Academic-Skills Project

Overview

Description

The Academic-skills Project (202200119) is for students who did their BSc at a University of Applied Sciences. Its goal is to bring their academic skills to a level required to start the MSc-Thesis project. 

After the Academic-Skills Project has been completed, the student is able to:
•       apply a suitable research or design methodology in a scientific manner
•       run a scientific project within its time frame
•       communicate to peers and non-specialists. 

The Academic-skills Project is about boosting academic skills to the level required for MSc Robotics, and as such it prepares for the MSc-Thesis Project. So, it is part of variant 2 of Year 2. 

It is about running a project, with the focus on the process of doing projects. The content, that is, project topic, must of course be related to robotics, and must match the specialisation and profile of the student. 

The Academic-Skills Project is carried out within a robotics-related research group of the UT. The list of recognised robotics-related research groups is indicated in the table. <to be added> This list is also in the EER-B, Article B4.7.2, Table 16.

The topic of the Academic-Skills Project must be in the scientific fields on which the Specialisation of the student is grounded. Furthermore the Academic-Skills Project must address aspects being taught in the Profile of the student.

CBL-like techniques can be applied, as the Academic-skills Project is formulated as a rather open problem. However, as the project is only 10 EC, the problem to work on is obviously framed such that it can be conducted within the time budget.

Note, there is no need to report on the used CBL techniques in the portfolio.

There is no Canvas page of the ASP, as there is no synchonised start each year, the work is in the research groups, and the forms needed for doing the ASP are available on this website: the Forms and Procedures Page.

Entry Requirements

To start your Academic-skills Project, you must have completed at least 45 EC in which the 6 compulsory courses of the chosen specialisation and CBL Year 1 are included. See also EER, Article B3.9.

You must satisfy these requirements at the moment you actually start the Academic-skills Project. It is possible to start the search for your Academic-skills Project a month or two before you satisfy these entry requirements. 

You may start the Academic-skills Project at a moment that results of examinations are still pending. However, in case these results appear to be insufficient later, the examination board may order you to interrupt your Academic-skills Project to repair these insufficient results.

Duration

The study load of an Academic-skills Project is 10 EC, being 7 weeks of full-time work. Any day off, public holiday, or time spend on other courses or jobs extends the calendar time of this period. This 7 weeks is the minimal duration of an Academic-skills Project. When the project is conducted next to courses, the calendar time of the project is of course longer. We advise you to plan and spend at least half of full-time, so 20 hours per week on the Academic-skills Project, this to keep a minimal pace of the project. Otherwise, you may lose too much time to get started again and again. 

Acquiring an academic-skills project

As a student, you must find an Academic-skills Project yourself. Robotic research groups often advertise student projects on their website or provide information on research projects they conduct. Together with the envisaged supervisor(s) an Academic-skills Project is defined, either (partly) by the student or by the supervisor(s). The research group, however, is in the lead of drawing up the topic of the Academic-Skills project in all cases.

The supervisor(s) check explicitly whether the proposed Academic-skills-Project idea is doable by the student, with respect to time budget, expected knowledge and skills, academic level, and whether it matches with the specialisation and the profile the student has chosen. 

The Academic-skills Project must be supervised and assessed by at least two supervisors. At least one of these supervisors must be an examiner of the MSc Robotics programme (in general, professors (all levels) working on robotics-related subjects can act as examiner for the Academic-skills Project). 

It is important to start in time preparing for the Academic-skills Project, as consulting scientific staff and asking them about an Academic-skills Project, takes time. We advise you to start looking for an academic-skills project at about 2 months before the expected start of it.

As a student, you must send the Academic-Skills Planning Form (also signed by the examiner in the supervision committee) to the Educational-Affairs Office. This to let the administration (and programme management) know that you are working on your Academic-Skills project. 

Running the project

Use the approach of doing projects as is done during the MSc-thesis project: splitting project time into three equal parts: exploration, production, finalisation, with a project plan after 1/3, a ‘demo’ after 2/3, and a report and presentation at the end (obviously).

More details are in the DoingProjects document (to be linked to here; draft version on Canvas M-Rob), and an overview is below.

Starting and Exploration Phase

At the beginning of the project, make agreements concerning:

•       Milestones of 1/3, 2/3 and final date.
These dates mark the ends of the exploration phase, production phase, and finalisation phase. This implies a meeting in which the Project Plan and Demo are discussed, and the final presentation and thus assessment is held.
These dates must be put on your Academic-Skills Planning Form, such that these are known by the Educational-Affairs Office. You have to send the completely filled-in and undersigned form to the Educational-Affairs Office.
Note that the planning of these milestones is the initial planning, which may be updated during the course of the project. 

•       PIP meetings on Progress, Issues, Plans.
These should take place preferably twice but at least once per week between the student and at least day-to-day supervisor. When the work is done part-time, this rhythm can be scaled accordingly.

•       Practical issues
Like workplace, access to Lab, where to go for support, use of tools and servers etc. This is of course specific to the research group where the work is conducted.

The project plan is the result of the Exploration Phase. Topics of the project plan are:

•       Introduction
Introducing the project: context, problem statement, goals (formulated as research questions or design objectives).

