Students who have earned all the programme credits may present their Master's Final Project before a university examination board. Students shall have to present a comprehensive professional informatics engineering project covering all the competences acquired during learning.
The Programme Academic Committee shall annually compile, through its Master's Final Project Commission, a list of master's final projects and assigned supervisors.
For Option A Master's Final Projects:
Before the end of the enrolment period students shall have to complete a web form stating their preferences for the projects on offer.
For Option B Master's Final Projects:
Start of the process: Statement of interest in Option B. In advance of enrolment, any students opting to perform their Master's Final Project according to Option B should send an email to master.ii@fi.upm.es stating their intent and attaching their Master's Final Project proposal, detailing the project workload, which should account for the 30 ECTS credits in:
*May for performance in the coming first semester (as of September)
*November for performance in the coming second semester (as of February).
Acceptance of Option B
The Master's Final Project Commission shall meet in advance of the enrolment period to approve or reject the proposals submitted by students opting for Option B and shall decide whether or not they are suitable with respect to the Master's Final Project goals, the learning outcomes described in the curriculum report and the Master's Final Project workload.
Students opting for Option B shall have to enrol for two subjects simultaneously: Practicum and Master's Final Project. The final grade of both subjects shall be the same and shall be equivalent to the overall grade awarded in the Master's Final Project assessment.
Each student's final grade shall be based on the three submissions and the respective presentation and public defence:
1 point- Work Plan (10% of final grade),
1 point - Interim Report (10% of final grade)
6 points - Project and Final Report (60% of final grade)
2 points - Presentation and Defence (20% of final grade).
General
Interested academic staff members may put forward projects during the period set aside for this purpose by the Master's Final Project Commission.
Each department and departmental section shall have to guarantee a big enough offer of projects to cover the demand of students enrolling in the subject. If the original offer submitted on a voluntary basis is not 20% higher than demand (1.2 * number of students enrolled in the subject in the same semester of the previous year), any department and departmental section that has fallen short of its quota shall be obliged offer additional projects. This quota is calculated as follows: Dept. quota = Next whole number [(1.2 * no. of students enrolled in the subject in the same semester of the preivous year * (no. of full-time academic staff assigned to dept. / total no. of full-time academic staff)) - no. of projects proposed by dept. in original offer)]. (Two part-time academic staff shall compute as one full-time academic staff member). The additional offer by departments and departmental sections shall be submitted to the Master's Final Project Commission no later than one week before the start of the semester enrolment period. The departments and departmental sections shall have a margin of at least two weeks to draw up this offering after having been requested to do so by the chairperson of the Master's Final Project Commission.
Proposal constraints
Each proposal shall have no more than one supervisor (co-supervision is not allowed).
Each proposal shall be sized to be performed by one student within one semester and shall require a total planned workload of 486 working hours (27 hours/ECTS * 18 ECTS) for Option A or 810 hours (27 hours/ECTS * 30 ECTS) for Option B.
Proposal structure
Supervisor's name and project title
Outline
List of specific project goals
Breakdown of total project workload in hours at the detail level of each work phase or task (for example, state-of-the-art research, analysis, design, implementation, testing, coordination, project report writing, project presentation and defence preparation etc.).
List of background knowledge recommended for performing the project.
In the event of exclusive offers for a particular student, the student's enrolment number.
Review of proposals
The Master's Final Project Commission shall meet at least once no later than two weeks before the start of the semester enrolment period in order to review the proposals submitted by the academic staff.
During this review, the Master's Final Project Commission shall assess the different submitted proposals and shall decide which are appropiate (and are therefore approved) and which need to be reformulated following the Commission's recommendations.
Any proposals that fail to pass a second review round may be definitively turned down and notice of the grounds for rejection of the proposal shall be served to the proponent.
Publication of proposals
The Master's Final Project coordinator shall publish a list of projects approved by the commission before the start of the enrolment period.
Choice of projects by students
Before choosing projects, students are advised to contact and meet with the proponents of the proposed projects in which they are most interested.
Similarly, students are advised to contact any academic staff working on topics that are related to their interests and encourage them to submit project proposals.
