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Experience suggests that a minimum of four weeks is required to write a high-quality thesis. Therefore, it's crucial to prepare well ahead of time to avoid a last-minute rush. Outstanding research is of little value if not well-articulated in writing. Examiners, unfamiliar with you or your daily work, will judge your thesis solely on its written text and the interpretation of results. It is advisable to allocate ample time to craft a thesis or project report.
- It is good idea to start planning of thesis writing as early possible, two month before the submission date. You can use the project plan template for thesis writing indicating the chapter wise plan and milestones.
- Define important milestones related to writing contents in the thesis. Think about the contents and their organization. Then, set milestones for different chapters of the thesis.
- You may also like to write some chapters (draft) along with your work, for example, Introduction and literature review chapters.
- Progressive writing is often a better strategy than attempting to write everything at once.
- While there's no strict page limit, aim to write concisely and avoid redundancy. This approach not only saves you time in writing but also makes for a more efficient read for the examiner.
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It is highly recommended to write project report and master's thesis in LaTeX. We have created a suitable template, which is customized for your need and 'ready to use'. Moreover, the template broadly follow the recommendations from NTNU Grafisk senter therefore, you do not have worry about the formatting. The template provides all essential information related to LaTeX writing and in-built packages. To use this template, you need an user account in Overleaf. NTNU has subscription to the Overleaf therefore use NTNU's email and password (SSO login) to obtain free access. We regularly update the template as soon as we find an error or suggestions. Read instructions and help provided in the template carefully. This template provides help only on LaTeX writing.
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Cover page
The front and back cover pages are already included in the template for both project report and master's thesis. The cover pages broadly follow the guideline or example provided by Grafisk senter. The cover pages will be updated depending on document class selection,
\documentclass[project,final]{ntnuthesis}
\documentclass[msc,final]{ntnuthesis}
Preface
Recommended length: Half page
Preface is combination of formal and informal text, and summarizes your journey, personal and professional as well as contribution of others. Preface also describes how the chapters are organized, I mean flow of chapters. This will help reader on what to expect. Preface is in fact, blend among acknowledgment, abstract and conclusion. Preface is an optional hence, if you do not have any specific to write, you can skip this chapter.
Abstract
Recommended length: 1 page
The main purpose of an abstract is to contextualize and describe the work in a concise and easily understood manner. The abstract should not contain highly technical and scientific phrases. Potential reader from other engineering background can understand your work. Read through the entire thesis and distill main points or a short summary. Sentence connectivity and clarity in writing are extremely important in the abstract. Clarity is achieved by providing information in a predictable order (something like storyline).
Successful abstracts therefore are composed into following order.
- General and specific background (around 75 words). Introduce the area of science that you will be speaking about and the state of knowledge in that area. Start broad in the general background, then narrow down to the relevant topic. Do not add much jargon or description.
- Knowledge Gap (around1 75 words). Now that you’ve stated what is already known, state what is not known. What specific question or challenge is your work attempting to answer? The new knowledge in your work.
- Method (around 100 words). State your general experimental or numerical approach, methodology to answer the question which you just posed in the ``Knowledge Gap" section.
- Main results outcome (around 150 words). Provide a high-level description of your most important results, and discuss in 4-5 lines. This is important to show how credible work is and what are the results.
- Conclusion (around 100 words). Describe how your findings influence our understanding of the field and/or their implications for future studies. What new knowledge you are adding to the existing state-of-the-art.
Consolidate the above points into 2 -- 4 paragraphs. Remember that the sentences must be linked to each other, similar to a story line. The examiner will like to read the abstract and encouraged to read the thesis.
Acknowledgement
Recommended length: 1 page
Acknowledgement section is placed after the abstract. In acknowledgement, you recognize and express gratitude to all those who contributed and supported you during your work. The acknowledgment is absolutely your choice and language. Please note that the acknowledgment is not part of evaluation.
First of all prepare a list of people to include in the acknowledgment. It is a good idea to thank the administrative staff, who helped you to sort out some problems during your study. Remember that the people, who do not know you personally, may read this part, so you should neither be too personal nor reveal your personal detail.
Recommendations
- If you are writing thesis in the Waterpower Laboratory, and use space, computers, etc., it is nice to acknowledge the laboratory. You can copy this phrase and put as part of the acknowledgement: Research work presented in here is conducted in the Waterpower Laboratory. The laboratory combines more than 100 years of experience in research and education in Norway. It has played leading roles for the development of global hydropower, including efficient designs and implementation of turbines.
- When you are conducting experiments in the laboratory and took the help from the technicians, include this phrase: I am thankful to the laboratory engineer and the technicians for help to prepare the test rig and completing the measurements. I acknowledge their contributions.
- When you are conducting numerical simulations using supercomputer, i.e., Idun, include this phrase: Numerical simulations presented here are conducted using IDUN computing cluster. The Idun cluster is a project between NTNU’s faculties and the IT division that aims at providing a high-availability and professionally administrated compute platform for NTNU researchers.
Disclaimer
This chapter is included in 2024 due to increased use AI and avoid any plagiarism related issues. Write your disclaimer, if any. This can be related to the project work data usage, use of chatGPT/AI or related to joint thesis work, limited resourced to complete the thesis work, or something you would like the examiners should know during the thesis evaluation. Example of the text is available in the template.