Bachelor's project

The purpose of the Bachelor's project is to give students an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to independently formulate a business-related problem statement within a given topic, select relevant literature, apply methodologies, collect and process data, make critical assessments, conduct analyses and conclude on the question raised in the problem statement.

On these pages, you will find relevant information, links and dates regarding the Bachelor's project in the sixth semester for bachelor students in Economics and Business Administration.

Before the registration deadline

Introduction Meeting

In the fall, Thursday 12 October at 14.15-16.30 you are invited to an introduction meeting about the Bachelor's project.
The introduction meeting will be held online via Zoom.

At the introduction meeting you will be presented to a presentation by Head of Bachelor programmes at Department of Management, Christian Waldstrøm. You will also have the chance to ask former bachelor students for advice when writing the Bachelor’s project and get inspiration for your project.

Views

Writing on your own or in a group?

A bachelor's project is a comprehensive written paper, and you must decide whether you wish to write it on your own or in a group (groups of up to four persons are allowed). The most important thing to remember when choosing whether to write on your own or in a group is that you should do what is right for you. 

There are advantages of writing a bachelor's project in a group, because you will have someone to be your partner to discuss and reflect on theories and ideas with. This will usually be a great advantage, because different angles on the project   will often provide a better result. But a bachelor's project requires a lot of work and will often involve many hours spent together in the group and sometimes compromises. For this reason, it is important that the group members both work well together and are socially compatible. A good tip is therefore to know the expectations of the person(s) you are writing the project with, as it is important that everyone in the group agree on the objective of the project. You should note that it is not possible to change groups during the process. On Boost your Student Life and AU Studypedia you will find information and inspiration on how to work in study groups.

Choice of topic

The topic of the project is typically based on an existing real-life problem, that is, an issue within the academic fields of the bachelor’s programme. It may be problems in a given organisation (private or public company, interest group, etc.), an industry or the community. You choose/define the topic for your bachelor's project yourself, as long as it stays within the academic frames of your programme. When choosing the topic, you might be inspired by a problem, an observation or a phenomenon that you find interesting or by models and theories from courses you have had. It might be helpful to discuss ideas for topic(s) with a possible supervisor for your project. 

It is a good idea to search for inspiration in the links below: 

  • The AU Job and Project Bank
    At AU Job and Project Bank, you can find both student jobs, project collaborations, internships and full-time positions
  • The news/Companies' own websites:
    Use the news, the newspapers or the companies' own websites to find problems that may be relevant for a bachelor's project . You have access to news media and company information through the library's databases.
  • Supervisors and topics:
    You can also be inspired by the available supervisors and the topics on the supervisor lists (please find the lists under 'Supervisor').

Supervisor

Before you register a supervisor and a title for your bachelor's project you must contact a potential supervisor who will commit to give you supervision within your chosen topic. The registered title will typically be a draft for your problem statement rather than your final problem statement.

All supervisors are specialised in each their different field. Below you will find a complete list of supervisors in the individual departments and their individual fields of expertise.   

All supervisors may be contacted through the links below:

Please only contact ONE supervisor at a time and await this supervisor's reply before you contact any others.

Registration

You must register the working title of the project and the name of the supervisor no later than 1 December.

The registration must be done via an online registration form that will be accessible on this page (below) after the introduction meeting.  

If you plan to write a group project, only one of the members should register the project in the registration form and state the names and email addresses of the other members. 

If you are unable to find a supervisor as the deadline approaches, you must register your project with a working title and description of the project before the deadline. You will then get a supervisor appointed to you by the department after the deadline.

If you are enrolled at Economics and Business Administration, BSc and wish to write your bachelor's project with a student from Economics and Business Administration, HA, notice that your project must be written in English. In addition, you must both do the following:

1) In the registration form under 'Comments', you must write that your group is interdisciplinary.

2) Send an email to bachelor.bss@au.dk in which you write that you wish to write an interdisciplinary bachelor's project. Please remember to state both your names and student numbers in the email.

Registration for reexamination in September/December

You will find information about reexamination in September/December and a link to the reexamination registration form in the section 'Reexamination'.

The writing process

Formal requirements and guidelines for written assignments

In the course descriptions you will find the specific requirements for the Bachelor's project including types of theses and formal demands of the thesis such as summary, word count, front page, language and layout. 

Your bachelor's project must adhere to the specific requirements (formal demands) specified in the course description in order to be accepted for assessment.

The course description for the Bachelor's project in the spring semester 2024 can be found below:  

The guidelines for written assignments include: referencing tools, how to refer to your sources and make a reference list, and how to avoid plagiarism.

Appendices

You can enclose appendices where you find it necessary to include extra material such as (but not limited to): 

  • Supplementary information about the empirical setting
  • Interview guides, transcriptions of interviews, questionnaires, etc.
  • Reports used as secondary data sources 

The project is evaluated solely on the basis of the contents of the main project and therefore the main project must be a complete and meaningful document independent of the appendices.

If you use interviews as data collection, there are no formal requirements that you transcribe interviews. However, transcribing interviews will often lead to significantly better analyses of the data.

Processing personal data

If you gain access to or collect personal data to be used in your assignment, you are responsible for taking care of that data.  

Learn about the the rules for collecting and processing personal data (GDPR).

