Information for Projects, Bachelor and Master Thesis

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Collection of information regarding projects and the writing of Bachelor and Master thesis.

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General Information

• The thesis and project should show that you can work independently on a specific topic.
• It is your duty to organize your work and ask for help if required.

• Contact your supervisor to create a sciebo folder for your project and all related files.

• Clarify with your supervisor if there are files from earlier projects, that concern your project. Often you don't need to start from scratch!

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How to start a project

Intro meeting

• Contact a team member to get a date for an introductin meeting. For this meeting you should make yourself familiar with the project that you want to make.
• Prepare the following points in a powerpoint presentation:

1. Presentation fo yourself.
2. What is the focus of the project and what are the partners?
3. What is the concept to realize the project and what are the prioritized goals?
4. SysML parametric Block diagram of the expected system architecture?
5. What is the state of the art?
6. What is your personal way to reach the goals ?
7. What is your time plan and what are the working packages?
8. What is the needed support?

Communication

• We communicate via the Software Slack
• Please contact Johannes Hug, or Filippos Tzanetos and give them all your email addresses of the concering students in the project.
• They will invite you to our slack channel.
• When you want to contact our team, do it via slack.
• When you want to contact Prof. Wollert, do this via Email!

Weekly Meetings (All projects and thesis projects)

• We have mandatory weekly update meetings with all the students that are currently making a project at our lab.

• The meeting date will be provided by your supervisor.

• If you cannot attend a meeting, be sure to tell Filippos Tzanetos. If you have not mentioned your inatendance 3 days before the meeting, you will be marked as unexcused.

• Ask Filippos to invite you the Webex Meeting that will also be opened at every meeting.

• If the team sees, that you miss too many meetings unexcused, you may be dropped from the project!

• Please prepare a powerpoint presentation with the official FH-Aachen PP Template. (Use 16:9 ratio)

• What should be presented during the weekly meeting?

  • What has been done during this week?
  • What will be done during the next week?
  • The questions that you want to ask?
  • Your main timeline, and your project progress.

• Yes, your presentation can consist of 4 pages, if done correctly.

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Thesis

• Please start your writing process at an early stage of your project. It is a lot easier to write the thesis step by step than writing 60 pages in the last two weeks. Moreover, you can send the first chapters to your supervisors to get an early feedback which is helping you in your writing progress.
• Keep in mind that feedback loops take time! Calculate at least one/two week(s) for your supervisor to read your thesis and provide feedback.
• You need at least 2 feedback loops. One by your supervisor and at least one by Prof. Wollert.

  • Prof. Wollert provides this service, so please make use of it.

Thesis Structure

A thesis consists of the following parts:

• Cover page (check the download section of the examination office)
• Declaration that you have written the thesis on your own and that you have declared all sources.
• (Acknowledgements)
• Executive summary in German and English
• Table of contents
• Introduction
• State of the art
• Main part (in engineering usually with the following chapters)
  • Analysis: What is the goal of the project? What do I have to develop? What is the current status? Why is the project neccecary?
  • Specification: How can the problem from the analysis be solved? What are the requirements? Keep in mind that there might be more than one solution to a problem.
  • Design: Which solution was selected and why? Does it fit the requirements?
  • Implementation: What was actually done? Not every project runs as planned, this is the chapter to tackle these issues during this development-phase.
  • Test: How was the solution tested? What is working? Why is something not working? Are there additional limitations?
• Conclusion and outlook
• List of References
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Attachements/Appendix

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Writing Style

• You can choose to write the thesis in German or English
• If you are writing your thesis in English, you can use Grammarly to check your grammar and writing style
• If you are writing in Word: Please use the heading styles and the automatic referencing system for pictures and tables. This allows you to create automatically updating references throughout your document.
• Reference all pictures and tables in your text; put the text first and afterwards the corresponding pictures and tables
• Please use justified text (Blocksatz) throughout your thesis.
• Your thesis is a scientific document. Therefore, please do not use the terms “I” or “we”. More examples can be found here: https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/academic-style
• If you want to show additional pictures or tables which are not crucial for the understanding of your thesis, you can put them in the attachements and refer to them in your text. In this case, your reader can decide if he wants to see it or check it out later.
• Do not repeat yourself (e.g. do not use “As told before…”; “As already discussed before …”) but use references to the chapters in which you have discussed the issue.

