Master Thesis
!Please note that all guidance in this section serves as orientation. Priority applies to agreements with your supervisor(s) as well as the regulations for examination and specific procedures required from the examination office!
Your Master Thesis will be the key evaluation of your whole studies and you should plan and conduct it with sufficient effort! It is supposed to be accomplished in the 4th (final) semester. You will have 21 weeks to write the thesis upon registration. Be aware that German students of “Wasserwirtschaft”, “Hydrologie”, etc. have 5 months instead. Sometimes your supervisors might not be aware of this. For Erasmus Mundus it is expected that you finish at the end of August of the corresponding year.
The evaluation will assess the written thesis as well as the oral presentation and defence of your results after submission (compare examination regulation).
The examination offers some FAQs for the Master Thesis Phase as well.
Choice of Topic
We recommend to start the organization of your master thesis early enough, potentially already at the beginning of your 3rd semester. Additionally, if you plan to do your thesis with external partners (a company, another university or a non-university research institution) or abroad it takes extra time to prepare everything! Identify your research interests and what kind of thesis you want to do (laboratory, modelling, analysis …). Invest sufficient time and energy to find out about suitable research groups and potential supervisors.
A well‐established external partner of the Hydro Science Department of TU Dresden is the "Umweltforschungszentrum" in Leipzig/Halle/Magdeburg, but there are plenty of research institutes with a huge variety of topics all over Germany and most of them accept master students for one of their research projects. Remember that you always need at least one supervisor at TU Dresden, so if you find an interesting topic at another institution, think about who of the professors at TU Dresden might match best with your chosen topic and contact him/her about this.
Once you have identified the topics/research areas of interest, contact the potential supervisor, which can be a professor, Post-Doc or Ph.D. student who are active in the field or even offered the topic. Avoid making appointments with nothing more on your agenda than “I need a topic for my master thesis!” rather know at least your field of interest. Please also do an honest self-assessment if you are able to learn new skills required for the topic in the relatively short period of the thesis or if the amount of time would be to big.
Take the topic choice seriously! A thesis can be highly demanding and a lot of students suffer from a bad topic choice during the process.
Registration of Thesis
The task description of the final thesis must be submitted by the supervisor to the examination office. If all requirements are fulfilled, the topic is officially handed out by the examination office (must be taken from there) and the work can start. The registration requires a successful completion of 60 cr with all marks available at the Examination Office. We know that sometimes this can cause problems, when exam corrections take longer than expected.
The task description needs to contain the starting date and the date of submission.
Research part and written thesis
Your written composition is an essential part of your thesis. Please schedule enough time for it (usually a minimum of 6 weeks is necessary to ensure an appropriate representation with regard to content and style). Your master thesis is a scientific report and as such needs a proper description in a structured and comprehensible way together and at the same time fulfilling formal standards (check with your supervisor), such as spelling, punctuation and references (influences your grade!). More than 100 pages are hardly justifiable and should be avoided. Also, thesis less than 30 pages including brilliant ideas are rather scarce. Usually you need around 70 to 80 pages to be able to put all important information and ideas on paper. Please ask your supervisor for a template!
Keep a logical consistent structure and include all necessary elements, such as:
- Header and Directories: The first chapters are the formal introduction to your thesis main text and include the cover page, statement of authorship, definition of task, abstract with keywords, Theses, Directories such as: Table of contents, Lists of figures, tables, formula as well as symbols and abbreviations.
02. Thesis Body: This is the main part of your work.
Introduction/Motivation: The thesis begins with an introduction, in which the relevance of your subject as well as the motivation should be clearly illustrated. It ends with an overview of the research questions and the thesis’ structure.
Literature Review/Background: This chapter serves two purposes: 1) explanation of all relevant terms and aspects that are necessary to understand your thesis without reading additional literature. This is especially important for readers who have only a general background. 2) Put your thesis in an overall context through other works/approaches/solutions on the topic and show the relevance of your ideas!
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Info: Literature Review
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Materials and Methods: Describe sufficiently detailed things that you did and that you used. The reader should be able to understand how your results have been achieved. Also, you should explain why you favoured your methods/materials over another if necessary.
Results and Discussion: This chapter can be divided into two if appropriate. First, present your results in tables or diagrams and describe them. Only afterwards interpret and discuss them. It will help you to structure this section.
