Research internship (NWI-IMC047, 15 EC)

This webpage explains the procedures for the research internship. For more information about the research internship, you should also check out the course description in the prospectus (studiegids).

Starting 2017 there is a faculty-wide administrative procedure for theses and internships: you have to register in Osiris when you start, and at the end you have to submit your final report, as a single PDF file, to the thesis submission website.

FAQ
procedures and checklists for the student
procedures and checklists for the supervisor and daily supervisor
procedures and checklists for the coordinator of the Master specialisation

FAQ

What is the difference with the Master thesis?
Unlike for the Master thesis, the internship need not be a completely independent and stand-alone research project. The aim of the internship is to get some practical experience in carrying out research, possibly as part of a team and in collaboration with others. Depending on the specialisation and the specific topic this can take difference forms, e.g. doing a case study, trying out tools & techniques, developing tools or prototypes, or a combination of this.
What is the difference between the intership report produced as part of the internship and a Master thesis?
The internship report should always reflect on the process of doing research, describing what you did and reflect on what you learned. (See the template documents below for guidance.) Often the report will also document the actual research (i.e. the research questions, the motivations for them, and the outcomes of your research). But instead of documenting this in an independent and self-contained document, all this might also be written as a contribution to a joint scientific article or technical report. Also, your internship project might result in some research data, or some software prototype and tool, rather than a classic thesis document.
Who can supervise a research internship?
A staff member (professor, associate, or assistant professor) acts as supervisor, and takes the responsibility for the quality of internship and the evaluation at the end. The supervisor can delegate the daily supervision to another member of the research group (for example a PhD student or postdoc). The supervisor and daily supervisor can be one and the same person, but then a second (associate or assistant) professor should be asked for their opinion to provide feedback on the final review and give a PASS/FAIL for the course.
Can I do my research internship externally, with a company, a research institute or group outside ICIS or abroad?
Yes, this is possible, but you do need to get an internal supervisor who will take the responsibility for ensuring that what you are doing is a worth-while project with a sufficient standard. The internal supervisor is also the first point of contact for the supervisors at the external organisation, and get will their input for the assessment. To do an intership externally, and especially if you want to do it abroad, it is important to start planning this early!
Can I combine my research internship and master thesis?
If the topic you worked on for your internship turned out to be really interesting and worked out well, then you could do a Master thesis to continue in that direction. However, note that this is the expection rather than the rule, and don't count on it that this will be the case.
Things may not work out as expected: you may be fed up with the topic after the research internship, with the type of research or with the people and organisations involved. Also, there might not be interesting avenues left to explore that would be substantial enough to fill a 30 EC thesis.
Moreover, doing different things -- tackling different topics, doing different kinds of research, and working with different people and organisations -- for your internship and your thesis gives you a broader experience.