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Referencing System

• Use a seperate referencing system such as CITAVI from the beginning of your project. You get a full version of CITAVI for free from the library (https://www.fh-aachen.de/hochschule/bibliothek/bibliothek-von-a-z/bibliothek-von-a-z-c)
• When using CITAVI: Import your sources using doi or ISBN identifiers -> your references will be formatted correctly.
• For MacOS, try using Zotero.

• If you need a quick introduction, please contact Johannes (hug@fh-aachen.de)
• Further information and tutorials are available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbclJ3gAFmesGYYRUssGEJw

Additional Hints

• Use primarly peer-reviewed sources (books, journals, conferences), ideally identified via a doi (digital object identifier).
• Sources: Ensure that you are using adequate scientific literature such as books and papers. You can look for (online) literature at the library (https://www.fh-aachen.de/hochschule/bibliothek/bibliothek-von-a-z/bibliothek-von-a-z-k/katalog-plus) or at a scientific data base such as IEEE Xplore or ScienceDirect. Please do not use blog posts to show the current state of the art.
• If you want to get feedback from your supervisor, make sure that the texts are grammatically correct!
• Use UML and/or SysML diagrams if you explain your program. Do not include screenshots of your program.

Presentation/Kolloquium

• Ensure that everyone can understand your presentation by including an introduction to the topic
• Do not overload your slides; use more pictures than text
• Use bullet points and no continuous text
• Try to follow the 7x7 rule: Use not more than seven lines per slide and don’t use more than seven words per line.
• Do not read out your slides; use your own words and explain them more in detail
• You should plan with about two minutes per slide -> do not use too many slides!
• Create back-up slides which you put after the final slide of your presentation - this way you can show additinal information during the round of questions

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Project Delivery / What needs to be handed in? / For Thesis and Projects

• Keep in mind that the Prüfungsamt has several tasks when you hand in your thesis.

  • Look at the "Infoblatt" -> Link

• A printed copy of your thesis for Prof. Wollert. (not needed for Mechatronics Project, Project2, Praxisprojekt)

• All your documents and project descriptions you used and created. Put them in the Sciebo folder, that your supervisor provided you!

• All code that you wrote, needs to be in a GIT project in git.fh-aachen.de

  • Your supervisor and Prof Wollert need to be owner of your project.
  • At best you adjust the namespace of your project, so it wont be deleted after you leave FH Aachen

• If you have implemented a physical device. You need to create a HowTo Document, so anyone could use your device!

  • The Document needs to be:
    • written in Markdown
    • begin with a

      Table of Contents

      • General Information
        • How to start a project
          • Intro meeting
          • Communication
          • Weekly Meetings (All projects and thesis projects)
      • Thesis
        • Thesis Structure
        • Writing Style
        • Referencing System
        • Additional Hints
        • Presentation/Kolloquium
      • Project Delivery / What needs to be handed in? / For Thesis and Projects
      Block
    • include all important information about your project
    • define how you start up the machine or device, so out team is able to do this at any given time only having your document
    • include images.
  • Here's a little example:

(TOC) //change the () to []

***

# Projectdesctiption

Here comes your project descripton, including the goal of the project. 

# HowTo

## Startup

## Hardware Config

## Software Config

***

# Troubleshooting

## This is happening

Lets to this to fix it...

• Link this HowTo in your Sciebo folder!
• A Poster and/or Rollup to your project. Discuss this need with your supervisor or Prof. Wollert.