An ITP thesis is a demonstration of mastery of a particular project or problem of your design. A thesis is a work of production or writing, developed around a clear statement of purpose, that considers an existing topic or area of inquiry and makes a meaningful addition to the literature on that topic, whether through rhetoric or invention.

Your thesis should fulfill three characteristics:

It should exist at the intersection of interesting, possible, and hard. The art is in taking on a problem large enough to stretch you, but not so large that it is unachievable.
It should be relevant to ITP. As an interdisciplinary program, ITP allows for and encourages exploration in a number of areas. This flexibility is not infinite, however. Your thesis should be something that faculty and other students at ITP can help you explore. Subjects that are too far from the collective experience of the institution will prevent you from getting useful feedback.
It should be personally engaging. Unlike class projects, which exist at the intersection of class subject and personal interest, the thesis requires you to take on a challenge which you yourself define. The single best predictor of success is whether you find a particular problem or project personally engaging, with or without ITP.

The work itself can be written research, a design brief or prototype for a larger project, a work of art, a piece of software, almost any form that is both rigorous and expressive, in fact. Possible theses fall into one of two categories: Production, and Written.

A Production Thesis demonstrates creative strategies or purposeful innovations in digital media, along with the ability to document this work and its implications in written form.

A Written Thesis proposes and defends a position based either on a practical research project and its conclusions, or on scholarly research into the nature and impact of digital media or emerging technologies.

MILESTONES:

1.	Preliminary Proposal entered in Thesis database	Due at advisement, end of Fall.
2.	Revise and refine your preliminary proposal	Winter Break
3.	Submit revised document to seminar instructor	Week 1, Thesis Seminar
4.	Mid-semester critique to outside evaluators:	Week 7
5.	Administrative deadlines for thesis show. Title, description, & url, officially submitted	Week 11
6.	Final In-class Presentation	Weeks 13 and 14
7.	Final Thesis Document submitted	Thesis Week
8.	Final Presentation	Thesis Week

Preliminary Proposal

In your penultimate semester, you should develop an idea or ideas for your thesis. You should use this semester to conduct preliminary research into your field of interest, to assess the feasibility of the proposed course of study, and to prepare the following in writing:

THESIS STATEMENT - What problem are you taking on, or what project are you proposing? This should be expressed in one or two sentences, and should be as specific and clear as you can be at the time. We anticipate that you will re-write this statement in increasingly specific terms as your sense of the project progresses.
PERSONAL STATEMENT - Why are you interested in this subject? When did your interest start, and why? What particularly fascinates you in this line of thought or type of project? What do you hope to gain from the experience? This should be one or two pages (250-500 words).
REESEARCH - Provide at least four examples of projects, books, products, or technologies that serve as background, inspiration, irritation, or research for the Thesis.
WORK DESCRIPTION - One paragraph to one page description of what it is you actually intend to make or do to pursue your Thesis. As with the Thesis Statement, this should be expressed as specifically as possible, with the specificity increasing over time.

You must bring a printed-out copy of a document containing all four of the above parts to your advisement meeting at the end of the Fall semester, as a prerequisite for Spring enrollment. You must bring a revised copy of this same document to the first session of the Thesis Seminar.

Seminar

The thesis development, presentation, and writing process is guided through the THESIS SEMINAR, a four-point course taken in the final semester at ITP. The thesis class is not your thesis; the purpose of the course is to help you finish your thesis, by providing a structured environment for both meeting milestones and presenting your work, both formally and informally.

Registration for the course is limited to 12 seats per seminar. A sufficient number of seminars will be offered to accommodate all students. Instructors for the Final Project Seminar are professionals who are brought in as expert facilitators in supervising thesis projects to completion. Seminar instructors will impose weekly deadlines and progress milestones as well as offering critique of your thesis projects-in-process within the class environment. Outside evaluators and full-time faculty will be brought in for mid-semester and end-of-semester critiques.

In addition to your in-class presentations, development of your thesis project must be documented online. Your seminar instructor will provide you the requirements for online documentation at the commencement of the thesis semester.

Thesis Document

At the same time as the thesis presentation, the THESIS DOCUMENT must also be submitted. This consists of the complete written documentation of your thesis project, and is organized in the same fashion as the Thesis Web Site.

The THESIS DOCUMENT is, in most cases, the only permanent evidence that your thesis ever happened. It is not simply a requirement of the department, but an annotated description of the work you did, the landscape you covered, the success you had, and the project you developed. Very often, the technology or platform for which a project has been developed no longer exists just a few years after a thesis has been completed. The Thesis Document serves as a lasting archive and communication of your research, development, and accomplishment.

The THESIS DOCUMENT should include:

Thesis abstract - Brief description of your Thesis
Personal Statement - Your interest in and reasons for pursuing this project
Research - Scholarly and practical research into field of study; inspirations, competition, even failures of others; the existing landscape
Methodology - How you decided to approach the problem, what you did and how, timelines, key details from schematics, plans, code, documentation
Conclusions - What happened, what you learned, what you believe are next steps based on your observations.
Sources - A comprehensive and annotated list of the resources in your area of study.
Other documentation - Appendices that do not appear in the written document may include discs or other archival media.

The document may use the above format, in which case your outline has already been completed, or any other format deemed appropriate by your Thesis Seminar instructor, as long as it satisfactorily addresses each of the above areas.

This document must be submitted to complete your thesis and is the formal permanent record of your work, suitable for archival storage. Therefore, your thesis documentation must be bound, contain all relevant information on the cover page (name, thesis title, thesis instructor, date), and have all accompanying materials on disk or tape securely attached.

Thesis Week Presentations

During Thesis Week, you will give a twenty minute presentation of your thesis, focusing on the most salient aspects -- goals, methods, observations, next steps. Thesis Presentations are open to an invited audience, including guests of the presenters. They are also webcast, and the video is archived for later viewing.

Only one student will be presenting at any given time. If a student's project extends beyond the scope of the typical instructor's cart in each classroom, it can be pre-set or installed on the floor, with special permission of the Thesis Show Producer. All student presentations are open to the general public, and will also be webcast.

Thesis Presentations may take a variety of forms, but in all cases serve to demonstrate professional competency in the student's chosen area of inquiry, as well as to communicate the thesis proposition and its conclusions.

Page last modified on May 16, 2007, at 01:49 PM