DISS: Supervision
Supervisors enable students to complete the taught module Informatics Project Proposal (IPP) during Semester 2, and to carry out MSc projects over the summer.
All teaching staff with a standard teaching load must submit project proposals that match their load. If HoS has agreed you should have a lower load, make sure that your data in Pip are up-to-date because we rely on it for determining teaching load:
https://pip.inf.ed.ac.uk/duty?staff-allocation
At least 40% of the capacity (rounded up) must be suitable for essentially any MSc student, with an elementary baseline version of the project being possible. Students interested in these projects should only be designated as unsuitable in exceptional circumstances, or if they fail to attend meetings or otherwise fail to take steps to understand what the project entails.
The load is calculated as follows:
Given that $X$ students are in the program, and that a standard load is $Y$, where each individual teacher has $Y_i = \left\{1,0.5, 2\right\}\cdot Y$, then we need at least $0.4X$ projects to have a decent choice that is not over-constrained, which means $Y$ is normalized to have:
$$
\sum_i{Y_i} = 0.4X,
$$
and floored up. I will publish the exact number soon. Note that this is not the number of projects, but rather the number of student slots that you have to offer!
2nd marking allocation: Suppose that $Z$ students (again, not projects) are to graduate this year. Then again the second marking load $W_i = \left\{0.5,1,2\right\}\cdot W$ is normalized to match $Z$, by setting floored up $W$. 1st and 2nd marking are both counted the same (note: 1st marking is a different duty than being a supervisor, although it's normally coupled). Staff who supervise fewer projects than their load are assigned 2 extra marking duties for every 1 lacking project supervision. Staff who supervise more projects than their load are assigned 1 less marking duty per extra supervised project. Staff with N moderation assignments mark N fewer MSc projects.
Over the summer, the supervisor gives appropriate technical advice and also assists the student in planning the project and working towards various targets during the period of work. Students should expect approximately weekly meetings with their supervisor at the start of the project but the frequency of these meetings will normally drop as the project progresses and as students become more self-sufficient. Backup supervisors may be allocated to cover periods of absence of the supervisor, if necessary.