For the student

BEFORE YOU START
Think about want to do your research internship and talk with possible supervisors. Depending on other courses you are still taking, you may want to do the internship half-time during an entire semester, or full time during one quarter. The seminar course provides a good opportunity to start thinking about topics. You can contact the coordinator of your Master specialisation
- Arjen de Vries for Data Science,
- Frits Vaandrager for Software Science,
- Peter Schwabe for Cyber Security,
if you need help coming up with a topic or supervisor, or you can directly contact any other member of ICIS.
Your supervisor must be an (assistant or associate) professor. Your daily supervisor may also be a post-doc or a PhD student.
In discussion with your university supervisor and, if you do your internship outside the university, your supervisor(s) there, try to come to a short (2 page) project plan for your research internship. This plan should describe
- who is acting as supervisor
- a brief description of the context of the research you will be doing, and some background info on this (this will typically include a review of some key publications)
- a description of the research activities you will be carrying out
- the start and end date of the internship. The research intership is 15 EC (which equals 420 hours, i.e. around 11 weeks) so students typically do it full-time in one quarter, or half-time over a semester.
You do not have to include a detailed planning for the research activities. The plan may well list several options for which planning and progress will only become clearer in due course.
ENROLL FOR THE COURSE IN OSIRIS.
As described on the faculty webpage for internships and thesis projects, you will then receive an email with a link to a form to fill out, possibly together with your university supervisor (you will need to provide the personnel u-number of your university supervisor). When you submit the form you also upload the project plan. You have one month to complete this form after you register in Osiris.
Also send the project plan to the coordinator of the master specialisation you are doing, i.e.
- Arjen de Vries for Data Science,
- Frits Vaandrager for Software Science,
- Peter Schwabe for Cyber Security
To get a desk in one of the student rooms, contact Simone Meeuwsen. You can contact her via S.Meeuwsen@cs.ru.nl or in her room M1.00.06.
HALFWAY DURING THE INTERNSHIP
which can be half way during the semester, or halfway during the quarter, depending on whether you do your internship full time or not, write up a midterm review.
The midterm review, in the order of 2 or 3 pages, should concentrate on the reflection of the research done so far and things you'd like to learn or try. Topics to address, and a template that you can use for this:
1. The process Describe which activities you have carried our, incl. how you have documented or recorded your work.
2. Results Which (preliminary) results and contributions were achieved? How did you document these so far?
3. Reflection & Evaluation What went well/not so well? What was harder/easier than expected? What bottlenecks/possibilities/new problems/new ideas came up in the course of doing the research?
4. Plans Describe plans for the rest of the internship, incl. skills you want to work at or try out, topics you still want to learn about, and plans for documenting the outcome.
If you do your internship internally in the university, you will typically meet up with your supervisor more often.
AT THE END OF THE INTERNSHIP
Write up a final report. This can take two forms:
- The report can be a relatively short document of a couple of pages describing the process of what you've done, the outcome, and some reflection on what you have done and learnt. See below for more info on issues to address there.
- Alternatively (and your supervisor may insist on this), your report can be more in the style of a self-contained thesis document (as you will be required to produce for your master thesis later) which documents the whole process and the outcome of the research in detail. In that case, you can choose to address the issues listed below either in a final 'Evaluation' section of this full report or write that up as a separate short document.
  (But note that when uploading your report to the thesissubmission.science.ru.nl website, you can only upload one PDF document, so you'll have to merge these two documents into one PDF.)
Either way, issues to address in your final report:
1. Activities Describe which activities you have carried our, incl. how you have documented or recorded your work.
2. Results What were the results and contributions? How did you document these?
  Only give a very brief description of the outcome of the research, possibly with pointers to places where more can be found about this. E.g. if you have produced or contributed to software, data sets, articles, technical reports, or other forms of documentation, then give pointers to these, but you don't have include all this in this final report.
3. Reflection & Evaluation
  Don't just evaluate and reflect on your results, but also on what you've done to get there.
  What went well/not so well/(not) according to plan? What was harder/easier than expected? (Either due to the subject matter, or your skills and experience.) Are there particular activities that you found hard or easy, or that you are not (or not yet) good at? If you were to start over on the internship, what would you do differently?
  Look ahead to your Master thesis, and to your future career: also given your experiences in the research intership, what kind of research would you (not) like to do for your Master thesis? Would you want to do your Master thesis internally at the university or at an external organisation? What are topics, skills, or activities that you want to work at during your Master thesis or your future career? Are there topics or activities that you want to avoid in the future? Or that you would to specialise in your future career?
WRAPPING THINGS UP
Once your supervisors have approved your final report,
- Upload the report to http://thesissubmission.science.ru.nl.
- Give a presentation about your project.
- Your supervisor will automatically receive the form (testimonium) to fill in to give you the credits for the course. Once it's filled in and signed, either you or your supervisor can hand this it in to the Student Service Desk.

For the supervisor and daily supervisor

Both supervisor and daily supervisor should involve student in ongoing activities in the group that are related to the work, incl. the group seminar, coffee breaks. Ideally interns function as members of the group, allowing for optimal interaction. If there are several interns in the group, having Scrum sessions may be a good way to foster interaction.
The daily supervisor is the first point of contact for the intern, but the supervisor should meet interns for a progress meeting every couple of weeks.
The supervisor is responsible for the final assessment and awarding a grade, where the daily supervisor provides input on the functioning of the intern.
If the supervisor and daily supervisor are one and the same person, the supervisor should involve a second person in the assessment.
The evaluation form, for both the first supervisor and the second evaluator, are now handled by online forms, as explained on the faculty webpage. But in case you prefer to fill it in offline as preparation for the online edition we still provide a digitial copy here [PDF, DOC]

In one of the emails you get from the system after the student uploaded the last version of their thesis, is an attachment to fill in (with PASSED/FAIL, NOT with a grade). You or your student can drop this off at the Service Desk of the Education Centre.

Research internship (NWI-IMC047, 15 EC)

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