Finally, any students who intend to perform their Master's Final Project according to Option B shall have to notify their supervisor in order to adapt the Master's Final Project offer to the 30 ECTS workload.
Students have to complete a web form stating their preferences for jobs offered before the end of the enrolment period.
Project assignment
The Master's Final Project coordinator shall provisionally assign students to their first project choice.
Supervisors with more than one student provisionally assigned to their proposals shall have one working day to decide which of these students to admit. Non-admitted students shall be assigned to their second choice.
This process shall be repeated until all students have been assigned to a project or all the projects selected by students have already been assigned.
If necessary, the Master's Final Project coordinator shall contact any students who are without a project to assign them one of the available projects in accordance, whenever possible, with their preferences.
Publication of assignments
At the end of the project assignment process, the Master's Final Project Commission shall report to the Programme Academic Committee and publish, in the first week of the semester, the final list of project assignments so that the enrolled students can contact their supervisor and set to work.
There are three submissions:
It is a requirement that students should upload all three submissions by the deadline in order to pass the subject. Submissions shall be made through the School of Computer Engineering's virtual classroom (Moodle) and shall be accessible (visible) to all subject academic staff.
Late submissions shall not be admitted unless the Master's Final Project Commission's finds that there is a justified reason.
All students enrolled in the subject are subject to the above submissions.
Work plan
The students' first job will be to write the description of the project to be performed acording to the instructions received from their supervisor during the first working meetings.
This document should specify in more detail the goals that each student is to achieve and the project planning. The document should be at most four pages long and shall be divided into four sections:
Submission assessment recommendation: the assessment of each of the first three sections of the document shall be worth 30%, and overal presentation shall be worth 10%.
Interim report
In the second submission, the student will have to submit an interim document describing the work performed so far, highlighting any changes that they have had to make to the work plan and providing a preliminary version of some sections of the final report. The document must be divided into the following sections:
Summary of the work performed
Explanation and justification of changes to the work plan
*Revision of the list of project goals
*Revision of the list of tasks
*Revision of the Gantt diagram
Draft table of contents and first two chapters of the final report, including citations and references (for example, report Introduction and Related Work.
Submission assessment recommendation: the assessment of sections 1 and 2 of the document shall be worth 10%, the draft shall be worth 70%, and overall presentation shall be worth 10%.
Students shall be responsible for the online submission of the final project report, which they shall have completed following their supervisor's instructions adhering to the structure and other requirements established by the Programme Academic Committee for this final report at the request of the Master's Final Project Commission.
This final report is divided into the following sections:
Students shall submit to the Postgraduate Centre:
Digital copy of the Master's Final Project
Letter of consent to the online edition and publication of the thesis in the UPM repository (Digital Archive) or, failing this, if you do not wish to give your consent, a printed copy of the project. The School of Computer Engineering's Publications Service provides a photocopying service for printed projects.
In order to pass the subject, students who have submitted the final report shall have to present and defend their project at a public hearing before a university examination board composed of:
In properly justified cases, the examination board members might put forward other members of staff to stand in for them.
The project defence shall focus on the motivations, goals, theoretical groundwork, processes, results and conclusions.
Students shall have a maximum of 15 minutes to present and defend their project, which will be followed by a 10-minute question and answer session.
The grade shall be awarded by majority decision of the board members including a reasoned report by each of the board members. The Master's Final Project Commission shall award the honours distinction to the maximum permitted number of candidates proposed for this distinction by the respective examination boards according to the Assessment policy. It shall use the reasoned report issued by the examination boards in its deliberations. Candidates may only be put forward for the honours distinction by unanimous decision of the examination board.
Students shall upload their presentation in PDF format to the subject electronic repository on the day before the public presentation.
Any students who have a justified reason (speech difficulty, diction problems, anxiety neurosis, agoraphobia, etc.) to consider that they should not be required to present their project under the same conditions as their peers should make this known to the Master's Final Project Commission no later than one month prior to the appointed date for the defence so that it may be taken into account and treated as a special case with respect to the regulations.
The UPM's library shall have custody of all the defended final reports submitted as either printed or digital reports. The examination board may propose the publication of final reports of outstanding quality in the UPM's Digital Archive, which shall go ahead subject to the approval of the Master's Final Project Commission.
