Welcome!
This web-site drafts the guidelines for the evaluation of the final MSc projects.
The major guidelines summarized in the bullet points:
- We give 5 grades for 5 categories;
- The guidelines specify for each of these categories the grade criteria through explicit gradients;
- Each category has 4 aspects to clarify, motivate, and document the categories;
- The guidelines also specify for each aspect a gradient, which is for clarification;
- Aspects themselves are not graded;
- The project grade is the mean of the 5 category grades.
The form is filled to document the evaluation of the project :
- The grades 6 and lower, 9, and 10 must be qualitatively motivated.
How to use the guidelines:
- There are two hierarchical levels followed by details examples;
- Categories (with gradients) → Aspects (with gradients) → Examples;
- The assessors process should position their evaluation along the gradients and the examples can be use for motivation of the grade.
We believe that through these guidelines we, as a faculty, can:
increase grade uniformity,
- set a common reference: - We need a common reference, in order to prevent that different supervisors, different EE capacity groups deviate in their project evaluations significantly, while we still provide a common EE diploma. The guidelines are "soft" and require personal interpretation with respect to the specific projects in order to account for why a specific grade is given: 10, 9, 8, etc. Moreover, so we can achieve a higher level of uniformity of the grading process among the different members of EE;
- assist our young and still inexperienced colleagues - In our defense committees, there are often people with limited experience in examination, e.g. people from the industry, young staff members, who need some definitions and guidelines on how to translate their own perception on the results of the projects and the knowledge of the student into the grading scale from 1 to 10. These guidelines are meant to help.
- assist the discussions in our defense committees - The guidelines can structure the discussions in the project defense committees. The defense committee are usually composed by people with different expertise who should align on a common agreed grade. These guidelines provide a common reference for discussions and interpretations;
- meet the requirements of the external accreditation - We need the guidelines for grade definitions for the up-coming accreditation of our BSc and MSc programs. The EE faculty must comply with these recommendations and introduce the grading guidelines before the next program accreditation.
reduce workload,
- reduce the number of evaluators - The number of evaluators in a committee is effectively reduced (under the assumption that PhD students and supervisors are allowed as voting members);
- delegate supervision - The supervision of BSc and MSc can be delegated to our PhDs, while the quality of supervision will not be lowered since we have explicitly written down evaluation guidelines.
- reduce bureaucracy - The provided guidelines do not require additional paper work. These should help examiners formulate motivation for their grades. The examiners still have their freedom for interpretation;
and help our students.
- motivate - The guidelines for grade definitions will clarify the goals and learning objectives for the student in the project. The student will have a-priori estimation about her/his own levels, which will avoid big misalignments between the expectations and actual results. Moreover, the student is expected to improve the quality of her/his work in the process of meeting the guidelines.
- make the student learn and strive for perfection - In the process of preparation for the half-way check and the final defense, the student will consult the guidelines, think about these and learn from these.
- catch up with leading universities which already have such guidelines - Many leading universities have grade definitions for final MSc projects. We have already impressions for that from TU-Delft, Maastricht University, and Danish Technical University.