IL222X Thesis Work Guide, Academic year 2010

     The goal of this guide is to help you organize your Masters thesis work activities in a way that you can most effectively complete your degree requirements.  The whole point of Masters thesis work is to show how well you can apply your skills to solve a practical technical problem.   In addition to successfully solving such a problem, you need to be able to effectively demonstrate how you solved it, and communicate to others all aspects of your study.  It is important to know what you need to do in order to complete this in the best and most timely way.  Please read this guide thoroughly, and if you have any questions, be sure to ask.  Your Masters thesis is worth 30 credits, but more important than that it shows all who read your thesis how well you can apply your professional skills.  Your work will be part of a public record, and anyone who wants a copy, including possible future employers, can get one.  Doing as good a job as possible is very desirable.

Purpose of your thesis

     A useful thing to think about is the purpose of your thesis.  During the time that you are completing your thesis project, one purpose is to show how well you can apply your skills to define, solve, and communicate the results of an applied technical problem.  In addition to proving your skills, another no less important purpose of your thesis is to teach.  Any problem worth solving will be of interest to other people.  They could be other scientists and engineers like you who, by reading the results that you obtained, can learn skills, ideas, data, methods or other things of value to them.  Business leaders might use your thesis as the basis of a new product, or new procedure.  Computer scientists might leverage your results in new applications or services.  You might form a company, and your thesis could be the basis of the entire vision, strategy and tactical direction that results in your first product.  So, in addition to defining and solving a problem, the ability to teach your results by effectively communicating them is also a very important purpose.  The quality of these results will reflect on you, and remember the results are open to the public.  So how you write your thesis is no less important than the actual technical work you do to realize it.

Choosing your thesis topic, supervisor and examiner

Time Frame 

     The time frame for your thesis work is normally 20 weeks, and the flow of the thesis is shown below in Figure 1.  Here is a description of the activities and milestones shown in Figure 1, and what is expected from you at those times.

• Project Start, (Week 0):  At this time you should know the general project area in which you will be working.  You probably don’t know exactly what the problem you are going to solve is yet, but you do know what the general subject area is that you will be doing work in.  At this point you should write out a 1 page description of this subject area that explains what the subject area is, and what the high level needs of this area are.  The reason to do this is so that you and your thesis supervisor can be sure that there is enough breadth in this area so that a good problem can be identified.  It is important that the problem be neither too superficial, nor too difficult to complete in the 20 week time frame.

• Seminars on Writing and Method:  It is important that you understand how an academic document such as a Masters Thesis is constructed.  Academic documents have their own rules and style, and your professionalism will be reflected in how well you use these rules. It is also important that you understand standard scientific methods for studying and referencing prior work, avoiding plagiarism, designing experiments, collecting and representing data, and analyzing results. These topics are well known and represent standard working procedures and communication methods for scientists and engineers.  During this time, you should take courses and attend seminars on scientific method and writing skills if you have not already done so.  These are professional skills, and the degree to which they are applied in your thesis work will affect the quality of the thesis and therefore will have an impact on your grade.

• Literature Study:  The activities of a literature study are to find, study, and understand what related work has already been done in your subject area.  There are many reasons to do this.  The most important is to understand as much as possible about the subject area so that a significant problem and a method to solve it can be identified.  A significant problem is one where the solution to it has impact on something.  For example, it could answer a question in a different way, or come up with a new architecture, or different algorithm that is better in some way, or an exciting new service.  Without knowing what has been done before, it is impossible to know what will have impact.  Also, people will want to know what is new, special, unique or different about what you have done.  Without doing the literature study, it is not possible to know.  The literature study should be complete by the 5^th week.

• Weekly Meetings:  Depending on the project you are working on, meetings for the project may be held about once per week.  Although this is shown on the time line up to week 8, it may go on over the entire 20 week time frame.

