Course summary

The Final Year Project is an individual project where the student will propose and then carry out a scientific project. The project is to be described in a final report and presented and defended during an oral presentation. The student must also review the reports of two other students.  

The road ahead: What you must do!

Formally, there are two examination points in this course, a research proposal and a Final report. The student must pass the proposal in order to be allowed to continue on the project.

Further, upon passing the research proposal the student will be assigned a supervisor and an examiner. The supervisor’s role is to aid the student. This includes answering questions, discussing the work etc. However it is up to the student to make use of the supervisor. The role of the examiner is to grade the final report, including the oral presentation and peer-review. The student will also be allowed to send the thesis to the examiner once during the thesis process for feedback, note that the method part should be mostly done at this time. 

The final report should be a paper to one of the following journals:

• https://jis-eurasipjournals.springeropen.com/submission-guidelines/preparing-your-manuscript/research-article (Links to an external site.)

• https://tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=uiss20#prep (Links to an external site.)

• https://tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=wasr20 (Links to an external site.)

• https://tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tsec20 (Links to an external site.)

Your task is to chose the journal best suited for your project and write a paper according to the journal instructions.

You may need to write some supplementary chapters in order to fulfill the course grading critera, what supplementary chapters you need will be decided by you and your supervisor.

The final paper, supplementary chapter and an abstract should be submitted using the thesis template: IT761G_HIS_UK_master_degree-1.doc  

Depending on the nature and quality of your thesis you may be invited to keep working on the paper towards submitting it to your selected journal, together with your supervisor and/or examiner. 

This is of course optional:) 

Below is a summary of what the student needs to do in order to pass the two examination points. Please also read the grading criteria for each step carefully.

Summary of grading criteria for the research proposal.

To pass this step the student needs to present a project proposal including the following:

• A description of the research topic and area

• A draft of a research question or aim

• At least three scientific references relating to the chosen area

• A brief discussion on methodology

• The student must prepare a slide show and hold an oral presentation. Slides must be handed in the day before the presentation.

• Each student will be given a 10-minute slot, this should be enough for presentation AND feedback. Thus, the presentation should be around 5 minutes and must not be longer than 7 minutes

You can find detailed grading criteria in the proposal description: Research proposal 

Summary of grading criteria for the final report.

To pass this step the student needs to do the following:

• Continuously send progress reports to the supervisor. This should be done each week via e-mail, week one is the first full week after you got assigned a supervisor. The student needs to send reports at least 80% of the weeks in order to be allowed to submit the final report for grading.

• Submit a final report that complies with the grading criteria and consists of: 

o Journal paper using the template for the chosen journal

o possible supplementary chapters needed to meet the grading criteria

• Present the project during the final seminar

• Peer-review the work of two other students using this template.