

International students can use the plan of paragraph 1.4.1 with some adaptations in step 1.

Step 1

The starting point for an international student will be the programme offer in which the outline is given of the student's personal master’s programme. In this programme the homologation courses are fixed. The compulsory master’s courses can be added. During the introduction the international student will be handed a provisional planning of the courses that should enable him/her to make a start. The first quarter of the programme can then be used to select a research group and to carry out step 2.

Until the research group has been chosen, dr. M.J. (Maarten) Korsten is available for advice.

Choosing the group for your Individual Project

The individual project can be completed at each of the chairs of the Electrical Engineering department. In this study guide you can find a short description of each chair. More information can be found on the chair’s websites. When you’ve made a choice for a chair of your interest, you can contact the secretary of the chair. She will direct you to one of the staff members who can give you information about the possible assignments.

You may think about the possibility to take the individual project and the master’s thesis assignment in the same area, to deepen your insight. Or you can choose to do them in rather different areas, to broaden your scope. They cannot be combined into one assignment.

The contact-person for students from abroad is dr. M.J. (Maarten) Korsten; room Zilverling 1022, phone: 053 489 2763; e-mail m.j.korsten@utwente.nl

1.1.7 Time management

According to the set-up of your master’s programme it should take two years to complete it. To our regret, only few students make it to graduate within this period. Below we discuss some measures that have been taken by the programme management to stimulate students to complete courses and projects in time. This way we try to prevent that students spend more time to these programme parts then necessary.

Course programme and examinations

The programme contains 120 EC (credits) to be covered in two years. Both years consist of four quartiles. This means that you should earn 15 EC during each quartile. As most courses have a working load of 5 EC you can take three courses during each quartile. The examination is included in this estimated working load and you are supposed to take the examination directly after the last lecture at the end of the quartile. If you fail the examination or if you don’t take it then you will have to take another examination at the end of the next quartile and this will interfere with newly taken courses during that quartile.

For this reason we advise against planning too many courses during one quartile. Taking too many courses may finally lead to time loss because when you fail the examination you spend your time in a non-optimal way.

Project work during a course

Many master courses contain project work and the mark you earn for such a course will be partly or fully based on an assessment of the project. Although this way of assessment is very suitable for master courses, in the past it appeared to lead to time loss for many students because they did not finish the project in time. The reason is obviously that there was no deadline for the project.

From the beginning of the academic year 2012-2013 the rules and regulation for the Electrical Engineering master programme contain an automatic deadline for project work that is part of a course: the lecturer will base an assessment of the project on the material that he has received from you at the last day of the quartile in which the course took place. So take care that you have delivered all your results at that moment!

Planning your master thesis

The master’s thesis has a working load of 40 EC, or 40*28=1120 working hours which is 28 weeks of work full time. Before you start the work for the master’s thesis you should make a planning for this period. It may contain a limited amount of time for other activities but the amount to time to be spent to the master thesis should be not more the 28 weeks, mentioned above. During the project take care that you can indeed finish in time, according to the planning. At the end of the planned period the Graduation Committee will give an assessment so deliver your results in time to the committee.