• Proposal Seminar:  At the end of week 8 you will give a Proposal Seminar.  At that time you will give a short presentation on your general subject area, the results of your literature study, and a description of the project you are intending to solve and describe in your thesis.  This description needs to include a problem statement, a proposal for the method you will use to solve the problem for example what experiments you will do, what you might design or build, or what software you might write, and a description of your expected results.  You also will give to your supervisor a thesis draft document that contains all of this information.  At this point the thesis draft is very rough and incomplete, and might be up to 15 or 20 pages.  Still, it should be complete in its writing style, and should have page numbers, chapter and section headings, references, charts, tables, and any other necessary figures.  After going over your thesis proposal, your thesis supervisor will discuss any changes that should be made.  After that, you will continue with your work.  NOTE that this does not mean that you have not started your thesis technical work before your proposal seminar.  It is important that you do start because that will help you define what your methods will be to solve the problem, and what you think the expected results might be.

•  beta-draft:  Your beta-draft is a draft of the compete thesis.  All thesis work should be done at the time that the beta-draft is given to your supervisor.  At this time your supervisor will read your draft and will give you comments and feedback that you will want to use to refine your thesis beta-draft. You may want to do one or more revisions of your beta-draft based on the comments and feedback that you receive before your oral presentation because it is the most recent beta-draft that you have submitted at the time of your oral presentation that will be graded.  Note that at about the same time, you will need to have found a thesis opponent and will also need to send the b-draft to that person.  The purpose of an opponent is to formulate questions and discussion concerning the content of your thesis.  The questions are put to you in order for you to demonstrate that you fully understand the subject area, problem space, problem solution and meaning of the data or technology that you generated or created.

• Opposition on Other Degree:  To complete the requirements of the Masters Thesis work, you must also be an opponent on another student’s thesis.  Be sure you identify someone who needs an opponent, and serve as an opponent.  It is best that you do this before you finish your last thesis draft and graduate, because you probably won’t want to worry about being an opponent after you start your post-school life.  Being an opponent is a serious job that requires that you read the thesis, and formulate questions and discussion that serves to establish if the person defending the thesis has really solved the problem the thesis claims to have solved, and that the person defending really knows in depth all the details about what they have done.  You do this by asking pointed questions, and engaging the defending student in discussion about various points of their thesis.  A typical amount of time an opponent spends doing this in a defense is about 20 or 30 minutes, although in practice an opponent can take longer if desired.

• Oral Presentation:  This is your thesis defense.  In most cases it is a public event, and needs to be advertised approximately 2 weeks in advance.  As a public event, anyone may attend.  A presentation typically lasts about 30 minutes, although you can take longer.  After that, your opponent may ask questions and engage you in discussion about your thesis work.  Following the opponent, anyone in the audience may also ask questions or raise discussion points.  A typical Masters Thesis defense takes about one hour, but it can last longer.

• Final Draft:  At this point you should make any changes to your thesis you think are necessary, such as any suggestions made by your supervisor or thesis opponent during your oral presentation.  Your final draft is then electronically handed in to your supervisor, who will then forward it to the correct KTH administrators with extra information that the supervisor is responsible to provide.

Grading criteria for IL222X 

Here are guidelines for how your IL222X thesis project will be graded.  This wording complies with the KTH criteria for thesis project grading. 

• To get an "A" you need to write an outstanding or excellent paper and give an outstanding or excellent oral presentation. 
  
• To get a "B" you need to write a very good paper, i.e., it should be either a very good review or present a new idea; and you have to give a very good oral presentation.
• To get a "C" you need to write a paper which shows that you understand the basic ideas underlying the IT topic being studied and that you understand one or more particular aspects at the level of an average master’s student. In addition, you must be able to present the results of your paper in a clear, concise, and professional manner – and answer questions similar to what would be expected at a typical international conference in this area.
• To get a "D" you need to demonstrate that you understand the basic ideas underlying the IT topic being studied, however, your depth of knowledge is shallow and you are unable to orally answer questions on the topic of your paper in depth.
• If your paper has some errors, including incomplete references or you are unable to answer any questions following your oral presentation in depth, the grade will be an "E".
• If your paper has serious errors or you are unable to answer basic questions following your oral presentation the grade will be an "F".
• If your paper or oral presentation is close to passing, but not at the passing level, then you will be offered the opportunity for "komplettering", i.e., students whose written paper does not pass can submit a revised version of their paper which will be evaluated. Similarly students whose oral presentation is unacceptable may be offered a second opportunity to give their oral presentation. If either the revised version of the paper or the second oral presentation remains at a failing level, the grade will remain an “F”.

