Theses

WarningTODO

update labot thesis --register (maybe based on copier template?)

Tip

This page is the supervisor-facing operational guide. Direct students to the student-facing thesis guidance for instructions, templates, and research guidance rather than reproducing that material here.

ConfidentialConfidential

Information on individual theses is recorded internally on Nextcloud.

Registration and project initiation

• Respond to the student’s supervision request by email.
• If supervision is accepted, ask the student to submit the request through SuSy and confirm it there.
• Arrange the first supervision meeting, for example through the supervisor’s booking page, and refer the student to the student-facing thesis guidance in advance.

Dear STUDENTNAME,

I have just confirmed the supervision in SuSy. Should we schedule a meeting for next week to discuss next steps, criteria, and open questions?

You can find my bookings page and the thesis page with additional information here:

https://bookings.cloud.microsoft/bookwithme/?anonymous=&ismsaljsauthenabled=

https://fs-ise.github.io/theses/

Best regards,

Gerit Wagner

First supervision meeting

Use the first meeting to establish a shared, realistic project frame. Record the decisions in the existing internal thesis notes; do not create a separate tracking system.

• Agree on the research objective or question and the intended contribution.
• Define the scope and explicitly note what is out of scope.
• Confirm the expected deliverables, including the thesis and any agreed data, code, software, or other supplementary material.
• Set a small number of milestones appropriate to the project, including when the exposé is complete, when substantial interim material should be discussed, and the submission target.
• Clarify methodological requirements, dependencies, feasibility risks, and any ethics, data-protection, or reproducibility requirements that apply.
• Explain the relevant assessment criteria and how the agreed objectives and deliverables relate to them.
• Discuss academic integrity and permitted AI and tool use, referring to the instructor plagiarism procedure and the student-facing digital-tools guidance.
• Agree on supervision arrangements: meeting cadence or triggers, communication channel, typical response expectations, and periods of limited availability.
• Set meeting expectations: the student sends a brief agenda, current material, decisions needed, and specific questions early enough to review; after the meeting, the student records agreed actions.
• Explain that students should request feedback proactively and raise conceptual, methodological, data, or implementation difficulties early.

Avoid extending the exposé phase unnecessarily. Once it provides a viable research question, scope, and approach, tell the student clearly that it is complete and that thesis work should proceed.

Advising and iterative feedback

Treat supervision as an iterative research-development process: the student develops and justifies the work, the supervisor challenges assumptions and gives directional feedback, and the student decides how to implement or discuss that feedback. Supervision does not transfer ownership of the research to the supervisor.

For each substantial feedback round:

1. Prepare: Ask the student to identify the maturity of the material and the specific questions on which feedback is needed. Link to the relevant student-facing guidance rather than repeating writing or method instructions.
2. Recommend: Give prioritized, actionable recommendations and distinguish required corrections from optional suggestions or possible extensions.
3. Agree: Record the important recommendations and agreed actions in the existing thesis notes or meeting notes.
4. Follow up: At the next exchange, ask the student to show where each agreed action was implemented or explain why it should be discussed further.

Throughout the project:

• State expectations, changes in direction, and concerns about progress or quality promptly and transparently.
• Relate feedback to the published assessment criteria; students should not be surprised by the basis of their grade.
• Encourage students to seek feedback before uncertainty becomes a major project risk. Make clear that disclosing a difficulty early is part of responsible research practice.
• Keep feedback proportionate to the stage of the work: emphasize direction and method early, then argument, evidence, coherence, and presentation as the thesis matures.
• Begin check-ins with an open, respectful question about progress or current obstacles, while allowing students to choose how much personal context they share.

NoteConversation starters

When checking in with thesis students, begin with questions that express interest in their experience—without being too personal. Let students choose how much they wish to share. Examples include:

• How was the start of your semester?
• Is this a busy time for you? How many exams are on your plate, and which ones?
• How are you feeling about your thesis these days? Any areas you’d like to focus on?

These questions help foster a supportive, respectful environment for supervision.

Project closure

Use this checklist after the student submits the thesis. The responsible supervisor should verify any program-specific institutional requirements rather than assuming that all programs follow the same process.

Submission and materials

• Confirm that the final thesis was submitted through SuSy and that the submitted version is the version to be assessed.
• Obtain the source files and any supplementary data, code, documentation, or software that were required or agreed for the project.
• Check that access restrictions, licenses, and data-protection requirements for supplementary material are documented before archiving or sharing it.
• Consolidate and archive the final thesis and associated materials in the existing thesis storage, subject to the applicable permissions.

