The preparation phase is an individual project of 10 ECTS supervised by your graduation supervisor and its objective is to define a concrete graduation project. Together with your supervisor, you decide on your topic and a global planning for the preparation phase and your graduation project. Before you start the preparation phase you are required to hand in your graduation plan and get it approved.
Typically, you do the preparation phase in the quartile before your start your thesis research, that is, in quartile 6. It is allowed to start earlier, or spread the 10 EC over two quartiles - this is to be discussed with and approved by your graduation supervisor.
During the pre-study you create a precisely defined problem statement, an analysis of the state-of-the-art including a thorough literature survey, the expected end result, an outline of the planned research and development approach (possibly already supported by some initial theoretical analyses, a small example or case study, and/or some initial experiments), and a project planning with clearly defined milestones (decision points) and deliverables (results). The student presents the project proposal report to the intended assessment committee that will also evaluate the graduation project.
The purpose of this preparation phase is to ensure that you can begin your graduation project with a well-defined research problem that is feasible to solve in the given context, particularly regarding the availability of required data, context information, and stakeholder objectives.
The preparation phase project is judged on the following aspects criteria, presentation, and report.
Feasibility study: | Clarity of problem statement through a description of state-of-theart and expected end-result, together with a research approach and project planning. |
Presentation: | Structure, contents, clarity, contact with audience. |
Report: | Structure, contents, clarity & correctness of arguments, English and general appearance |
Each are scored on a number of sub-criteria as unsatisfactory, sufficient, or good. The score “sufficient” represents what can be expected from a student based on the assessment form. The preparation project is not graded on a numerical scale; the student either passes or fails.
You will be able to find the assessment for the preparation phase here once it is finalized.
If a student fails the preparation project, then the student needs to do a new preparation project with a different supervisor from a different cluster.