So you are thinking about starting your thesis! This is great news, you are about to start on a fantastic journey of discovery.
Your thesis will be different from projects you have done previously in your studies. Most importantly it is not:
- a chronological report on what you have did in the 5 months
- or documentation of a tool / method / process that you have built.
The aim of the thesis
you are ultimately trying to close a gap in knowledge, this can be a very small gap.
- When to start?
- Find a supervisor
- Most students at DTU use overleaf, but you can use word if you prefer. If you use overleaf, this can be linked to a github repo, which I think could really exciting possibilities.
The final date for the report submission date…
The idea is to safety net the thesis to enable you the opportunity to explore. We do this by carefully considering the scope and that the project would still make a valuable contribution even if it did not prove itself this time. This safety net is also part of why we suggest the use of the Design Science Research Methodology, as this enables you space to reflect on your results even if you do not achieve what you set out to. Involvement with the companies Supervision You have primary access to your supervisor, but it might be good to get domain knowledge also from others.
The structure of the thesis Some people like to sketch this out in the following template – this is how I was taught to do it by …. At a seminary at University of Reading, I think it still makes a lot of sense…
This can be written at any point in the thesis, but will be the last thing to be finalised. It is a summary of the project, as such it must include simple flowing answers to the following quesitons:
- What problem have you identified and why should we care?
- What is the big potential opportunity / solution you have identified?
- What is the gap in previous approaches to address this problem wiht this opportunity?
- What is the ting you will do differently (point of departure)
- How will you do this?
- How will you know if this addresses the gap identified in the previous work - how will you test it?
- what did you find?
- What are the next steps?
Identification of an important problem This provides the narrative / story. It also scopes the study. The segments below act as a framework, you might not follow them precisely but they should help you in the early days. They provide a logic for the introduction. Problem: What is the main (big) problem you are trying to address? Urbanisation, - more people and more large cities, interact with lots of cities – reuse of existing cities.. decarbonisation – natural disasters – places that are easy to build tend to be places that flood etc… or just better buildings… Oppportunity: This could be a specific technology a new regulation, a desire for change a new persepective… Complication: slow, difficult to implement,, Ends with: the problem that you will address in your thesis. Background everything it is possible to know before you start your case studies - known knowledge. This is scary so it means you also need to use this to scope the problem.
The aim here is to identify a gap in the knowledge. Along the way, maybe in another relevant paper you can find a methodology that we can use in the thesis to investigate the problem.
how do you get to the gap of fire safety and structure..,.?
DSRM … https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284503626_A_design_science_research_methodology_for_information_systems_research
we are trying to find out what problem this is appropriate for when we need these problems is this knowledge already easy to access? if not hwat are the ‘solution objectives’ for this? does it help people to know what they need to know when they need to know it.
A way of doing research - not necessarily the things you do - it should have a test,
how many?
- maybe talking to people first (focus group) - do they need what you background says they need? do you have the right solution objectives? - make adjustments if needed.
- section first - with different disciplines
- plan - with different disciplines
- combination - what can this do?
Discussion Conclusion The conclusion is the boss, it has the answers, knows what the other chapters did, but doesn’t need to go into detail to explain that and just wants to focus on getting the main points (headlines) across – also make a quick case for future work.
From the talk – agile and fast moving teams being able to collaborate in a single space --- this is what 11034 should be doing …. No one person has all the answers …. So many fields in the AEC. Licensing question…. GPL-3 vs. MIT - no effect on early contribution, as not sure to … open vs. open-source – just the software its not to do with the data…. How to build open source communities… build the community not the .. Lets focus on speaking the same language – we are not producing data – its muck Focus on interoperable language … then use any tools you want…. Towards an open ecosystem and open – Architects and engineers don’t have the tools to support investment – so will keep paying rent every month… building the commercial financial model – with a fixed cost and super long return period… DAVID Arup – tactic – for getting familiar in open source… present code in group – repo for the team, then repo for the course… Open source for a ‘smooth on ramp’ to get talented people into the AEC… Open source – ability to contribute code in convince Most firms aren’t actively looking for new tools – prop tools convince them -- Not just the speed, we can build better buildings… what we want is the culture of open source… Learning curve to the more established projects is a big blocker The second one is that
It is possible to write theses with up to 4 students. If you are interested in writing a joint thesis, please fill in the form of the type of thesis you want to write about, and include the student number(s) of the team members.
It is possible to develop a thesis in collaboration with an external partner (i.e. a company, a research institution, an organization). Please, provide us with the name of the external partner(s) and where they are located by filling in the given field in the form.
If the nature of a thesis is confidential (i.e. technical information about the technology/product that might be used by competitors, or sensitive business information), the student can choose to make his or her thesis public or not. This can be done by the student when the final thesis is submitted to DTU Inside (the intranet of DTU).