Examiner seminar

Examiner seminar

Students

The examiner seminar is a "almost-half-way* check, indicating whether you are staying on target, and thereby well on your way towards the finishing line. It is not about quantity, i.e. delivering "everything that you have", but rather about quality, i.e. to see that your work so far is up to par, and that the necessary quality level is maintained.

NB! For access to this seminar, you - after having discussed and worked with your supervisor! - need to have a clear and well-formulated research question/-s, and a ditto methodology section, together with preliminary sections for the introduction, background, problem statement, and theoretical framework/-s in place. You also need to have (and read!) a reference article or book on the methodology chosen.

Also make sure you have at least one, but preferably more, articles or books of related work in place before the seminar.

Also see the Agenda section below.

Examiner and supervisor

Early in the project examiners do a seminar with students and supervisors, focusing mainly on the research questions and the method section. This is a 30 minute session where the students first present their project to the examiner, and get feedback.

The most important aspect of this seminar is that the students should get a clear, honest, and objective idea on how they are doing with their thesis, so that they can change course as early as possible if necessary.

The feedback is aimed towards the students passing the thesis. If there are red flags, they will be pointed out here.

Agenda

Students do a 15 min. presentation to the examiner, followed by a discussion of approximate 15 minutes around the following issues:

  1. Ensure the students can explain their problem statement. It should be understandable.
  2. Ensure the problem is within Computer Science. It may be applied, but the knowledge contribution should be within CS.
  3. Ensure the students have a realistic methodology aligned with the research question(s) / knowledge contribution.
  4. The methodology must be suitable for the problem/challenge, i.e. will provide usable information to answer the questions.
  5. Ensure the students present a methodology reference paper or book that describes the method and its terminology.
  6. Students have the knowledge to do what they set out for, eg. have the prerequisite courses.
  7. Students have time to finish the project (i.e. the scope of the project might need to be adjusted )
  8. Students have the resources to do it (eg. access to datasets, hardware, contact with the people they should interview, respondent population, etc.)

NB! All supervisors need to participate in this seminar for continued guidance of their students according to the examiner seminar outcome.