Outlook and Summary: Summarize what has been done and mention the essential findings without going into much detail or discussion. As an outlook you present what more could/would have been done if there had been more time. Also, potential assumptions/generalizations can be drawn here. Please note that introduction and conclusion should also make sense when reading it without the chapters in between!
03. References: All and only cited literature has to be listed in the required citation style. Best is to use a literature manager such as Zotero or Mendeley (for WORD-Users) or JabRef (for TeX-Users).
04. Appendix: All tables, figures or other supplementary data and material (detailed descriptions, definitions, extensive examples, algorithms, large tables, repetitive diagrams, etc.) has to be placed here, however, only, if referred to in the main body. Non-printable material (such as measurement data, models, etc.) should be submitted solely with your digital thesis version. Please consider also to move the whole appendix to the digital version, especially in case your appendix is very large. It should be, however, discussed with your supervisor obviously!
Defence (Oral Presentation and Discussion)
The thesis is to be defended in a public colloquium. It is required to have your written thesis submitted in print to the examination office a certain time beforehand in order to enable your supervisor and thesis committee to assess it properly. Consult with your supervisor on content and time/place of this defence, since it is an important evaluation part of your thesis. Please do not underestimate the time necessary for preparing a nice presentation! Good slides are fundamental for a successful presentation and there are several guidelines on how to do it in an appropriate and appealing presentation. For some institutes and additional poster of your results needs to be prepared. Ask your supervisor on layout requirements according to TU Dresden’s Corporate Design.
The defence starts with a presentation of your work of around 25 minutes and is follow by a discussion in which you will be confronted with questions related to your topic. The overall performance of both parts will be graded.
Master Certificate
After finishing your master thesis (submitted written thesis and defence), you have to apply for your master certificate. At the same time, you have to decide whether you want to include possible surplus modules in your certificate. Normally the university needs 4 weeks after this to hand out the certificate.
As a TUD graduate you can get additionally two certified copies of your master certificate. Take advantage of this offer, since you might need them for applications coming up and getting certified copies in hindsight can become quite expensive. You can find information about this under the following link: https://tu-dresden.de/studium/im-studium/beratung-und-service/amtliche-beglaubigungen
Extension of Thesis
An extension needs to be permitted by the examination committee and you have to file an extension request in consultation with your supervisor (!!!) at least 4 weeks before the official submission date, giving reasonable reasons and explanations. In case problems are caused by conflicts between you and your supervisor, please contact your tutors first. Very often, problems can be sorted out by mediation! Do not change the topic or leave the working group as an initial response.
Especially scholarship holders and students from exchange programs as well as Erasmus Mundus students are usually obliged to finish their thesis by the end of the 4th semester. Scholarship extensions are rather difficult to achieve, so if you see any problem coming up that might require extensions of study and scholarship periods, please contact your tutors!
Additional Remarks
Good Scientific Practice
TUD Dresden University of Technology has issued guidelines to ensure the use of Good Scientific Practice that are mandatory for all employees engaged in scientific research, young researchers as well as all students. Pleases ask your supervisor for guidance in order to work according to the university and general scientific standards!
Supervisors
Your supervisor(s) have the responsibility to guide you through the whole process, however, the work is your responsibility alone! Please apply/implement/use methods/strategies that you already know rather independently according to the supervisor’s requirements. A regular consultation with your supervisor is essential in order to update him/her continuously about the process and stage of your work or if you encounter problems. Especially the structure and procedure are to be coordinated in order to prevent misunderstanding or any incorrect interpretation of the tasks that you have been given.
Please prepare your questions specific and thought-through if possible, in order to use the time of your supervisor appropriately. Avoid repetitive questions and demands if possible!
Please contact your supervisor early enough in case of unexpected problems or things that might require an extension of the submission date. He/She will know whom to contact and what to do exactly.
Resources for Help
The Writing Centre of TU Dresden offers workshops and seminars as well as helpful resources on the following topics (exemplary):
- Orientation and Planning
- Reading and compiling academic texts and sources, Citations
- Work and Time Management
- Contact with supervisor
- Checklists
Additional there is also a specific Writing Counselling for Students, offered in cooperation with the SLUB (library).
For more information, use search engines to find helpful documentations, reports or tutorials in the internet.