Criteria for thesis supervisors

Bachelor and Master theses may be supervised by:

• MU academic and professional staff with a Ph.D. degree or equivalent,
• PhD students of FI MU after passing the state examination and defending their theses,
• graduates of doctoral studies at FI MU who have gained experience in supervising theses at FI MU (at least 3 successfully defended theses as a supervisor or consultant)

Bachelor theses may additionally be supervised by:

• FI MU doctoral students

In addition to the above, students may qualify to supervise bachelor's and master's theses with the approval of the Vice-Dean for Undergraduate Studies if they meet any of the following criteria:

• Academic and professional staff of universities and research institutes with a Ph.D. degree or equivalent,
• MU doctoral students,
• professional staff with a master's degree and at least 5 years of experience (after obtaining a master's degree) in computer science or a related field, who have gained experience in supervising theses at FI MU (at least 3 successfully defended theses as a supervisor or consultant)

Criteria for thesis opponents

Opponents of bachelor's and master's theses are proposed by the supervisors of these theses and approved by the head of the department. Additional criteria may be attached to the approval (e.g. that at least one of the supervisor-opponent pair is an academic staff member of FI MU). In particular, bachelor and master theses may be opposed by:

• All those who can supervise bachelor and master theses,
• academic and professional staff of universities and research institutes with a Ph.D. degree or equivalent,
• doctoral students of MU,
• professional staff with a master's degree and at least 5 years of experience in computer science or a related field

Duties of the thesis supervisor

The supervisor must be familiar with the formal requirements for bachelor's and master's theses, and ideally should be familiar with the complete guidelines for students.

The thesis supervisor guarantees the thesis assignment, which is reviewed and approved by the field supervisor. Assignment Requirements:

• The thesis assignment must be adequately challenging in terms of professionalism for the degree being completed,
• the assignment must define specific objectives, the fulfilment of which can be evaluated by the committee,
• the assignment must be formally correct, clearly formulated and understandable not only for experts in the specific field (e.g. the use of abbreviations is not desirable).

The official assignment is filled in by the thesis supervisor in the IS MU Final Thesis Topics Schedule. The student and the thesis supervisor are obliged to confirm the topic in IS MU within the deadlines set by the final study schedule for Bachelor's or Master's studies. Subsequently, the official assignment is approved by the guarantors of the fields of study.

After the approval of the official assignments, the supervisor proposes the thesis opponent(s). The thesis opponent(s) are appointed by the head of the department on the basis of the proposal.

Theses are by law public. If the thesis or part of it cannot be made public immediately (e.g. due to the filing of a patent), the law allows the thesis to be hidden for a maximum of 3 years. At the Faculty of Computer Science, it is not infrequent that theses are solved in cooperation with commercial companies that have problems with the publication of some parts of the thesis. Potential conflicts should be resolved during the selection of the topic and well discussed during the development of the thesis assignment.

Full credit in the SBAPR/SDIPR course is a prerequisite for acceptance of the thesis.

Immediately after the submission of the thesis, the supervisor checks the thesis in the IS, checking whether the student has also submitted electronic attachments and whether the thesis is not plagiarized (using IS tools).

Assessments

The submitted thesis is reviewed by the supervisor and at least one independent consultant who has not been involved in the supervision of the thesis. The opinion of the consultant may be included as part of the supervisor's review. The text template for the preparation of the thesis report can be obtained here.

The creation, submission, publication and evaluation of final (bachelor and master) theses are regulated and specified in:

• Dean's Directive No. 2/2024 Creation, submission and evaluation of final (bachelor's and master's) theses

FI assessments have a loose structure, which means that the assessment can always be tailored to be relevant to the specific type of thesis. The report must be of high quality in terms of content and form. For students, the assessments are an important feedback on their usually most extensive project. The testimonials are also freely available afterwards, and by the quality of the testimonial you are doing a calling card for yourself and the Faculty of Computer Science. Also pay attention to the correctness of the language of the testimonial.

As part of the thesis review, focus on the following:

• Evaluating the quality of the work, including, for example, checking the functionality of the implementation and looking at the electronic attachments (especially the source code),
• assessing the quality of the text, specifically the content, overall consistency of the work, use of references, quality of citations, linguistic accuracy, typographical and graphic design.

It is also necessary to pay attention to plagiarism checking, not only by automatic checking in the IS, but also by "feel". Unfortunately, it happens that students take texts or images from the Internet without citing the source or without proper explicit citation. Such passages are usually relatively easy to identify, for example by an obvious change in language style from the rest of the text. In such cases, you should detect plagiarism.

The report must include: the title of the work, the student's name, the grade, the date of the report, and a description of whether it is the report of the opponent or the supervisor.

The report is also expected to:

• A brief summary of the topic of the thesis and its results (it is not necessary to repeat information given in the assignment or in the thesis itself),
• a verbal commentary on each aspect of the thesis, it is appropriate to mention both the strengths and weaknesses,
• specific comments from which the student can learn,
• if the proposed assessment is excellent and you consider the thesis to be particularly outstanding, you may nominate the thesis for the Dean's Prize,
• or questions for the defence.

Assessments for Bachelor's (or Master's) theses must be deposited in the IS at least one week before the start of the Bachelor's (or Master's) state examinations.

Defence

The thesis defence is part of the final state examination and the participation of the thesis supervisor and the opponent is expected. If you are unable to attend the thesis defence as a supervisor or opponent, please always send an apology in advance to the chair of the relevant examination committee.

Supervisors and opponents are asked to send in advance to the Vice Dean for Undergraduate and Master's Studies the dates when they are unavailable during the state examinations (e.g. due to business travel), and every effort is made to schedule all students' state examinations so that their supervisors and opponents can attend the defense.