Assessment and completion

• Start the assessment workflow and create the review template:

  labot thesis --grade

• Check if title in the PDF corresponds to title in SuSy. If they differ: TODO

• Before assessment, check for potential plagiarism and other indications that submitted work may misrepresent authorship or permitted AI/tool use. Automated similarity or AI-detection results are not proof and cannot reliably establish authorship; manually assess the underlying evidence.

• Also check for content generated by AI:

  The following tools may be used only as supplementary screening aids. Their scores are not reliable evidence that content was AI-generated and must not be used to determine authorship or misconduct without independently verifiable evidence.

  • EduWriter AI Content Detector — free version for teachers & students; paste/upload text to get % AI ‐ likelihood.
  • QuillBot AI Detector — free version; supports multiple languages.
  • Grammarly AI Detector — free tool to check if parts of a text look AI-generated.
  • SurgeGraph AI Detector — free version; sentence-level tagging.
  • GPTZero — free basic usage; paste in text / upload to get AI content score.

• If misconduct is suspected, follow the plagiarism procedure. Document and refer a substantiated suspicion through the formal process rather than independently imposing or recording a misconduct-related sanction.

• Assess the thesis using the generated template and the published assessment criteria.

• Complete and spell-check the assessment report within the deadline set by the responsible examination office; the internal target is two weeks.

• Archive the final assessment report as a PDF in the grade archive and consolidate the assessment materials.

• Register or forward the grade through the applicable institutional process and verify that the required step has been completed.

• Invite the student to a feedback meeting to explain the assessment and discuss the research process; make clear when a grade communicated before formal registration is unofficial.

NoteEMail Templates

Bewertung Ihrer Bachelorarbeit und Feedback

Sehr geehrte/r Frau/Herr XXXXX,

Ich habe das Gutachten zu Ihrer Bachelorarbeit erstellt. Vorab möchte ich Ihnen schon inoffiziell mitteilen, dass Ihre Arbeit mit der Note XXXXXX bewertet wird.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu dieser hervorragenden Leistung!

Abschließend möchte ich Sie zu einem Feedbackgespräch einladen, um die Bewertung und den Prozess zu besprechen. Ich würde mich freuen, wenn Sie diese Möglichkeit wahrnehmen. Einen Termin können Sie über Bookings auswählen:

https://bookings.cloud.microsoft/bookwithme/?anonymous=&ismsaljsauthenabled=

Mit besten Grüßen

Gerit Wagner

Bewertung Ihrer Masterarbeit und Feedback

Sehr geehrte/r Frau/Herr XXXXX,

Ich habe das Gutachten zu Ihrer Masterarbeit erstellt. Vorab möchte ich Ihnen schon inoffiziell mitteilen, dass die schriftliche Arbeit mit der Note XXXXXX bewertet wird. Die Präsentation wird mit XXXX bewertet.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu dieser hervorragenden Leistung!

Abschließend möchte ich Sie zu einem Feedbackgespräch einladen, um die Bewertung und den Prozess zu besprechen. Ich würde mich freuen, wenn Sie diese Möglichkeit wahrnehmen. Einen Termin können Sie über Bookings auswählen:

https://bookings.cloud.microsoft/bookwithme/?anonymous=&ismsaljsauthenabled=

Mit besten Grüßen

Gerit Wagner

At the feedback meeting, use the same assessment criteria to explain the grade, identify strengths and areas for development, and close any remaining administrative or repository-access questions.

Publication and reuse opportunities

When a thesis makes a promising conceptual, empirical, methodological, or technical contribution, discuss whether it could be developed into a publication, research software, or an open-source contribution.

• Explain that follow-on work is optional, is separate from completing and grading the thesis, and normally requires substantial additional work.
• Agree on a realistic next step, responsibilities, and whether the student wants to remain involved before investing in further development.
• Discuss authorship early. Co-authorship depends on substantive contributions to the follow-on output, not on supervision or thesis authorship alone.
• Obtain and document the necessary permission before publishing the thesis or sharing its data, code, software, or other materials; check third-party rights, licenses, confidentiality, and data-protection constraints.
• Ask whether the student permits the thesis to be made available to other students. A decision about sharing the thesis does not automatically grant permission to share its underlying data or code.