Role of the supervisor
As a (potential) supervisor of final projects you should make sure that possible projects are announced, for example, on your chair's website, or through the programme mentors of the specializations. You should be prepared to talk to candidates who are interested to do a final project, even if candidates have their own ideas about the topics of the final project. Supervisors should try to find out if the interests of the candidates match their own expertise.
The supervisors must have some available supervision capacity (time) to be allocated to the candidate when they agree to supervise a final project.
GUIDANCE
You should cooperate with the candidates in order to reach an agreement on the initial project plan (part of the deliverables of Research Topics). You may consider the writing of an initial project plan as the first activity a candidate has to do in the project, or you may develop it together with the candidate. You must check the project plan and guarantee that it indeed conforms to these formal requirements and reaches the preferred academic level.
You should stimulate the candidates to work independently. You should view the candidates as junior colleagues who are in a learning process. This implies that you should not hand out ready-made solutions to the candidates, but rather let them search for solutions. You may provide the candidates with basic material and should check the suitability of some additional material that the candidates are studying. You should watch out for the progress of the candidates in their final project, intervening only in case major obstacles appear. You may have to take the initiative to call a meeting in case (apparently) no progress is made, and if necessary involve a study adviser. You should also monitor the project planning and suggest adjustments to the planning if it is found necessary. Finaly you should read critically the material produced by the candidates and provide timely feedback.
In an external project, an external organization may give a higher priority to its own interests (for example, the development of a certain product) than to the interests of the candidate (conclude the final project successfully and in reasonable time). In this case, the you may have to intervene in order to guarantee that the candidate’s interests are respected.
ASSESSMENT
At the end of the final project, you need to evaluate the project in its totality, and assign a final mark to the candidate together with the rest of the graduation committee. The graduation committee should consider in the evaluation the work itself, the final report and the presentation. The assessment criteria on the assessment form give a systematic list that should be used by the graduation committee to determine a final mark. The assessment criteria have been assigned a weight, so that the learning objectives given are properly assessed. When assessing the criteria, the committee should motivate the score for each criteria. The rubrics are guidelines, meant to give a good idea of what achievement merits what score; they should be applied by analogy in an actual assessment in order for the committee to reach their final mark.
Assessment committee
The assessment committee (formed with the help of you as a supervisor) contains at least the following members:
- Two examiners, one from the research group at which the project was supervised (this is you), and one from another research group of the CS department;
- One of the examiners is appointed as senior examiner by the Examination Board, and acts as chair of the committee
- The examiners are collectively responsible for the final grade; in case of doubt, the chair of the committee has the final say
- Other (internal) supervisor(s), in an advisory capacity
- If your graduation project is external, an external supervisor from the company or institution at which the student carried our their Research Topics, in an advisory capacity.
You may act as examiner, if you have been appointed as such by the Examination Board. We have published a list on the FP/RT Canvas and the CS Lecturer Canvas for an overview of all appointed examiners.
Example
A student from CS Cybersecurity does an external assignment for TNO and the responsible research group is SCS. The daily supervision is in the hands of a PhD student, and Andreas Peter is overseeing the whole assignment as remote supervisor, joining in on their meetings only once every few times. Then the committe would consist of:
- Two examiners:
- Andreas Peter (senior examiner and remote supervisor)
- An examiner from another research group. This research group may be involved in the Cybersecurity specialization (e.g. DACS), but doesn't need to be (e.g. PS or FMT)
- Two advisory members:
- The supervising PhD student
- A daily supervisor from TNO
ACTIONS TAKING BY THE (MAIN) SUPERVISOR
Research Topics
- Discuss possible topics with student and agree on the contents of 'research topics'
- Sign of on Research Topics registration (Standard Registration form in Mobility Online)
- Guide the student through the course of the Research Topics
- Assess Researh Topics and send a completed assessment form to BOZ
Final Project
- Discuss the direction of the final project assignment with the student
- Involve a second examiner (preferably one from another chair, to complete the assessment committee). And eventually form a graduation/assessment committee (see above).
- If confidentiality applies, the supervisor together with the student need to put in a request with the programme director. In this request it should be clear why and for how long (maximum of two years) (parts of) the final project needs to stay confidential.
- Responsible for supervison and guidance of the student during the course of the Final Project
- At least one month before the final presentation: send green-light declaration to boz-cs@utwente.nl
- Pick up diploma (and assessment form) at BOZ on the day of the colloquium
- Deliver a completed assessment form to BOZ
During the process the student is mainly responsible for the progress of the Final Project and Research Topics. One part of the Master's programme is the ability of the student to succesfully carry out a small scale research project on their own. Nonetheless, if the student is not progressing as one should expect and this causes a substantial study delay, please let them contact a study adviser, or if necessary contact the study adviser yourself.