Note: Obs! Subject to change!

Exjobbs associated with Prof. Gerald Q. "Chip" Maguire Jr.

Prof. Gerald Maguire <maguire@kth.se> is an examiner for thesis projects (primarily) on: data communication, mobile communication, personal communication, ... . Note that he spends a large fraction of his teaching time supervising exjobbs. For examples of past thesis projects, see the subset of theses for which he has been an examiner (see the list of the past annoucements (1992-2008) to see which theses he has been an examiner for).

If you have been offered a thesis project (exjobb) in industry which you think he might be the relevant academic advisor and examiner for, then send the description of the proposed project to him via e-mail -- before stating on the project. If you have an idea of your own or are looking for an idea in an area which you think he would be a suitable academic advisor and examiner, send him mail.

Note that he is only interested in being both examiner and academic supervisor; therefore, if you are a Stockholms University student who must have a NADA examiner, then don't even think about asking him to be the academic advisor.

Students needing an "Intyg" for CSN should directly contact their study adviser or the relevant administrative office (such as ICT's Student Centrum (Studentcentrum)), as I cannot sign such documents.

Registration forms are available from your school/program. (See for example.) See also the directions for masters thesis project students at CoS.

Join the mailing list to find out when exams are taking place, find an opponent, ... .

There is a KTH Social discussion group for degree projects on the advanced level at the School of ICT.

There is some useful information in the following two presentations the 23 of January 2009: Ben Slimane's presentation on procedures for exjobbs and G. Q. Maguire Jr,'s Scientific method, Previous work, Literature study, Plagiarism, ...: Some useful tips for those doing a masters thesis project.

Please note that all correspondence with me regarding your thesis project should be done via your KTH e-mail account.

In keeping with the KTH policy regarding putting the final thesis in DiVA - I expect that all students that I am an examiner for will agree to put the full text of their report on-line.

New exjobbs with grading

Since 1 July 2007, it is possible to have the following types of exjobbs with a grade:

• Civilingenjöexamensarbete - 30 hp as part of the Civilingenjöexamen 300/270 hp program
• Magisterexamensarbete - 30 hp as part of the Magisterexamen 120 hp program
• Magisterexamensarbete - 15 hp as part of the Magisterexamen 60 hp program

Information for students about the grading of exjobbs

Examples of some (current) project descriptions

Some examples for 2011.

Advice to every exjobb student

My advice to all thesis project students is:

1. Do not panic! There are lots of things that you will not know, but you can learn them.
2. Get in the habit of writing. Try to write at least one page per day. If you think of a question write it down. When you think of an answer write it down. Once a week step back and look at the table of contents for your thesis as you plan the next week's activities.

Overall timeline for an exjobb

Generic timeline and its relation to what you must write

Literature study

The literature study should consist of the following parts of the final report (i.e., it is just an early version of the final report containing only a limited subset of the report):

• Title page
  • Title
  • Author
  • Date
  • State where you are doing this work
• Abstract
  • Short problem statement
  • Why is this problem worth an masters thesis project? (i.e., Why is the problem both significant and of suitable degree of difficulty to be worth an masters?)
• Introduction
  • Longer problem statement
  • General introduction to the area
• Background
  • What have others already done?
  • What does a reader (another x student -- where x is your study line) need to know to understand your report?
• References

For an example of a masters literature study see: Erik Ehrlund's Literature Study.

I encourage students to use Zotero for their reference management. Of course you can also use a commercial tool or other tool. The key is that you should be using a tool to facilitate working with your references and reference material. You can find examples of using Zotero in my II2202 lecture notes on powertools. I encourage you to use my Zotero style IEEElike-with-access as it provides a rather complete reference (including DOI, ISBN, or URL where relevant).

.

Note about language(s)

The thesis is generally written in Swedish or English. There must be an abstract in both Swedish and English. Under certain circumstances, and with the approval of the supervisor, the thesis may be written in another language, but must still have abstracts in both Swedish and English.

Possible - Exjobb report outline

• Title page
  • Title
  • Author
  • Date
  • State where you are doing this work
• Abstract
  • Short problem statement
  • Why is this problem worth an M.Sc. thesis project? (i.e., why is the problem both significant and of suitable degree of difficulty to be worth an M.Sc.)
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
  • Longer problem statement
  • General introduction to the area
• Background
  • What have others already done?
  • What does a reader (another x student -- where x is your study line) need to know to understand your report?
• Method
  • What are your goals? (What should you be able to do as a result of your solution - which couldn't be done well before you started?)
  • What you are going to do? Why?
• Analysis
  • How you are going to evaluate what you have done?
  • Analysis of your data and proposed solution
  • Does this meet the goals which you had when you started?
• Conclusions
  • Conclusion
    • Did you meet your goals?
    • What insights have you gained?
    • What suggestions can you give to others working in this area?
    • If you had it to do again, what would you have done differently?
  • Future work
    • What you have left undone?
    • What are the next obvious things to be done?
    • What hints can you give to the next person who is going to followup upon your work?
• References
• Appendix/Appendices (Optional) - one of which might be a list of abbreviations or terms which you use in your report.

