Project application

Student guide home

When applying for an individual student project you have to use the application form available at your institute secretariat. Please visit the secretary and ask for information on how to do this.

If you want me as a supervisor you will have to write a project specification which you attach to the application form before submitting it. See the instructions for writing a project specification below.

• The purpose of writing the project specification document is to ensure that you are heading in the right direction from the beginning and that you have some initial material for your report. When you later on write your report there is nothing wrong in copying as much as possible from your specification.

• We highly recommend using Google Docs for writing the requirement specification. This makes it much easier for us to support you in the writing process.

• A few pictures and/or sketches will normally ease the understanding quite a bit. For the requirement specification it is fully acceptable to draw sketches, tables etc. by hand and then scan or photograph them.

• The final version of your project specification document will be submitted for approval by the student board as an enclosure to your application form. It must therefore be submitted as PDF. Use the full title of the project and “Specification” as file name.

• Make sure to email a copy of the application and project specification to your supervisors.

Title page

• Project title
• Name of project participants
• Name of project supervisors
• Institute name(s)
• Type of project and number of ECTS points
• Project period

Introduction

• Background information
  • What is the project all about? Give the outside reader at chance to understand the domain.
• Problem statement
  • Wherein lies the problem?
• Related work
  • This is your background research…
  • During your literature search what did you find?
  • Your own or the research group's prior work if any?
• Project aim (engineering design process) or Hypothesis (scientific method)
  • How did you derive your project aim/hypothesis and how it connects to related work?
  • If you use the engineering design process please use SMART criteria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
  • If you use the scientific method, your hypothesis should as a general rule be written as an IF-THEN statement or more precisely as stated below.
    • If (I) is related to (D), then (P)
    • (I) is the independent variable controlled by you.
    • (D) is the dependent variable which you observe.
    • (P) is the predicted outcome.

Materials and methods

• General description of how you intend to run your creation process (engineering design process) or prove your hypothesis (scientific method).
• Tentative budget
• Tentative time schedule
• Deliverables
  • What you deliver and when. Use the example below as a template:
    • The project will be reviewed by the supervisor about halfway through the project period which is November 1st, 2018. By this date the following will be delivered:
      • Deliverable a
      • Deliverable b
      • The sections “Introduction” and “Materials and methods” of the project report.
    • The project deadline is January 1st, 2015. By this date the following will be delivered:
      • Deliverable A
      • Deliverable B
      • A project report documenting the fulfillment of project aims, deliverables and learning goals

References

• Reference to literature that you have cited in the specification. Most references probably origin from the Related work section.
• For more info about referencing please read the References document.

Participants

• Your full contact info and a passport style photo of yourself.

The first time you write up a project specification like this you will probably find it rather difficult and tedious. But I assure you that you will benefit from this work during your project period.

Did you remember to include a few pictures and sketches?