The Master’s Thesis Project

Attend the information meeting about the Master Thesis
The next meeting will be held at SDU on October 5th 2021 from 12:15-14:00 
Find the program here

Useful links:

• Slides from the information meeting
• Slides from the information meeting (for the IB lines)
• Slides from the information meeting (for Management Accounting)
• Slides from the information meeting (for Accounting and Finance)
• Slides from the information meeting (for Strategy and Organization)
• Slides from the information meeting (for Brand Management and Marketing Communication, Global Marketing and Consumer Culture)
• Planning and starting your thesis
• Important information from the library
• How to establish a Master's Thesis in cooporation with a company

2. Register your wish for topic/supervisor - fill in the electronic form before 1 November/1 May

Link to the electronic form

In the form, you must indicate the idea/subject area, you would like to work with and if relevant, who you would prefer as supervisor. In case you are a group of two persons, you must fill in the form together. The subject must be relevant for your profile. Read more about about topics/areas of interest of possible supervisors here - notice that the type of information given varies between profiles. For some profiles, only topics are listed, while both topics as well as supervisors and their research areas are listed.

The heads of research groups will assign supervisors based a preliminary project description provided by you. The preliminary project description should include concrete and specific ideas about the focus of the thesis, a suggestion of the methods that you expect to use to analyse problem and data, and some references to literature that you expect to use.

The form is automatically sent to the head of the relevant research groups who will assign supervisors.

Find inspiration for a topic via the link in the menu to the right.

3. Enrol in the "course" Master's thesis - See period for enrolment here

You are allowed to enrol for the Master's thesis if you have passed 60 ECTS when you start working on your Master's thesis. If you wish to complete your Master's before you passed 60 ECTS courses when you start working on the thesis: You need to apply the Study Board.

4. You get a supervisor 

Supervisors will be assigned 1 December/1 June at the latest. You will get a notification once your profile responsible has assigned a supervisor to you.

5. Get approval of the supervisor agreement - same form as for registrering for a topic - deadline 15 January/15 August

Use the same form as for number 2.

To get an approval, you need a to develop your idea/subject further into a problem statement and you also have to make a plan for the supervision. 

The problem statement must be sufficiently elaborate for an evaluation of whether the problem statement can allow you to demonstrate ability to produce knowledge at a high level. The problem must be relevant for the profile focus and it must require that you build on or extend the knowledge that you have acquired during your master studies. This means that it must be a complex problem and/or a problem requiring use of relevant literature and/or empirical methods at a high level. Further, the problem should justify the number of working hours that should be used for working on the Master's thesis.

The plan for supervision must show important milestones in your project and the supervision that you need in connection to these milestones.

Read about requirements for problem statement and plan for supervision here. For this step, you can have one meeting with the supervisor and/or a few e-mail correspondences.

When you are ready to get the approval, you must again go to the digital supervisor agreement, fill in, and submit (see under 2.). The form is then automatically sent to your supervisor and the profile responsible who must approve before the form automatically goes on to the student information point and the examination office.

6. Work on your thesis according to the plan

Read about what can you expect from your supervisor and how you can get the most out of supervision. You can find information about library resources.

Read about demands for the contents of your thesis in the goals description in the course description or read about general formalities.

Via the menu to the right and in the course description (link at the top of this page), you can read more about the guidelines for submission of your thesis.

8. Oral defense.
The oral defense takes place individually if you have prepared the project individually and otherwise in the group in which you have written the project report. Present at the defense is you (and the other group members), the internal examiner (normally your supervisor), and an external examiner. The external examiner is often from business but may also be employed at another university. The defense is open to the public, but there are seldom additional people present.

The oral defense starts by you/your group presenting your project. You can see the time set aside for this part and for the entire defense in the course description under “Examination regulations → Exam - bachelor project with oral defense → Additional Information”. After the presentation, the internal examiner will examine you in the project and related theory and methods. The external examiner typically also poses a couple of questions.

The external examiner and the examiner must be able to do an individual grading after the defense. Therefore, expect that the examiner asks specific questions to specific group members if you do the defense in a group. You can help the individual grading by ensuring that all group members actively contribute during the presentation and the examination. 

You cannot expect that there is a projector in the examination room, and/or that there is time for setting it up. Therefore, expect to do your presentation directly on your laptop. Out of precaution, bring a hard copy of the presentation for the internal examiner and the external examiner. 

The presentation should give the internal examiner and not least the external examiner an introduction to the project. Topics can be:

- State your problem and elaborate on why you found it interesting and why the problem has academic and practical relevance – including for a company that you have possibly collaborated with. 
- Shortly specify your research aim and the research method(s) employed. 
- Elaborate on your choices of theories and methods and the reason for your choices. Also, find time to touch upon other theories and methods that could have been employed and in which way it would change your thesis/results. If you have found errors (e.g. in a proof) or other shortcomings in the literature, it is fine to mention this and the consequences this has had for your project.
- Summarize shortly the most important results and discuss challenges that you have had in reaching the results and assess their strength.
- State the implications of the results. Reflect on possible recommendations and a possible need for additional research.
- If anything new of relevance for your thesis/problem statement has shown up, for example new academic or newspaper articles or feedback on a presentation in the company if you prepared the thesis in collaboration with a company) you could also put that out in your presentation, as it shows that you are motivated even after handing in the thesis.