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ASE 2025 goals: do cool research, do not break the rover. Written down on white A4 paper

ASE2025 Project Page

Welcome to ASE! On this page, we have compiled the necessary information for you during the project. Check back regularly, as we will update it throughout.

Communication​

  • Technical Questions: reach out through Microsoft Teams, so that your domain expert, the ASE team and other students are kept in the loop.
  • Confidential Technical Questions: reach out through email: ase@vu.nl. This email is read by all members of the organizing team.
  • Questions About Research: reach out to your domain expert directly.
  • Private Questions: reach out to your domain expert directly.

The ASE team will reach out through Teams and email. There is no Canvas page for ASE.

Timeline​

The ASE team will provide technical support and office hours from April until June.

Meetings​

There will be a mandatory meeting every two weeks with your domain expert and the ASE team. This meeting will be in-person, in the ASE labs.

Presentations​

Research Question Presentation​

Towards the beginning of the project, you will share your research question to the group in a 5-minute presentation. Each presentation is individual since, even if you work in a group, you should have your own research question to focus on. You should summarize your literature review results and explain your research question and the next steps of your project.

The goal of this presentation is to solidify your research question and find possible room for improvement in your research proposal.

See how to give a bad talk and how to give a good talk.

There will be a mandatory presentation to describe your research questions on April 14th. This presentation is ungraded.

Time​

Make sure to be there at 10:50 so that we can get started with the first presentation at 11:00 sharp.

Location​

NU-4B17

Progress Presentation​

The main goal of this presentation is to practice your public speaking and presentation skills, which you will do by presenting your progress so far.

The only two questions you must answer in your presentation are:

  1. What has been done until now?
  2. What are the next steps?

You can structure the presentation any way you like, but should focus on presenting well. You will be provided (ungraded) feedback on how you present.

The presentations are group-based, and each presentation can be 12 minutes maximum. This is a hard limit: you will be interrupted and cut off after 12 minutes.

What Does it Mean to Present Well?​

The following quote captures the essence of a good presentation perfectly:

"The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives."

– Lilly Walters

Which in practice means:

  • ❌ Fill your slides with a lot of (small) text
    • ✅ Limit your slides to contain the minimal amount of words necessary to assist your storytelling. Make the text big and capture attention. Remember that slides are free! Splitting up your story into multiple slides is perfectly fine
  • ❌ Lay out all the facts on your audience
    • ✅ Build a story. Decide which details are worth telling and how your story can best be built to tell them. For example, start with a central question and then make the goal of your presentation to answer this question. Details that are not relevant to answering the main question can be left out
  • ❌ Just read the text on your slides out loud
    • ✅ Use the slides to back up the story that you are telling. As soon as your audience needs to decide between listening to you or reading the slides, you are losing engagement
  • ❌ Just look at your supervisor all the time
    • ✅ Interact with the audience! Make them feel seen. Look around, walk around, use your hands
  • ❌ Assume your audience is really stupid, or really smart
    • ✅ Determine the expert level of the audience. Is it good use of your time to explain how a CPU works? But can you skip over acronyms only you know?

There will be a mandatory presentation to describe your progress on May 19th, with a feedback session afterwards.

Time​

Make sure to be there at 12:50, so that we can get started at 13:00 sharp.

Location​

NU-4A54

Final Presentation​

The final presentation will be held on June 26th. This presentation is graded.

Thesis​

Draft Submission​

Check back later.

Final Submission​

Check back later.

Grading​

Your final grade is signed by your domain expert and their second reader, based on the Faculty of science rubric. You can find the 2025 regulations here.

The ASE team will keep student observations that your domain expert can use to aid grading.