Requirement

To be allowed to start with the thesis project, you must have obtained at least 67.5 EC. The contents of the project should be related to an HCI topic.

Registration

You are required to apply for approval of your research project by submitting a request via OSIRIS Student. Please select ‘My Cases’ > ‘Start Case’ > ‘Research Project GSNS’. Important: in order to apply completely and correctly, you must have discussed the project setup with your intended project supervisor beforehand! To make sure you obtain all the information required, we advise you to study the request form before discussing it with your supervisor.

In OSIRIS Student, please also read about the delay protocol. Among other things, it says: 'There will be strict adherence to the ending date as specified (before starting the project) in the 'application form'. If an assessment is reasonably possible on the ending date, the assessment will be made and processed.'

You are advised to work full time, which means 40 hours per week. However, 32 hours per week is also allowed. In that case, please note that your project takes 25% more time to finish. Please be aware that this does not allow working on the side for more than 1 day per week.

External project You have the possibility to do your thesis project at a company, or (non-)governmental institute. Also, in such cases, two departmental staff members should approve the project and serve as thesis supervisor and markers.

HCI staff will occasionally send calls for internships/projects by e-mail, via study associations or put them on the KonJoin system. In case of a project or internship outside of Utrecht University, please make sure you also fill in the 'daily supervisor' section in the research project application form. If an external party hosts you as a student, you also need to provide a Work Place Agreement.

Scope constraints The topic of the master thesis should lie within the HCI domain. We encourage you to choose a topic that fits your primary supervisor’s interests and ongoing work closely. In principle, the supervisor can be any GSNS staff member, in particular of the Department of Information and Computing Sciences. Groups of interest including but not limited to:

• Human-Centred Computing
• Multimedia
• Social and Affective Computing
• Natural Language Processing
• Business Process Management and Analytics

Body of the work

The MSc thesis is split into two parts: 15 EC preparation and 25 EC execution. This comprises 3 periods (or blocks) of work (including the HCI colloquium), which is about 7.5 months of work.

The first part comprises 1 period (or block) of full-time work. The student will complete (at least) the following deliverables:

• The MSc research application form (a.s.a.p.);
• A completed literature research for the project;
• A clear (list of) research question(s);
• A skeleton of the thesis;
• A time plan for the second part of the thesis;
• A description of the research methodology; and
• A plan for the evaluation of the results/outcome.

The second part comprises 2 periods (or blocks). You will complete (at least) the following items:

• Perform and complete scientific research according to the predefined plan;
• Write a scientific report about this research. You may choose between a regular thesis (plus optional appendix), or a scientific conference/journal paper, plus mandatory appendix;
• Give a presentation about the work; and

Usual assessment criteria Your thesis is usually assessed by using the following criteria:

• Level: Theoretical level, practical/experimental level, understanding of the underlying matter, and amount of work;
• Problem handling: Methods, techniques, design instrumentation, implementation, and experiments;
• Skills: Analytical skills, distinguishing matters of major and minor importance, evaluation, and independence, collaboration, self-reflectiveness, and planning;
• Effort and attitude;
• Originality;
• Relevance and knowledge utilization;
• Report/Thesis: Literature survey, problem statement, style of writing, quality of Dutch/English, report structure, textual structure, coherence/consistency, conclusions/recommendations, and neatness;
• Oral presentation: Presentation/public speaking skills, structure, discussion skills, and presentational aids;
• If applicable: Appendices: Collected data and code including a technical description and installation manual.

Cum Laude

To receive a cum laude, your grade for the second part should be at least 8.5. Please be aware that if you do not finish in time; normally, you cannot get a grade higher than an 8.

Procedures around the completion of your project

• Determine date and time to defend your thesis. The defense will be concluded by a discussion with the committee to determine the grade. For reservation of a room, please contact Geraldine Leebeek.
• After your grade has been determined, your supervisor will fill in the assessment form in OSIRIS and submit it.
• You also need to deliver a PDF of the final version of your thesis. Do not forget this, because this is a requirement before you can graduate! Your title page should contain the name of our institution, and a thesis number (= HCI-your_student_number). Upload the PDF to Igitur.
• When your final grade is registered in OSIRIS, you will receive an email confirming that your dossier will be sent to the Board of Examinations. The date on your diploma (degree = certificate), will be the last working day of the month in which your final grade is registered.