Final important points

     You have a few other responsibilities that you need to be aware of as you do your thesis work.  The first is to fill out an application to enroll in the correct course number for the Masters Thesis work.  You need to enroll in IL222X.  The department this code applies to that you need to indicate on your application form is Communication Systems, or just CoS.  After you fill it out, hand it in to the program advising office.

     The school requires that at some time during your Masters Thesis work that you be an opponent on another student’s thesis.  That was described in the milestones above, and is shown to take place typically in week 18 or 19, but you can do it at any time you want, preferably before you defend your own thesis.  See the description of being an opponent in the milestone points above for a rough explanation of what you need to do.  In addition to being an opponent, you also have to be an “active listener” at two other thesis presentations.  The idea of doing this is so that you can see how a thesis presentation is prepared and defended, and so that you can get ideas of the right way to give a thesis defense presentation.  It is also to get you used to the practice of listening critically to the presentation material, and formulating questions.  MS thesis defenses are announced at regular intervals during the school year, so it is easy to find ones to go to.  There is no suggested time to do this, so a good idea is to start going to thesis presentations right away.  For both being an opponent, and for being an active listener, you need to show that you have actually done this by having the faculty member responsible for the defense sign a certificate to that effect.  Here is a handy certificate (Intyg) that you can use to keep track of being an opponent and active listening times, and getting signatures.  Note that the responsible faculty member who signs for these is usually the supervisor of the person giving the defense, and they may have their own requirements that you have to perform before you can get the signature.  For example, some faculty members will require that to get credit for being an active listener, you need to completely read the thesis and formulate a number of questions to ask during the defense.  For being an opponent, the supervisor will always require that you have read the thesis, and have prepared a suitable opposition discussion.  Be sure to ask the supervisor of the person presenting the thesis in order to find out any special requirements the supervisor might have. 

     A very important extra responsibility regards time management.  The suggested time frame of a thesis project is 20 weeks.  It can take more or less time depending on the subject area or project you are working in.  It is your responsibility to plan your time so that you make continual forward progress while you are enrolled in IL222X.  Of course it is possible to take time off for holidays, vacations or personal issues.  In those cases, you just add the time off to your time line, and stretch it longer than 20 weeks.  What you want to avoid is extended, unexplained absence.  If you disappear for several weeks or months without informing your supervisor, you may return to find that your supervisor has no idea of your progress, and now must spend a lot of time catching up.  So, don’t disappear without talking to your supervisor. 

     You need to be aware of your own living situation and limitations, such as visas, housing, jobs, and other logistical problems.  It is your responsibility to take care of any approaching difficulties, such as your visa expiring, or running out of money to live on which requires you to return to your home country.  Your time line can often be adjusted to take into account these kind of problems, but only if you let your supervisor know well in advance so that some sort of planning can be done.
 

     Finally, you need to also be flexible with your time line to accommodate your KTH supervisor.  Your supervisor is there to help you do the best job possible, and may, when you submit your beta-draft, take up to several weeks to completely review it.  In this case, your time line will be extended.  Normally your supervisor will not want you to proceed to your oral presentation until it is felt that your thesis is complete and correct enough to defend.  This is in your own interest because the grade the thesis gets is directly related to the thesis completeness and quality.  Your time line will be adjusted to allow making any necessary corrections or additions to your thesis.  Often it may seem that things are moving slowly, but also remember that your supervisor is probably supervising several other Masters students as well, and may have a lot of beta-drafts to review.  Delays are frustrating, but you should understand the time commitments your supervisor has and respect them.  However, it is also important to know that at any time during your thesis work you may elect to stop working on your thesis and give your oral presentation at the next opportunity after your supervisor has finished reading your most recent beta-draft.  You don’t have to make any revisions to your beta-draft if you don’t want to.  But, remember that your grade is based on the status and quality of your thesis work and b-draft at the time of your oral presentation,  and deficient work can expect to receive a lower grade.

     A Masters thesis project should be fun to do, and should also be something you should be proud to put on your resume.  So choose your topic well, and have fun doing the work.  If you have any questions at all about the information in this guide, be sure to ask!
 

MTS 2010