[staff-physics-and-astronomy-HL-UHD-UD] Grading of MSc research project

[Jasper van Wezel]

Dear all,

If you are supervising an MSc research project this year, please notice a
change in the assessment introduced at the start of this year. The weights
of components contributing to the final grade are now:
- Research work - 60%
- Written thesis - 20% (used to be 30)
- Oral presentation - 20% (used to be 10).

The idea behind lowering the relative weight of the thesis is that the
availability of GenAI tools makes judging the knowledge of students based
on written work increasingly hard. (Producing good quality chapters and
even entire theses through GenAI is already possible.)
This does mean that the oral presentation increases in relative weight, so
please treat it on par with the written thesis as a method of assessing
student knowledge and understanding.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Best wishes,
Jasper.


PS1: The full assessment plan for the MSc Ph&A can be found at:
https://tinyurl.com/4m8fbpf4
Some further information on how the use of AI affects assessment can be
found at: https://tinyurl.com/mtwv3wk2

PS2.: if you are supervising an MSc research project, please don't forget
to register it in datanose at the start of the project.
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