Confidentiality

When you contact external parties (organisations or individuals) about a possible cooperation in connection with your project, you might need to use a confidentiality agreement between you and the company, which can be found here:

Confidentiality agreement

Note that your supervisor and the external examiner (censor) both have implicit confidentiality through their jobs. However, some companies might still ask for a confidentiality agreement between AU and the company.

Note: When handing in your project, you can choose whether it should be ‘open shelf’ (i.e. accessible to others in the future). Choosing ‘closed shelf’ will ensure that only your supervisor and the external examiner will ever see your project.    

Use of AI

From the summer 2024 the use of generative artificial intelligence tools will be permitted for this exam. The general rules on plagiarism apply if generative artificial intelligence is used. You must specify how generative artificial intelligence has been used in an appendix to the assignment.

Special situations

If you have any problems, such as personal or health problems which will affect your ability to complete your project, or you have unsolvable problems with fellow students in your group, contact the Student Counsellor’s Office to get information on how to handle this.

For any major changes affecting your project, please inform your supervisor. In the rare instances of problems between you and your supervisor, first try to sort it out with the supervisor by mentioning your concerns or issues to the supervisor. If this is not possible or the problem persists, you should contact the Programme Coordinator at the department where your project is registered:

It is important that you do not wait until you have handed in your project or until after the defence to address these issues, as misunderstandings or issues about the supervision process are not grounds for a subsequent complaint about the final grade.

Handing in the Bachelor's project

Handing in the project in WISEflow

The bachelor's project must be submitted on 1 May at 12:00.

The bachelor’s project must only be uploaded in respectively WISEflow. You are not allowed to hand in a paper copy of the project, as it is the uploaded version that is legally binding. When you have handed in the project in WISEflow it will automatically be send to supervisor and external examiner.

WISEflow
You will receive an e-mail from WISEflow when it is possible to upload your project. Deadline for handing in the project in WISEflow is 1 May at 12:00. This means that you should begin uploading well in advance before deadline, since the flow closes exactly at 12:00. Uploading a big project like the bachelor's project can take up to 30 minutes. 
If the submission date is a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday, the deadline is the first working day after the deadline.

If you experience problems with uploading your project, please contact the technical and/or administrative support

If you have not previously tried to upload an assignment in WISEflow as a group, please read and follow the instructions on how to submit as a group.

The project including appendixes must be saved as one PDF-file and uploaded under “Paper”. You will receive information regarding upload via Brightspace.

Under the category “Extra material” you can upload material like movies, sound, programs (Excel, SAS mv.). The extra material does not have to be a pdf-file and you can hand in more than one file up to a maximum size of 1 GB. If you need to hand in more than 1 GB as extra material you can send this directly to your supervisor on a USB-stick. 

Confidential projects
You are not required to attach your confidentiality agreement when you upload and submit your bachelor's project.

When you upload your bachelor's project in WISEflow, you must indicate (in the 'Cover') whether the project contains confidential material.
 

The oral defence

The department will contact you by e-mail or by Brightspace with information about when your defence will take place (at the latest 6 weeks after it is handed in). 

The total duration of the oral examination (incl. deliberating, grading and feedback) depends on the number of students: 

1 student = 45 minutes

2 students = 60 minutes

3 students = 75 minutes

4 students = 90 minutes

Presentation
The oral exam starts with a presentation of the project (approx. 5 min. per project regardless the number of group members). There are no formal requirements for the initial presentation, but it can profitably be a quick presentation of the purpose and results of the project, but it can also be beneficial to use the time for selecting one or two areas in the project which you want to emphasise, e.g.:

  • A discussion of some of the selections and delimitations which have been made
  • Considerations concerning how the topic could be examined further
  • Correction of essential mistakes, clarifications of unclear parts or pointing out defects in the project
  • Relevant additions which have become available after the project was handed in (e.g., from the media, literature, feedback from the case company, etc.).

There are no requirements concerning how to make the presentation (poster, cue cards, presentation on your laptop, etc.). It is not recommended to use a projector for the presentation as this always ends up taking time away from the presentation.

If you are part of a group, there are no requirements concerning the division of content in the first 5 minutes.

Discussion
After your presentation, the supervisor and the external examiner will take over with questions and comments as the basis of a discussion with you about the project.

Deliberation
Afterwards you will be asked to leave the examination room, while your supervisor and co-examiner are deliberating. Please note that you must bring your personal belongings with you when you leave the examination room.

Grading and feed back
After the deliberation you (or your group) will receive your overall feedback, including your respective grades. 

Reexamination

If you do not hand in or fail the Bachelor's project in May/June, you can register for the reexamination in September or December. Registration for the reexamination in September or December must take place no later than 15 June.

The deadline for submission of the Bachelor's project at reexamination is 1 September or 1 December. If the submission date is a Saturday, Sunday or a holiday, the deadline is the first working day after the deadline.

The re-exam is similar to the ordinary exam. There is no formal requirement that students change their problem statement before beginning their second or third attempt. However, students are encouraged to contact their supervisor in order to identify relevant sections of the project, which may be in need of revision, before the project is resubmitted.

You register for the reexamination of the Bachelor's project online in the registration form before 15 June.

The registration form opens on 1 June.

It is possible to attend the reexamination only if you have been registered for and thereby used an attempt at the ordinary exam.