1) How are project groups created?

You should find another person willing to work on the same project. The assumption is that students should work in pairs and equally share workload.

2) Do I need to have a project partner? Can I work alone on the project?

It is strongly recommended to work in pairs (more than two students are not allowed to constitute one group). A single person can undertake project work by herself/himself only in special circumstances. Still, the assessment criteria and scope of the project remains the same as for two-student groups.

3) What is the role of your supervisor? What does independent work mean?

Supervisor’s focus is to guideline your research process. Projects are supposed to be carried out by students independently, which implies that students need to perform literature search, formulate their research problem, identify suitable methods and tools to address the research question, generate results and discuss them on their own. A supervisor can only overlook this process, define a general area of students’ investigations, suggest refinements, provide formative feedback and perform assessment.

4) How do I handle meetings with supervisors?

Meeting with your supervisor is an important component of the course as it helps you to obtain direct feedback and comments on your progress. It is strongly recommended that both students always attend meetings scheduled with supervisors. Except three larger meetings that involve all student groups supervised by your supervisor (mid-Feb, March and April), it is your responsibility to contact the supervisor and schedule a meeting with her/him whenever needed.

5) What project should I undertake? How do we select a project?

A list of available project ideas can be found on the course website dedicated to a given course round. Each supervisor proposes a general area for investigations and each student group (2 students) are asked to choose one of them. Bear in mind that it is still up to you to decide how specifically your project will be defined since it is you who formulates a research question and identifies the project scope. There is naturally a possibility of choosing your own project outside the range of the supervisors’ proposals. The research problem is at the heart of your work starting from literature review, actual investigations to generating results and concluding the study outcome. Therefore choose project depending on your interests and already at this stage consider potential options for specific research questions for you to pursue within the course. Once you identify a general area and a corresponding supervisor, please email this information to the following email address: kexjobb.csc@ncslab.se.

6) Can we work on an project with an industrial partner?

It is advised not to undertake a project with an involvement of an external company. Judging from experience, such projects are more difficult to handle given the course requirement. In essence, by nature such projects are less research oriented and it may become harder for students to formulate a suitable research question.

7) What do I do within the course? What is the outcome intended for evaluation?

The essence of the course is to perform a research study within one of the proposed research areas (or your own project). Your task is to precisely define a research problem for investigation, perform a thorough literature study to identify the state-of-the-art in the field (you can come across interesting questions as well as suitable methods), implement/apply selected methods, reflect upon and discuss your results in a wider context. The end product of your work however is a report that describes all the steps mentioned above. The report should be written according to academic standards. It is the report that is the main base for evaluation (80%; please see the assessment scheme). In addition, you will have an opportunity to orally present your study at a kexjobb student conference held in the beginning of May and provide feedback as well as critical assessment of your colleagues’ reports.

8) What is the assessment scheme?

Starting from the 2017 course round, students can only be awarded Pass or Fail. Please find more details regarding the examination under Assessment.

Please pay special attention to the checklists (p.2 and 3) used in the assessment process to ensure that reports and oral presentations fulfill Pass criteria. It is strongly recommend that you get familiar with them in the beginning of the course to understand what aspects of your work are critical for the final assessment. In addition, you are supposed to submit a project specification in the beginning of the course, send in a written opinion of one of your colleagues’ work and orally comment on it at the kexjobb student conference held towards the end of the course.

It is very important that you stick to all the deadlines, participate in the conference and follow closely the schedule posted on the course website.

9) Are there any examples of kexjobb reports available?

Kexjobb reports are publicly available in DiVA (kth.diva-portal.org) so you can download a few examples from the last years’ course rounds. In addition, please find on the course website a few selected examples of high quality reports from previous years.

10) Do we get any extra training on academic writing and presentation skills within the course?

Yes, you have an opportunity to participate in two lectures with an expert in written and oral communication in Swedish. The dates are available in the schedule on the course website.

11) What is the course official language?

It is Swedish and English. However, you may not be able to communicate with all the supervisors in Swedish. In the same spirit, you can write your report and orally present your work either in English or Swedish.

12) How do I obtain extra information?

A lot of relevant information is available on the course webpage. If however you find it difficult to find an answer to your question, please turn to the following email address kexjobb.csc@ncslab.se. In addition, if you want to post a general query, please make use of the forum on the KTH Social webpage for the course (in short, course website).