•       Analysis / Feasibility
Literature review, analysis of the problem resulting in requirements (for design work) / how to proceed, test experiments to support feasibility reasoning. Especially for design-oriented projects, this includes possible approaches with advantages / disadvantages, presented in DSE tables, for example. 

•       Testing / Verification Plan
Describe the testing (verification / validation approach), especially what is needed to get out of tests, to support the scientific reasoning (part of the final report). Describe what to show at the Demo milestone. And thus, to know what to work for in the Production phase.

•       Planning of the Production Phase
So, the plan of action, that is tasks and the planning of the work in the production phase.

Production Phase

This is executing the project plan and document the progress (logbook like) as that contributes to the final report. 

In these kind of scientific projects, often work appears to be different then originally planned. This is due to growing insight, growing experience, unforeseen issues popping up, etc. To keep on track, tasks, priorities of tasks and thus planning need to be reconsidered and updated when necessary. This is part of the doing projects activity. Decisions on changing the plan must be taken together with the supervisors.

The demo (showing essential results) at the end of the production phase, needs to be carefully prepared. This demo is a kind of (design) review to discuss and gather feedback from the supervisors. Next to that, it is to become clear / decide that the work is good enough to enter the Finalising Phase. Often, many new ideas arise, so the left-over work and new things must be prioritised to avoid overloading and thus unnecessarily extending the Finalisation Phase.

Finalising

First is to update / detail out the planning of this phase: plan the left-over work agreed to be done at the demo meeting, and plan the report writing, taking into account feedback moments and reading time for reviewing by supervisors.

On report writing: discuss the articulated outline first (rich report outline), that is a global line of thought of the report, so more then only chapter and section headings. For the review process, check the process as is used at the research group. Use earlier made documentation, including stuff of the project plan, obviously.

Start planning the final presentation a few weeks ahead of time, after permission by the supervisors. This permission implies that the work is expected to be at least sufficient, provided the work to be done is of same quality as shown before.

The presentation takes 20 minutes, followed by a Q&A session of about 15 minutes.

After presentation and assessment, deliver all the artifacts according to the process as used at the research group, and clean up lab space if applicable.

There is no need to report on activities in the CBL portfolio (for the MSc-Thesis Project this must be done, however). So, the report on the content of the work is the only final report you must produce for the Academic-skills Project.

Feedback, Assessment, Extension

Formal feedback during the project is embedded in the workflow of the Academic-Skills project:

• During each of the two milestone meetings (Project Plan and Demo), the supervisors give a formal formative assessment on the process including planning and content. This feedback is related to the assessment criteria as presented on the assessment form.
• This formative feedback can trigger the repair policy: in case it turns out that the original project appears to be too much / too complex for Academic-Skills project work, the project can be updated w.r.t. topics and/or planning, arrangement of extra technical support, adaptation of supervision approach / policy, etc.
• If at the next formative feedback (the next milestone meeting), the student’s work is not back on track (that is, the student’s work is still not good enough to achieve a pass at the very end of the Academic-Skills Project), the resit policy can be started. In case the level of results are beyond the control of the student, the repair policy can be reviewed and adapted, which may cause a delay of the project.
• Resit policy implies that the student can extend the project with a maximum of 3 weeks (full-time equivalent). This three weeks may spread out over a longer period. The student and supervisors must agree on this.  Assessment of this extended Academic-Skills Project results in a pass with grade of 6 or a fail. 
  This implies that the resit policy can already be started before the summative assessment at the 'normal' end of the project.
• In case the repair policy implies the project gets delayed (so due to reasons beyond the control of the student), the planning must be updated accordingly, and agreed upon as such by the examiner. In case no agreement on the rescheduling of the plan is reached, the student can request the EB to mediate. 
• There is no need to inform the Educational-Affairs Office about delayed / udpated milestone(s) and planned enddate, as opposed to the MSc-Thesis Project. 

For the Supervisors

Supervising an Academic-skills Project of MSc Robotics implies

1. Check and approve explicitly whether the proposed Academic-skills-project idea is doable by the student, with respect to time budget, expected knowledge and skills, academic level, and whether it matches with the specialisation and the profile the student has chosen. 
   This approval must be done before the student starts their academic-skills project. It is indicated by co-signing the Academic-Skills Project Planning form.
2. As supervisor / examiner, check and co-sign the Academic-Skills Project Planning form of the student.
3. Act as a supervisor and arrange day-to-day supervision. Best is to use the DoingProjects supervision scheme, to let the student get familiar with this way of supervising scientific projects, and thus better prepare for their MSc-thesis project.
4. Provide formal formative feedback at the end of the Exploration Phase and end of the Production Phase, so at reviewing the Project Plan and Demo respectively.
5. After presentation and Q&A session, and based on the work and report, assess the project by two staff members of which one is examiner. Use the specific assessment form to record and file the assessment. 
   When at assessment it turns out that the work is insufficient, the student can use up to 1 month to repair. Assessment of this ‘resit’ results in a pass with a grade of 6, or a fail. In the latter case, the student has to look for another academic project.