Guidelines for Bachelor/Master Theses

This sheet contains the most important information for students that have been accepted for writing a thesis at our institute. If there are any open questions not answered here, please consult your supervisor.

General Information

Please read the following link of the computer science department for details regarding the registration and submission as well as the formal requirements of the thesis: Hinweise für Studierende für Abschlussarbeiten. Please also look at the Formvorgaben für Abschlussarbeiten. Read the requirements of your examination regulations for theses and keep them in mind. While typically these requirements should already be covered by the "Hinweise für Studierende für Abschlussarbeiten" page, double check to make sure that this is the case. The university also offers a general FAQ for students writing a thesis. Note that this FAQ provides content for supervisors and examinors as well which you do not have to read.

Below, you find additional information about specifics at our institute. We do not repeat information from the links above.

Formal Procedure

  • Registration:
    • Our secretary needs some data from you to prepare the thesis contract. Please send, as early as possible, the following data via email to our secretary: address, phone number, e-mail address, matrikelnummer, and course of study
    • For the contract, we also need a short summary of your topic/task and a working title for the thesis (the title must be both in English and German. It can still be changed while working on the thesis). Your supervisor might ask you to prepare a first draft of the title and the summary which will then be edited.
    • Once the contract has been prepared, you can schedule a meeting with our secretary for formally registering the thesis. You need to bring the prepared registration form (please refer to https://www.student.uni-stuttgart.de/pruefungsorganisation/formulare/#id-959532c6). In case you do not know your working title for the field "Thema", please ask your supervisor. Our secretary will then inform you about the next steps.
  • While working on the thesis:
    • If you have any questions (e.g., regarding the structure and contents of the thesis) or you encounter problems that you cannot solve yourself, contact your supervisor. We will usually not initiate meetings ourselves; instead, students are responsible for scheduling meetings as they need them. We encourage you to get feedback from your supervisor on a regular basis.
  • Submission:
    • You are required to submit 2 copies of your thesis (unless specified otherwise in the contract) plus one separate copy of the title page.
    • Please contact our secretary in order to make an appointment for the submission of your thesis.
    • Digital Submission: Send your final thesis (as PDF) as well as the required abstract txt file(s) to your supervisor at the University and our secretary by email. Please note that the digital version must be identical to the printed copies.
    • If your thesis includes source code or other digital artifacts, please ask you supervisor at the University on whether and how to submit those.
    • If you wrote your thesis with a company: Make sure that your thesis and other digital artifacts are approved for submission by the company. If in doubt: Talk to your advisor at the company.
  • After the submission:
    • Depending on your course of study, you might have to give a presentation that presents/summarizes your thesis (see below).
    • Contact your supervisor after the submission of the thesis to schedule the presentation. You should also tell him your course of study such that an appropriate length of the presentation can be determined.

Additional Information for Theses Written at an External Company

If you are writing your thesis at an external company, please keep the following additional details in mind:

  • Registration:
    • We need some additional information about the external company that advises your thesis. Please send the name of the company, the address of the company, and contactinformation of your advisor at the company (name, e-mail address, phone number) to your supervisor at our institute.
    • The short summary of your topic/task and a working title for the thesis (see above) generally are proposed by the external company and then approved by our institute. Please forward this information as early as possible to your supervisor at our institute.
    • When signing your contract with us, we will ask you whether your thesis can be published after the submission. Please verify beforehand whether your company allows for publication of the thesis.
    • Please note that if the company asks for a non-disclosure agreement,
      this must be set up between the company and the institute (or
      between you, the institute and the company; but never just between you
      and the company).
  • While working on the thesis:
    • You have an advisor at the external company and a supervisor at our institute. The advisor typically is your first point of contact in case of problems. The supervisor is your contact for administrative and examination related questions. This includes, for example, questions regarding the format and content of your thesis, the structure and table of content, citation style, ... .

Form of the Thesis

  • You have to write your thesis in LaTeX using the template from https://github.com/latextemplates/scientific-thesis-template.1)
  • Keep the form requirements from the computer science department in mind (see link at the top). The template should already meet those by default.
  • There is no fixed page count or limit. The number of pages strongly depends on the specific topic of the thesis.
  • You can write the thesis in German or in English. If you write in German, do not translate technical terms; use the English version for those.
  • Use a numerical-only bibliography style, e.g., numeric (see bibstyle and citestyle in config.tex).

 

1)Have a look at the documentation before using it – the template has a lot of options.

Presentation After the Submission

  • In most cases, the length of the presentation is 30 minutes. After your presentation the audience will ask some questions about your thesis.
  • The presentation is not graded separately, but will influence the final grade of the thesis.
  • There is no mandatory template for presentation slides.
  • Please follow the advice for good presentations from our seminars. If you did not attend one of our seminars, ask your supervisor.
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