MS Thesis Advising Quickstart
Expectations and a schedule to plan toward
These are introductory notes for new and potential thesis advisees in the Field Robotics Lab. They exist to set expectations on both sides and to give you a schedule you can plan against. Explicit expectations make the work more efficient and more productive.
What you are committing to
To do a high-quality thesis requires that you commit to doing a thesis in FRL five quarters prior to your graduation.
Thesis research in FRL takes more time than the four thesis blocks allocated in your course matrix. The table below estimates the commitment in units of class blocks — roughly double the time formally allocated.
| Quarter | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Background — problem statement, lit review, proposal | Foundation — tools, skills, prototyping | Execution — development, experiment | Documentation — document, draft | Graduation — administration, revision |
| Time | 1 course overload | 1 thesis block + 1 course overload | 1 thesis block + 1 course overload | 2 thesis blocks | 1 thesis block (1 directed study) |
Course work and research work will often compete for your time. Courses should not be neglected for your research, but neither should your research be neglected for coursework. There will be times when you need to prioritize progress on your research over perfecting work for your courses.
NPS offers a number of additional educational opportunities — the TSSE program, FE/PE exam preparation, and others. In my experience, taking on these additional commitments should be carefully considered when planning your time.
Generic thesis outline
For the purposes of this discussion, an NPS MS thesis consists of these chapters. This is an approximation, not a rule.
- Introduction — motivation, problem statement, contributions.
- Literature Review — background, closely related work.
- Approach — background, procedures, methods, models, experimental setup.
- Results and Analysis — the majority of the technical contribution.
- Conclusion — discussion, summary referring back to the problem statement and contributions, and future work.
The schedule
Typical deliverables by quarter follow. Your specific timeline will be based on your topic, but will likely vary only slightly.
Quarter 4: Background
Develop a specific thesis question and investigate the research literature to describe how your topic fits within the context of the current literature.
Mid-quarter:
- Second Draft, thesis proposal
- Outline of Literature Review chapter
End of quarter:
- Final Draft, thesis proposal, including specific anticipated contributions
- First Draft, Literature Review chapter, with document database and automated cross-references
- Detailed Outline of Introduction
Quarter 3: Foundation
Acquire the knowledge and skills required to execute your approach. This may include reproducing previous results from the literature, learning new tools, or setting up new systems — vehicles, sensors, and so on.
Beginning of quarter:
- Full Outline of Approach chapter
Mid-quarter:
- First Draft of Introduction and Approach chapters
End of quarter:
- Second Draft of Introduction and Approach chapters
Quarter 2: Execution
The culmination of the previous two quarters, and where the “doing” of the thesis work happens. By the end of the quarter you should have answered your thesis question.
Beginning of quarter:
- Full Outline of Results and Analysis chapter
End of quarter:
- 90% of thesis research complete
- Detailed Outline of Results and Analysis chapter
Quarter 1: Documentation
The emphasis shifts from doing the research to documenting the results. You begin by drafting the Results and Analysis chapter; assembling that material usually reveals additional work — experiments, simulations — needed to finalize the results. This is also when you begin working with the document as a whole rather than individual chapters.
Mid-quarter:
- First Draft of Results and Analysis chapter
- Detailed Outline of Conclusion chapter
End of quarter:
- Second Draft of Results and Analysis chapter
- First Draft of Conclusion chapter and Abstract
- First Draft of complete thesis
Quarter 0: Graduation
This quarter guides your thesis through the revision and acceptance process.
| Week | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2 | Submit first three chapters to thesis processing |
| 3 | Submit Second Draft of complete thesis to your advisor |
| 6 | Submit Third Draft to second reader |
| 8 | Submit Final Draft to the department (Chair and Program Officer) |
| 9 | Submission to thesis processing |
| 11 | Graduation |
Writing
I provide notes and pointers to resources to help you prepare thesis documents, but I do not proofread your documents. When writing professional research documents — proposal, papers, thesis — you should:
- Make sure you are prepared, by consulting the writing resources and doing whatever preparation you need in order to write effectively.
- Prepare a First Draft.
- Prepare a Second Draft by revising the document at least once, having at least one external person review it (a classmate, the graduate writing center), and revising again based on that review.
Stages of a document
I use these terms consistently when planning, so that we mean the same thing by them:
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| Outline | Headings, subheadings, and subsubheadings only. |
| Full Outline | Outline plus a description of each element — notes, bullet lists. |
| Detailed Outline | Full Outline plus key figures, tables, and equations, or sketches of what we expect them to look like. Includes bullet lists of anticipated results and conclusions. |
| First Draft | The first time the document is in a state to be reviewed and revised. |
| Second Draft | After you have revised it yourself, had it reviewed externally, and revised again based on that review. This is the draft that is ready for my review. |
| Third Draft | Reviewed by me and revised — ready for the second reader. |
| Final Draft | Accepted by the second reader and ready for department review. |
The Full Outline and Detailed Outline are the critical steps. Once we agree on the Detailed Outline for each part of your thesis, the writing itself should be fairly straightforward.
How my review works
My review happens between the Second and Third Drafts, and at least three weeks should be budgeted for it. That allows time for iteration, discussion, and the possibility of additional experiments and analysis.
My detailed review is done on the complete thesis document at the Second Draft stage, including complete conclusions and abstract. I am of course happy to review parts of the document earlier — a specific chapter or section you have questions about — but reviewing the complete document is the most efficient use of everyone’s time.