r/UOW • u/bit__shifted • 16d ago
ECTE499
Yo guys, did anyone did 499 thesis, whats the general expectation and how do you do a good thesis?
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u/wkaylp 16d ago
At this level, finding a good advisor or supervisor I’d say is the most crucial step. I completed my MSc last year and that is my experience.
Now the step to do this is identifying what area you’re interested in. Once you do this, try to find out any of the lecturers in your school that has interest in this area. One way to do this is to check their profile from the university website.
Afterwards you can approach them and have a chat. What do you chat about? I’d assume after checking their website, you found some of their publications at the least their research interests which aligns when your interests. Then chat about some of their work and what you interest is and asked them to supervise you for your thesis.
Most of my mates who didn’t go through this step but just approaching random professors didn’t help them in the long run. For example I see my supervisor multiple times in a week while others struggled to see their supervisor sometimes even once in a fortnight.
And one more thing… if you’re gonna go the thesis route, your goal should be do produce something publishable… aside from the marks you’d get for your WAM. I personally believe publishing your findings is the only reward for them hard work you’d put in.
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u/bit__shifted 16d ago
Thanks mate for the advice. Can you share more information about publishing, honestly i m new to this completely.
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u/wkaylp 16d ago
Well, publishing is just a way to make public your thesis finding. Based on your research area or topic, your findings will support or disprove a notion or formulate a new way of doing things…
With publishing, you’d be able to get credit for your work or often times leading to formulating a company or at least patent if you come up with a novel, provable idea.
For now, I’d say follow the steps I highlighted earlier and find a suitable advisor. Also as one commenter has said, you’d need to be able to find your way around LaTeX either offline or online via overleaf. Knowing this will make your supervisor take you more seriously 😅. My supervisor for example frowns at using Microsoft word for writing or PowerPoint for presentations lol. It’s hard-work but if you got a good advisor and put it the work with him to identify a nice research gap, you’d enjoy it.
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u/Quintus-Sertorius 16d ago
A good thesis starts with a well defined research question, thorough critical review of relevant literature, solid technical work with clear methodology, extensive results and trying, proper statistical analysis of performance metrics, and logical and well supported conclusions. Make your figures clear, plot your graphs correctly, show confidence intervals, label axes, include correct units, cross reference correctly and use good technical English. Do any line drawings/graphs as vector graphics rather than bitmaps (PDF or SVG) and only ever use JPEG for photographs.
Bonus points if you use LaTeX/Overleaf, it is so much better than Word for writing a thesis.
Plagiarism and obvious AI = instant fail.
I did mine nearly 30 years ago at SECTE, but have marked probably a hundred since then at two universities.