Add something to the guide to help students make their plan for their lit study and project

[moorepants]

The students may not have enough experience making a plan (or knowing how long tasks will take). Some guidance that helps them budget time better for specific tasks would help.

[moorepants]

We could collect some date form students who have the final version of what it took to complete their tasks. This would give some data on that.

[LeilaAlizadehSaravi]

I am preparing a guideline document. Students who have already finished their literature study or thesis could judge if this guide could have been helpful at the beginning. If that's the case, we can suggest it as a guide to the others and complete it over time.

[moorepants]

This is an issue Simonas brought up to me after his lit study. You could chat with him about it.

Please prepare your document as a page on this website so we can incorporate it here. Open a pull request for review and feedback :)

[radogit]

Much like /research/ and /jobs/ I would like to propose creating a /content/pages/guides/ folder, as I think we will soon be looking at quite a few guides branching out into their own separate pages.

[moorepants]

I have only been using the folders for pages that have autogenerated main pages, i.e. research.rst is generated from all pages in a folder. It is fine (and preferred) to drop all other pages in content/pages/. You can name the guide files like guide-*.rst if that helps with organization.

[moorepants]

Here is some text written by Eline de Kruk that we could mimic/copy for our guide:

Administration
 Your master thesis is your project. Take autonomy of the topic and progress.
 The necessary steps, deadlines, and required forms to apply for the Master’s exam are listed on

(https://www.tudelft.nl/studenten/faculteiten/3me-
studentenportal/onderwijs/gerelateerd/formulieren/msc-formulieren ).

 If you are a BioRobotics or Haptic Interfaces student, you should contact Coordinator-CoR-
[email protected] before you start.

 You will need to think about Data management, more information on this can be found in the
master guide.

(Group) Meetings
o Usually I have office hours on Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, for which you can subscribe
via the google form.
o You are the chair of our meeting, so that means that you decide whether you want to have a
meeting and you prepare the agenda.
o If you’d like me to prepare or read anything before the meeting, then make sure you send the
agenda and request in time.
o Additionally, you can attend the lab meetings (CBL or Bike lab, depending on topic). In these
meetings one of the students or staff from our group presents and we all discuss the topic. I
would recommend this; it is fun and inspiring. Also, a very good place to practice your
presentation skills.
o I expect the students that I supervise to be a team, we are in this together. I therefore
appreciate if you also help your peers during the process. This can be on getting started
procedures, feedback on written reports, or preparing and practicing presentations. If you
would like to contribute something specific, like a very useful software, please feel free to share
this in the group and we can set this up.

Getting started
Your master thesis project takes about 5-6 months. You will conduct your own research and write a
research report, your MSc thesis. At the end of your thesis, there is a master defence. On this day,
you will present your work publicly for friends, family, and your graduation committee. After this,
there will be a 60min exam in which you defend your research for the graduation committee. If
successful, you will receive your MSc diploma on the same day.
To begin your master thesis, you must write a starting document. In this document the following
elements should be included:
 Research Topic and supervisors
 Research question/aim
 Short introduction (200 words) to introduce the aim/question
 Research plan
Describe how you plan to answer your research question. Parts you can think of:

• Will you use experiments or simulations?
• Which part of the aim/question do you want to answer with these
  experiments/simulations?
• What will these experiments/simulations look like?
• What do you need in terms of equipment?
• How many participants are you going to test?
• Will you need ethics approval?
• How are you going to manage the data?
• What analyses will you do on the data? (e.g. which metrics are you going to extract, will
  you compare two groups, or will you be looking at regressions?)
• Do you have all the right knowledge and expertise to conduct this research or will you
  contact other experts from inside/outside the TU Delft?
   Planning
  Make a clear overview of your overall planning for the 6 months. Include a separate planning
  of what your goals/deadlines are for each week. Think about where things might get delayed
  and what you will do to cover this. Also think about where you would like feedback/input
  from your supervisors.
  Your supervisors are here to guide you in this process. Make sure you hand-in the start document
  within the first month of your MSc project and schedule an appointment with your supervisors to
  discuss the document together. When approved by your supervisors, you can start your research
  plan!