For those writing in English an excellent resource is: Chicago Editorial Staff, The Chicago Manual of Style. 14th edition, 923 p., 1993, ISBN 0-226-10389-7
The Chicago Manual of Style (FAQs)
For a suggest of how to handle (format) on-line reference, see http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite7.html
A generally useful book for writers is: Marie-Claire van Leunen, A Handbook for Scholars, Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.

Note that under the Bern Convention every figure has its own copyright, thus if you are going to use a figure from someone else you must make sure that you have the copyright owner's permission. Generally when you get this permission they will say how they wish this to be acknowledged. This is in addition to your existing obligation to properly cite your sources.

For an nice introduction to statistics for usability studies, see chapter 2 of Tom Tullis and Bill Albert, Measuring the User Expeience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics, Morgan Kaufmann, 2008, ISBN 978-0-12-373558-4

Edoardo Paone's presentations slides -- appear here with the permission of the author.

Vassilios Ververis's presentations slides -- appears here with the permission of the author.

Exjobb opposition report

Your primary goal as an opponent is to help the student improve their thesis. A secondary goal is to help the student improve their future oral presentations. Achieving both of these goals is based upon providing feedback. There is a template for the opponent's report that you should complete. Generally you should begin your oral opposition with what you liked about the oral presentation, then comment on what could be improved. Following this you should ask the questions that are still unclear after having read the thesis and after having heard the student's oral presentation. You should also have ~10 minutes of questions for the student after their presentation in order to start off the question and answer period. You can find a template and examples of opponents reports below.

Exjobb opposition report

Reviewer name:
Date of review:

Title:

Author:

Section I. Evaluation
Category:
Relevance of content:            1 to 5 (5 excellent)
Disposition:                     1 to 5 (5 excellent)
Evaluation of published results: 1 to 5 (5 excellent)
Abstract:                        1 to 5 (5 excellent)
Conclusion:                      1 to 5 (5 excellent)
Presentation of related work:    1 to 5 (5 excellent)
Language:                        1 to 5 (5 excellent)

Section II. Recommendations

Section III. Detailed comments for the author

Examples of exjobb opposition reports (each appears here with the permisison of its author):.

• example report 1
• example report 2

An old version of the form for the examiner to sign when you have completed your opposition - generally this should not be needed, but sometimes it is useful to have something physical.

KTH common goals for a 30 hp Civilingenjöexamensarbete as part of the Civilingenjöexamen (300/270) hp program

"Studenten ska:

• Kunna tillämpa relevanta kunskaper och färdigheter som förvärvats inom teknikområdet på ett givet problem
• Inom givna ramar, även med begränsad information, självständigt kunna analysera och diskutera komplexa frågeställningar, samt hantera större problem på avancerad nivå inom teknikområdet
• Reflektera kring, värdera och kritiskt granska egna och andras vetenskapliga resultat
• Kunna dokumentera och presentera sitt arbete, för given målgrupp, med högt ställda krav på struktur, formalia och språkhantering
• Kunna identifiera sitt behov av ytterligare kunskap och fortlöpande utveckla sin kompetens Dessa KTH-gemensamma mål ska utgöra grunden för kursmål för alla examensarbeten för civilingenjörsexamen. Ytterligare eller mer specificerade kursmål för examensarbete kan utarbetas av skolorna, för utbildningsprogram eller för enskilda examensarbetsämnen. "

KTH common goals for a 30 hp Magisterexamensarbete as part of the Magisterexamen (120 hp) program

"Studenten ska:

• Kunna tillämpa relevanta kunskaper och färdigheter som förvärvats inom huvudområdet på ett givet problem
• Inom givna ramar, självständigt kunna analysera och diskutera frågeställningar och lösa större problem på grundnivå inom huvudområdet
• Reflektera kring, värdera och kritiskt granska egna och andras vetenskapliga resultat
• Kunna dokumentera och presentera sitt arbete med krav på struktur, formalia och språkhantering
• Kunna identifiera sitt behov av ytterligare kunskap och ta ansvar för sin kunskapsutveckling "

KTH common goals for a 15hp Magisterexamensarbete as part of the Magisterexamen (60 hp) program

"Studenten ska:

• Kunna tillämpa relevanta kunskaper och färdigheter som förvärvats inom teknikområdet på ett givet problem
• Inom givna ramar, självständigt kunna analysera och diskutera frågeställningar, samt hantera större problem på grundnivå inom teknikområdet
• Reflektera kring, värdera och kritiskt granska egna och andras resultat
• Kunna dokumentera och presentera sitt arbete, för given målgrupp, med krav på struktur, formalia och språkhantering
• Kunna identifiera sitt behov av ytterligare kunskap och fortlöpande utveckla sin kompetens "