Thesis Guidelines

Note: This page is currently under development. Things might change/be updated; however, big changes will be announced to students early, so they can adjust in time.

For students pursuing a thesis at the LTeD Research Lab, the following guidelines apply. These guidelines formulate the expectations by supervisors and provide a framework on how to work on the thesis project.
Note, as these guidelines are not formal rules, individual agreements can be discussed as long as they are in conformance with official regulations (e.g., when a thesis is co-supervised with someone from another research unit or institution).

Core Values

  • Proactivity: Be proactive in seeking guidance and feedback as well as providing updates and progress reports. Don’t wait for your supervisor to reach out to you.
  • Responsiveness: Respond to emails and requests in a reasonable manner.
  • Independence: Demonstrate the ability to work independently, while also knowing when to seek help.
  • Transparency: Be honest and clear about your work and its outcomes. By being transparent, it supports understanding, clarity and allows to build on it in future work.
  • Quality Work: Strive for high-quality work in all aspects of your thesis, from research and analysis to writing and presentation.
  • Professionalism: Maintain a professional attitude in all interactions with your supervisor and peers but especially test users and study participants.

Research Focus

Your thesis should conduct original research under direct supervision that can lead to a scientific publication (e.g., at a conference). 
The focus is thus a research question that you propose and we discuss together when starting the thesis. It may be refined in the process of working on it, but it is ultimately at the core of your thesis and should be answered using scientific methods of the respective domain.
Note, depending on your research focus, the thesis project can be literature-based or more implementation-heavy. In coordination with your supervisor, we can try to align the thesis project to your strengths.

Time Commitment

The bachelor thesis is designed as 10 ECTS which approximately consists of 250 hours of work, while a Master thesis is designed as 30 ECTS (approx. 750 hours of work). Nobody will count hours and there is no need to track them. However, we want to have a weekly commitment from students, so that we can approximately plan a submission date. Many students who have successfully finished a bachelor thesis in our lab plan for ~2 days/week (16 hours), which translates roughly into 15-16 weeks (four months or roughly one semester). For master thesis projects the expectations are higher, as we expected you to work ~4-5 days/week (32-40 hours) over one semester.
Since we know many students work part-time or have care responsibilities, we are open to discussing individual solutions providing more flexibility and adjusted timelines. However, we do not accept thesis projects without reasonable planning and agreed deadlines. Note, your research project might be outdated and irrelevant if your prolong the work extensively.

Writing and Feedback

We do not require you to write a certain number of pages, instead we ask you to aim for clear, scientific writing and proper reporting of your work. Depending on the focus of your work, more or less text will be needed to explain it thoroughly and help the reader to understand it. Always consider your audience!

  • Bachelor thesis projects are usually either literature-focused or implementation-heavy, thus, the length of the written work can vary. To give you some orientation, a bachelor thesis can range between 20-40 pages.
  • Master thesis projects are more extensive and require a strong research focus, thus, the length can vary heavily, e.g., a formal proof might need only few pages of proper notation, while extensive design and implementation work needs to be presented and documented thoroughly to inform the reader. Thus, a master thesis can range between 30 and 80 pages.

Before submitting your thesis, a review/feedback with your supervisor can be scheduled. For this, you are allowed to submit one chapter of your choosing to get detailed feedback on its content, writing and formalities. Integrating this feedback should give you sufficient support to improve the whole work before its final submission. Note, we will not read the complete thesis before submission.

Regular Meetings

Thesis supervision includes regular meetings between students and their supervisor(s). These meetings are an opportunity for students to present their progress and bring topics and questions to discuss. Since we require students to work independently, frequency of meetings may vary based on the phases of the thesis project or the students’ needs. Time and place should be coordinated in advance. You are advised to ask early for a meeting since short-notice meetings might be difficult to schedule. Most often, our meetings take place in the offices of the LTeD Research Lab. Note, preparation of the meetings is strongly advised and if a meeting does not have purpose, you should cancel it respectively.

Workplace

Usually, students can choose their workplace freely. They may work remotely or use university resources (e.g., TU Wien library). When starting your thesis project, you receive the opportunity to work in our Open Desk Office (HD0209), if members of the team are in the office. Note, you will not receive a key, but during primary working hours, usually 10:00-16:00, our team members can give you access.

Tools

Which software and hardware students may use for their thesis strongly depends on the topic and context of their work. However, we collected some tools for you to checkout: