Frequently Asked Questions - Individual Study Planning

Writing a bachelor's or master's thesis is a crucial but often difficult task when completing a degree. We have therefore created a sub-page on “ How To Thesis?” where you will find answers to most questions about the thesis, such as thesis registration and submission as well as finding topics and supervisors.  

Sometimes, the first step of finding a topic and a supervisor already poses difficulties. The best first step is therefore to take a look at the different  workgroups of the institute and select those that fit your own interests. Once you have found your favourite workgroup and potential supervisor within that workgroup, you can ask them whether they would be willing to supervise you. For this email, there are two important things to keep in mind:

• Some workgroups and lecturers at the IKW have specific guidelines for thesis supervision. For example, some have dedicated “onboarding weeks” during which students can apply for supervision, others only accept very specific thesis topics, and yet others expect you to submit an exposé that follows specific guidelines. It is therefore important that you carefully review the information provided on their workgroup page. A summary of these “rules” can be found in the “ How to start your thesis with supervisors at the IKW” tab on the “How to thesis” page.  

• You are less likely to be successful if you send a generic email to multiple lecturers. First of all, try to think of a thesis topic yourself. You can get inspired by the research of the respective workgroups and by the content of seminars that you have taken part in. It is always better to already have an idea of what you would like to research, ideally in the form of a short exposé. Exposés typically include a working title, a clear research question or research statement, a rough description of how this research question is embedded in or emerges from existing academic literature, an initial (rough) structure of the thesis, and a bibliography that includes the literature that you deem most relevant to your topic. Note that, as mentioned above, some lecturers may have specific requirements for such an exposé. Finally, make sure to tell your potential supervisor how your project fits into their research and what background you already have in that area (e.g., attach a CV/transcript).

If your favourite lecturer declines the supervision, approach the next person with an adjusted exposé and email. Finding a suitable supervisor may be difficult, but you can increase your chances enormously by putting effort into how you reach out to lecturers. If you have been rejected multiple times, feel free to approach the coordinator for individual study planning to discuss what options are available and perhaps what you could do better. 

Yes, there are no official dates by which a thesis must be started or submitted. The only requirements regarding the timeframe are that the thesis must be submitted:

• Bachelor's thesis: no later than 3 months and no earlier than 2 months and 1 week after registration.
  (§12 (5) of the BSc Cognitive Science study regulation 2024)
• Master's thesis: no later than 6 months and no earlier than 5 months and 1 week after registration. 
  (§12 (5) of the MSc Cognitive Science study regulation 2024)

Exceptions to these timeframes must be requested from the examination board and require suitable justification and proof, such as illness (proven by a doctor's certificate) or unforseeable technical problems (proven by a corresponding statement from your supervisor). Beyond these official requirements, the timing of your thesis may depend on agreements with your supervisor or on pre-set supervision cycles during which lecturers take on new thesis students; see “ How do I find a thesis topic and supervisor”. 

The rapid development of generative AI can lead to uncertainty and confusion about what is and is not allowed, as well as how students are expected to document their use of AI when it is permitted. 

General guidelines can be found on the  university website on the use of AI and in the  guide of the Institute of Cognitive Science (PDF, 1,35 MB). In the “Declaration of Authorship”, which can be found on the last page of the institute's guide and must be signed and attached to your thesis, you declare, among other things, that “[i]n case artificial intelligence tools were used, their way and purpose of usage has been made transparent.”

Exactly what this transparency or documentation should look like, and to what extent you are allowed to use AI in your thesis, must be discussed with your supervisor prior to using AI for your thesis. It is important to clarify with your supervisor what they allow and what they expect from you. The institute's guide includes examples of how the use of AI can be documented. Templates from other universities may also be available online and can provide additional guidance. 

Yes, you can write your thesis abroad. This may be particularly helpful if, say during your semester/internship abroad, you have found a researcher or research project that caught your interest. There are two important things to consider when thinking about writing one's thesis abroad:

1. Funding: Typically, students are unable to finance a stay abroad by themselves. Finding a way to fund the stay is therefore an important consideration when planning to write your thesis abroad. Most funding opportunities, such as Erasmus+, only support full-time internships or semesters abroad as long as they are not meant for writing your thesis. Questions on this can be discussed with the Mobility Office ( ikw-eras@uos.de). In some cases, companies may be willing to provide financial compensation for an internship if your thesis contributes to one of their projects. Thus, while writing your thesis abroad is generally no problem, finding a way to finance the stay may be a challenge.
2. Permissible supervisors: Not every combination of supervisors is permissible. There are three important rules to be aware of. First, “[a]t least one of the examiners shall be a member of the status group of professors and lecturers or have a Habilitation or hold an interim professorship.” And second, “[a]t least one of the examiners shall be a member of the Osnabrück University.” Also, external supervisors should typically hold a relevant doctoral degree, or at least a relevant Master's degree. Make sure to check whether your preferred combination with an external supervisor fulfills these requirements.
   (§12 (4) of the BSc/MSc Cognitive Science study regulation 2024)

If funding poses too big of a challenge, perhaps the following could be a worthwile compromise: You can apply for an Erasmus+ Internship where you contribute full-time to a project abroad. After successfully completing the internship, you can write your thesis in Osnabrück based on the project within which you have worked during your internship. Even if you write the thesis in Osnabrück, your thesis may still be supervised by, say, the head of that project. 

