Bachelor's project

The Bachelor's projects is an independent assignment worth 15 ECTS, placed in the final year of your Bachelor's programme.

In the Bachelor's project you will have the opportunity to work academically with a specific subject area of your choice. In the Bachelor's project you must, among others, be able to:

• define and describe a practical or theoretical problem that must fall within the scope of the study.
• examine, analyse and solve a specific problem using relevant academic theories and methods.
• critically assess all the sources usedand document them using references, notes and a bibliography
• argue on a sustainable scientific basisfor the choice of theory and methodology

You must have sufficient academic knowledge to define research questions that dig deeper into the subject area than previously or that combines knowledge in a novel way. You must have an understanding of which scientific methods you can use og practise choosing the most suitable approach to the problem you are examining.

Read more about the Bachelor's project requirements in the Bachelor's project course description.

The aim of your Bachelor's project
The Aim of the project is for your to demonstrate your ability to define, analyze and process scientific problems within a specific academic subject area.

Formalities
Apart from being familiar with the content requirements of your Bachelor's project, you are also expected to aquaint yourself with the formalities in connections with the Bachelor's project.  Before you start the writing process, it is e.g. good to know about the allowed length of the project. Formalities, including information about the length of the project, is found in your Bachelor's project course description.

In the process model you can see, when during your programme the Bachelor's project is placed. However, you have the option to write the Bachelor's project in both spring and autumn, if that better fits your study plan.

There are important dates you need to be aware of, when writing your Bachelor's project.

Take a look at the table below, to see the dates that apply if you write your project in the spring or in the autumn.

If you do not pass your 1. examination attempt you have the right to a meeting with your supervisor, where you can discuss what you need to focus on in your reexamination. There is no fixed rules on what you should change in your project - that is an academic assessment made by your supervisor.

You need to sign up for the reexamination yourself
If you do not pass or do not submit your project in your 1. attempt, you decide whether you would like to sign up for the following reexamination or wait until the next option, where the exam is ordinarily offered. For Bachelor's projects in the autumn the reexamination is placed in February and for Bachelor's projects in the spring the reexamination is placed in August (see the deadlines in section 3).

You have 3 examination attempts
You have 3 attempts to pass your Bachelor's project - see exam rules.

The first thing you need to do when it´s time to write your Bachelor's project, is signing up for the project, finding a topic and requesting a supervisor. The order in which you need to do this depends on whether you write your project in the spring or autumn semester.

Sign up for the Bachelor´s project at course registration
You must sign up for the Bachelor's project yourself. You sign up online through Student Self-Service when course registration is open between the 20^th and 30^th of May/November.

Apply for approval of your topic and request a supervisor
You apply for approval of your topic and request a supervisor by filling out a form, which you can find in Other forms. If you are writing your project as a group, you only need to submit one application. See deadlines in the section 'Important dates for Bachelor's projects'.

• The application deadline is November 15^th, if you write your Bachelor's project in the spring.
• The application deadline is June 1^st, if you write your Bachelor's project in the autumn.

Find your topic
To make sure you are ready to get your topic approved, it´s a good idea to find the topic for your Bachelor's project early on. You may e.g. contact your lecturers for advice and feedback on your ideas and find out what other students have written about.

Decide who you would like to supervise your project
Ask your Study Secretary where you can find an overview of possible supervisors, that you can use to find out which supervisors may be able to supervise you in the subject area of your choice.

Writing for a company or organisation? 
You can choose to write your Bachelor's project for or in collaboration with a company or organization, if you wish to do a more practically oriented assignment. E.g. you can check if there is any project positions in SDU Jobbank or ask for guidance at the Career Guidance. It can strengthen your CV to have collaborated with a company, when you apply for jobs later. 

Seek guidance from your supervisor if you would like to do a practically oriented assignment.

When you have been assigned a supervisor, you must, in collaboration with your supervisor, outline your subject area, so that it fits with the extent of a Bachelor's project.

After that you must fill out the Bachelor's project contract. In the course description you can see what attachments you need to enclose with the Bachelor's project contract. It may be a bibliography, supervision plan or project description.  

How to submit your Bachelor's project contract
You fill out and submit the Bachelor's project contract via. the form that can be found under Other forms (see the deadlines in 'Important dates for Bachelor's projects' ).

The supervisor must approve the contract. You will receive an e-mail when it has been approved.

When you have filled out and submitted your Bachelor's contract, you will start the writing process. For that, it´s a good idea to know how to approach a larger written assignment.

Make your writing process a good experience
Help is available to get the best possible writing experience. Make sure to use your supervisor and match your expectations about how the supervision will take place.

Also read about to write a good assignment.

Supervision
During your Bachelor's project there is allocated 6 hours of supervision, before you submit the project. Included in the 6 hours is the supervisory meetings themselves as well as your supervisors preparationtime before the meetings. 

How to use your supervisor
Having a good collaborative relationship with your supervisor is important to the Bachelor's project process.

You supervisor is there to help you with the areas where you need feedback and inspiration. Therefore, you gain the most from the supervision, if you continuously show him/her your incomplete ideas and products.

Always discuss with your supervisoron how to contact each other as well as how you would like the 6 hours of supervision to be distributed. Should contact be frequent (e.g. trough e-mail) or would you prefer a few longer meetings? Should your supervisor read (and therefore prepare) at lot?

Examples of how supervision can look

• 3 meeting of one hour distributed over the entire period.
• 1 meeting of one hour before approval of the topic, 2 meeting of one hour spread across the period after the contract has been written and approved.
• 2 meeting of 30 minutes before approval of the topic, 2 meetings of one hour after approval of the topic.

Before going to a supervisory meeting, you should always consider what you expect from the supervision and how you would like to prioritize the time to gain as much as possible. Take the lead and make an agenda for each meeting. 

You submit your Bachelor's project in SDU's digital platform.

The deadline for submission is:

• May 15th in the spring semester
• December 1st in the autumn semester

The deadline for assessment and grading of the Bachelor's project is 5 weeks. For Bachelor's projects with an oral defence the deadline is expanded by one week.