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Independent assignments

Independent assignments are assignments where you essentially organise the work yourself, and where you have the freedom to organise the task process as you see fit. Examples include seminar assignments, a semester project, a bachelor thesis or your Master’s thesis. 

If you are unsure whether your assignment is covered by the guidelines for data protection in independent assignments, please contact your lecturer/supervisor. 

You can write an assignment in collaboration with a company. In connection with a collaboration with a company, the company may wish to draw up a confidentiality and/or collaboration agreement (also called NDA: non-disclosure agreement). Below, you will find a number of different things to be aware of in such a situation:

SDU has a template for confidentiality agreements between companies, students and SDU. Whenever possible, you are recommended to use the template, as it takes into account the situation in which you as a student will share information you get from the company with your supervisor and will submit an assignment which will be assessed. Therefore, please suggest to the company that the SDU template is to be used. 

If the SDU template is used, SDU is a party in the agreement. If the template is used, there can be no doubt as to whether you as a student may share information with your supervisor. As an employee of SDU, the supervisor is covered by the confidentiality agreement. 

When SDU is a party in the agreement, the agreement must pass to SDU RIO to be approved. After the agreement has been approved by the lawyers at SDU RIO, the head of department must sign the confidentiality agreement. 

 
If a confidentiality agreement is entered into exclusively between you as a student and the company as the only parties, it will be a breach of the agreement if you share information with your supervisor at SDU. Therefore, remember to ensure that you can receive guidance from and discuss the project with your supervisor without any problems – this is factored into the SDU template. 
If a confidentiality agreement is entered into between only you as a student and the company, it will be a breach of the agreement if you hand in an assignment containing confidential information you have received from company. It must therefore be stated in the confidentiality agreement that you can submit your assignment to SDU and that you may be examined on the assignment. It is also important that the assignment can be passed to an examiner (internal or external) and that SDU should be able to pass the assignment to an examination complaint board in the event that you wish to complain about the assessment.

 

Last Updated 07.02.2024