Postgraduate Orientation Seminar

1
Postgraduate Orientation Seminar

• Dr. Christopher Staff
• Chair, Faculty Postgraduate Subcommittee
• Faculty of ICT

2
Overview

• Introductions
• Whats expected of a research degree?
• Significant Information from Regulations
• Maintaining contact with your supervisor
• What to do if you dont get on with your
  supervisor
• What to do if you have problems with your
  research
• Access to Digital Libraries
• Workshop in ICT
• Other resources

3
Introductions

• Who are you?
• Whos your supervisor?
• Whats your area of research?

4
Expectations

• MSc/MPhil/PhD have slightly different
  expectations
• All require originality
• PhD in addition, requires significance
• But remember Ideas do not have to be correct in
  order to be good its only necessary that, if
  they do fail, they do so in an interesting way -
  Robert Rosen

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Regulations - MSc

• 52. (1) Dissertations presented for a Masters
  Degree shall (a) be work of an advanced or
  original nature in the area of study (b)
  satisfy the Board of Examiners as regards content
  and presentation and (c) fulfil the
  requirements as provided by relevant bye-laws and
  guidelines as regards format and length.
  
• (2) Prior to submission, the student shall seek
  the written permission of the Principal
  Supervisor, which shall be attached to the
  thesis, provided that a student may opt to submit
  his thesis notwithstanding any negative advice
  from the Principal Supervisor.
  
• (3) No dissertation shall be accepted which is
  identical in substance to a document already
  submitted for a degree in this or any other
  university or to any other published material.
  No students shall, however, be precluded from
  incorporating such previous work as may be
  necessary to the presentation and fuller
  understanding of their exposition, provided that
  the nature and extent of such incorporation are
  clearly indicated in the dissertation itself.

6
Regulations - MSc

• 53. (1) After examining the dissertation, the
  Board of Examiners may approve it unconditionally
  or subject to correction of minor errors to the
  satisfaction of the Principal Supervisor and
  admit the student to an oral examination.
  
• (2) If the Board of Examiners is not satisfied
  with the quality of the dissertation, it shall
  not admit the student to an oral examination and
  shall either (a) refer the dissertation back to
  the student for major revision and resubmission
  within six months in revised form to the
  satisfaction of the Board of Examiners or (b)
  not grant permission to resubmit and state that
  the degree be not awarded.
  
• (3) Students who fail to satisfy the Board of
  Examiners in the oral examination may be given
  permission to re-submit the dissertation after
  making changes as necessary and be re-examined
  orally within a period of six months. Such
  permission shall be granted once only.

7
Regulations - MSc

• 55. (1) Students registered for a Masters
  degree by research may be required to support the
  Facultys teaching activities and/or provide
  laboratory demonstration service for up to a
  maximum of 100 hours a year, provided that these
  duties do not conflict with their research work
  and that students may be exempted from this
  requirement for a good and valid reason.

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Regulations - MSc

• Dissertation - 84 ECTS
• Study-unit - 6 ECTS
• Length of dissertation - 45,000 words
• Must pass both study-units to be awarded degree

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Regulations - MPhil/PhD

• You are initially registered to MPhil
• You will be eligible to upgrade to PhD after 12
  months (FT) or 24 months (PT), following
  presentation of work completed and to be done to
  a board

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Regulations - MPhil/PhD

• 7. Further to regulation 9 of the Regulations,
  the student shall submit a written application
  requesting the transfer to the Ph.D. degree,
  together with a summary of the work carried out
  by him/her, preferably in the form of a technical
  report. The Board would give favourable
  consideration to work published or accepted for
  publication in refereed technical journals and
  conferences. The report shall also include a
  research proposal for the Ph.D. degree which
  shall indicate clearly the research questions in
  the field to be addressed, the hypotheses to be
  tested, and the methodology to be adopted in
  dealing with the research issues. Where
  necessary, the student may be required to
  demonstrate competence in those skills required
  by the nature of the investigation.

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Regulations - MPhil/PhD

• Thesis length
• MPhil 50,000 words
• PhD 60,000 words

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Regulations - MPhil/PhD

• 41. (1) The examination of doctoral theses
  shall take place in two stages (a) submission
  by the student and preliminary assessment by the
  Board of Examiners and (b) oral defence of the
  thesis.
• (2) In assessing a thesis, the Board of
  Examiners shall require (a) evidence that it
  represents a significant contribution to
  knowledge in a particular field of study (b)
  evidence of originality (c) evidence of the
  ability of the student to relate the subject
  matter of the thesis to the existing body of
  knowledge (d) evidence of the ability of the
  student to apply research methods appropriate to
  the subject and (e) a satisfactory level of
  literary presentation.

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You and your supervisor

• It is your responsibility to keep in touch with
  your supervisor
• You should make arrangements to meet as often as
  you and your supervisor require, at a time agreed
  between you
• Dont wait for next meeting if you have a
  problem!
• Supervisor will normally try to contact you if
  you havent been in touch for a while

14
Regulations

• Postgraduate Harmonised Regulations (Masters)
• MSc Bye-Laws
• Doctor of Philosophy Regulations
• MPhil/PhD Bye-Laws

15
You and your supervisor

• MSc students have Panel of Supervision that meets
  at least twice per year
• MPhil/PhD students have Progress Report once per
  year

16
You and your supervisor

• What to do if you dont get on with your
  supervisor
• Talk to supervisor
• Talk to Head of Department
• Talk to me, or your departmental rep on the PG
  subcommittee
• Talk to Faculty Officer/s
• Talk to Student Advisory Services

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You and your research

• We hope that youll have an event-free research
  experience
• But do expect the unexpected - things can and
  usually do happen to throw your research off the
  rails for a while
• Sometimes, this may take a long time to resolve
• Its important we know early!

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Access to Digital Libraries

• University has agreements with ACM, IEEE,
  Springer-Verlag
• You normally need to create an account or
  register (free) with the DL provider
• Currently, you need to access the DLs from the
  campus network

19
Workshop in ICT

• National conference on ICT organised by Faculty
  of ICT
• November 17-18
• http//www.um.edu.mt/ict/events/wict

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Other Resources

• Plagiarism and How to Avoid it
• How to Write a Literature Review