Prior to the end of your studies, courses may end up in the “Zusatzleistungen” ("additional courses") section for different reasons. Typically, these will be courses that you have taken during your semester abroad, or courses that you have taken at different institutes of Osnabrück University (such as the language centre or the institutes of informatics, philosophy, or psychology). The reasoning behind this is simple. Courses that are not a regular part of the cognitive science program and are therefore not assigned to any particular module are automatically moved to the “Zusatzleistungen” by the system. Whether these courses can be accredited to a mandatory or a mandatory elective component has to be decided by the person responsible for the respective subject area ("Modulbeauftragte:r"). The process for this is the same as the process for getting approval of credits that you have taken during your semester abroad. Please take a look at “Getting approval for external credits” on the  information page of your study program. 

In short, for each course that you would like to obtain approval for, you have to fill in the application for approval form and send it to the responsible person along with documents describing the contents of the respective course and the grade you have achieved. If the responsible person approves the application, submit the signed form to the examination office along with the transcript or course certificate stating the grade you achieved.

In case you have registered for a regular course from the cognitive science program and the course is listed under the "additional courses" section, this can be later transferred by the examinations office to the corresponding module when handing in the “Form to assign courses to modules”. It is advised that courses from the cognitive science program are registered for the corresponding module in the cognitive science program rather than as an "additional course" directly when registering for the examination.

There is no problem with taking more than 120/180 ECTS during the timeframe needed to complete the degree program. Credits that go beyond what you require to complete your degree will ultimately be moved to the additional courses (“Zusatzleistungen”) section of your transcript. Even though they are “only” listed as additional courses and do not count towards your Bachelor's degree, they are listed with exactly the same information as all other courses, i.e., including the name, grade, semester, examiner etc.

If you are about to finish your Bachelor's degree with us and are planning to also pursue the cognitive science Master's degree at our institute, courses beyond the 180 ECTS that are listed as additional courses ("Zusatzleistungen") on your final transcript of records can later be transferred to your Master's program. Once you begin your Master's studies, courses from the additional courses can then be accredited towards your master's degree. This is only possible with courses from the list of additional courses that do not count towards your Bachelor's degree, not for courses that have been assigned to your Bachelor's degree in the “Form to Assign Courses to Modules”.

Note: Unless you have good reasons to do otherwise, please submit the assignment form and your wishes regarding the list of additional courses ("Zusatzleistungen") only when you want to register your thesis, not beforehand. Switching things around before the thesis registration only leads to unnecessary work for the examination office.

In order to plan your studies properly, it helps to get an overview of the required modules you have already filled and where you still need more credit points. The easiest way to check this is to fill in the “Form to Assign Courses to Modules” of your respective study program:

•  Bachelor PO19
•  Bachelor PO24
•  Master PO24 

To fill in this form, I recommend taking your transcript of records (ToR) to hand, the modules listed for each course in the  course list, and the study regulations of your respective study program. The study regulations contain a section on “Structure, Scope and Duration of the Program” (typically §4). Here, you can see how many ECTS have to be achieved in each component of the program. Importantly, here you can check which “identifiers” correspond to which components. You can then match these identifiers with the identifiers of the courses you have successfully completed (taken from your ToR and the course list). Knowing which of your courses can be assigned to which program component, you can now enter them into the "Form to Assign Courses to Modules" in the way you prefer. How exactly you assign them may, for instance, depend on which grades you would like to be counted towards your final grade: the free electives, other than the mandatory electives, do not count towards your final grade, so you should typically assign the courses with the best grades to the mandatory electives, and the remaining courses to the free electives. Once you have assigned all your courses to modules in the form, you will see where exactly you still have gaps, i.e., for which modules or program components you still need more courses in order to reach the required ECTS.

The form can help you keep track of your progress at any point during your studies. Once you want to register your bachelor's or master's thesis, you will have to submit the form alongside other documents. Please check out the details on “Thesis Registration and Submission” on the  information page of your respective study program for further information on this. 

Note: Unless you have good reasons to do otherwise, please submit the assignment form only when you want to register your thesis, not beforehand. Switching things around before the thesis registration only leads to unnecessary work for the examination office.

The old study regulation (BSc PO19) includes a mandatory oral examination. For detailed information, please take a look at the  section on the oral examination in the program information BSc PO19.

