What is a degree project?

A degree project is the last thing you do in your studies. In the project you work alone, or in a group of two students, on a well-defined problem. The purpose is to make a more detailed and in-depth investigation of a topic that interests you. The project can be carried out at the university or at an external company, and spans over a whole study period on half-time (bachelor level). You work on your project for 20 weeks so it is important that you choose a topic that you find interesting!

Where do I start?

The first step is to find a topic for your project. You can either:

• Select a topic from the list of open project proposals.
• Ask a teacher or research that is experienced in an area that you are interested in if they have a topic for you.
• Propose your own topic.

It is generally easier to select an open project proposal or ask around for a topic, than defining your own.

What is a suitable topic?

For a topic to be suitable it must be well-defined, of reasonable size for a degree project, something that can be investigated, and within computer science. Simply re-implementing something that already exists is not allowed. There must be something new in the project! In general, all ideas that fulfill these basic criteria are allowed, but some ideas can be denied if we cannot find a supervisor that has knowledge about the area or if the topic is too small or too large.

I have an idea, how can I proceed?

Contact a teacher or researcher at the department that you know works in the area. If you don’t know anyone, contact the course manager and ask for a name. If the teacher/researcher seems interested in your idea and find it suitable for a degree project, ask if he/she wants to supervise you.

When the degree project course starts you will get all information you need to start your project, but it is always good to be a bit prepared when the course starts. 20 weeks might seem like a long time, but the weeks quickly pass by if you struggle to find a topic.

About this page

The purpose of this page is to provide some general information for students carrying out degree projects mainly at bachelor level. The guide is written for students in Computer Science at Linnaeus University, but most information is general enough to be useful for students in other subject areas or universities as well. It is not intended to be complete. How to carry out a degree project largely depends on the type of problem that is being investigated.