Broadly speaking, you have to choose one of the five subject areas, in which you have completed both the compuslory and the optional compulsory part. You will receive 3 ECTS for it and the grade of that oral exam will replace the entire grade of that module, i.e., of the compulsory and the optional compulsory part.

The examination procedure itself differs from study area to study area. Once you have selected the area, you should contact the person responsible for that area, as listed in the abovementioned section on the oral examination. Your examiner will then tell you exactly what the oral examination will comprise. Often times, it includes questions about courses of the compulsory module and questions about one or two courses of the optional compulsory module, depending on what courses you have taken and for which of those courses the examiner was the lecturer. Sometimes, you are also asked to prepare a pre-selected academic paper which you should then briefly introduce and discuss during the oral exam and/or for which you should write a small summary or critical engagement prior to the oral exam as a form of preparation. Please decide on a module first and then approach the person responsible for that subject area in order to find out how exactly they structure the oral exam.

Together with your examiner(s), you will decide on a date that suits everyone, typically a few weeks after you reached out to them, and then register for the oral examination at the examinations office at least two weeks in advance of the examination. 

If you fail a final exam, most courses will offer a resit of that exam within the same semester or during the first week of lectures in the following semester ($9 (2) of the PO24 study regulation). In order to take part in the resit exam, you have to register for it on HISinOne just as you did for the first exam. Registering for the resit is only possible once the “fail” for the first exam has been entered on HISinOne. Hence, if you encounter issues with registering for the resit, please check whether the “fail” has already been entered.

Failing a course entirely has no immediate consequences for your degree other than a note in your preliminary transcript of records indicating that the course has been failed. According to the PO24 study regulations (§9 (1)), “[f]ailed modules may be retaken an unlimited number of times." Note however that each semester in which the course is taught, only a main exam and a retake are typically offered, and the courses with integrated exercises typically have to be retaken in full, including the exercises, if both the final and the retake have been failed.

On the other hand, "[p]assed modules may not be retaken for the purpose of improving a grade.” Of course, you should avoid failing courses, as it shows on your preliminary transcript and prolongs your studies, but you do not face the threat of being exmatriculated.

Note that other than normal coursework, the Bachelor's and Master's thesis can only be failed and re-taken once.

It is not always easy to be admitted to a master's degree. Many degrees mention very specific requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to be eligible to apply, often in the form of “at least X ECTS in subject area Y”. Unfortunately, we are unable to assess in how far you meet those requirements, as we have no insight into the admission processes at other universities and institutes. For example, whether certain cognitive science courses that include mathematics, such as neuroinformatics, can be counted towards admission requirements such as “at least X ECTS in mathematics” is impossible for us to say for sure. If you are able to take more courses, we recommend aligning your choice of courses as closely as possible with the requirements of your favourite master's program. When applying, we recommend stating clearly in a letter of motivation or a separate document how the courses you have taken fulfill the requirements, particularly for courses whose title does not straight-forwardly seem to fit to the requirements.

In order to figure out the admission requirements of a master's degree, please look for their official “admission regulations”, typically a document that can be downloaded on their website. Sometimes, the requirements are listed on their website. However, these are not legally binding and can be incomplete.

There are a few options to finding a cognitive-science-related mini-job to support your studies. 

Generally, it may be fruitful to take a look at posters and flyers in the entrance of the IKW and on different floors of the IKW. There are often student assistant job advertisements from both the cognitive science institute as well as other institutes, such as the institute of psychology or informatics. Sometimes, student assistant jobs are also advertised through cognitive science mailing lists.

If you are interested in a tutoring position for a course at the institute of cognitive science, then you will have to apply through a dedicated StudIP course through which tutoring positions are distributed. Once the institute knows how many tutoring positions are available for the upcoming semester, a corresponding StudIP course is created. Either you will be added to the course automatically, or you will be able to find it on StudIP in the list of courses of the institute. When the application process opens, you can select for which tutoring positions you would like to apply and upload all application documents, typically a CV, letter of motivation, and your transcript of records. If your application is successful, you will be contacted and receive a contract for (typically) one semester with usually 21 hours per month. The tasks of a tutor vary between courses. Often times, it includes providing feedback on student essays, offering tutorials in which they briefly recap the contents of that week's lecture, offering Q&A sessions, organising room bookings, and answering student emails as far as possible. 

Outside of opportunities at the university, cognitive science students have been able to get student assistant jobs particularly at ROSEN Technology and Research Center and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), both located in Osnabrück. If you are interested in student assistant jobs in the areas of informatics, robotics, AI and machine learning, perhaps take a look at the job offers listed on their website or send them a “speculative application” (Initiativbewerbung). To get an overview of what companies in the Osnabrück region may be interesting from a cognitive science perspective, I recommend taking Tobias Thelen's course “Meet the locals - CogSci job perspectives”.