After proposals have been submitted they will become available for arranging supervision once selection has been opened. This will be announced separately by e-mail. Your own proposals can then be viewed by members of staff and staff proposals will become available for viewing. You can only see proposals that match your degree programme, but you should question if they are really suitable and potentially discuss this with the proposer. It is also still possible to edit your proposals and add additional proposals to the system. Suitable navigation links will then be available in PATS to view proposals and express interest in them. Deadlines for active tasks are visible in your task list in PATS.

Initially, you should express interest in the projects you consider doing on PATS. This simply indicates to the proposer that you may want to do the project, but it does not mean supervision is agreed. Members of staff can see which proposals you are interested in and you can see who is interested in your proposals. PATS shows a plain list of all proposals, but also a list of supervisors (for members of staff, students) with their proposals and profile information. Students can also see how many supervision slots a member of staff still has available (if the project coordinator is using this feature). Only the supervisors listed specifically for the module are available for project supervisions; other supervisors can sometimes be brought in, if possible, which is to be arranged via the project coordinator.

Then you should contact members of staff to discuss the proposals and agree supervision, either for their projects or for your own projects, in particular if they have expressed interest in them. It is better to be pro-active and contact members of staff early instead of waiting for them to contact you; that includes supervisors who you think may be suitable for your project, but have not indicated interest. Also, members of staff have limited supervision slots and once they are gone they do not have to take on more projects (they can choose to do more projects, of course, but those with free slots are more likley to take you on).

You must discuss a proposal with a member of staff before supervision can be agreed. This should be done with an in person or virtual meeting, not an e-mail alone. If you wish to do the project, clearly indicate this to the member of staff, either during the meeting or later on via e-mail. During the meeting the following should be discussed:

• The project itself and any clarifications on the problem or the specific version of the problem (in case there are multiple options).
• Expectations of what should be done to complete the project to a specific standard.
• Your degree scheme to ensure the project is suitable for you.
• Any special resources needed, ethics or legal issues related to the problem.

Student and supervisor are responsible for the project to be executable, including any suitable risk management. This should be clear before project supervision is agreed on PATS.

If a member of staff is happy to take you on for the project, they can select to supervise you on PATS directly. Once this happened you have a project agreed and cannot select any other project; if there is a problem, please contact the project coordinator (a change without well-justified reason is unlikely). You will receive an e-mail from PATS that the project has been created and see the project (instead of the proposal/project selection) in the navigation and the deadlines show up in the task list.

Note that members of staff can only choose to supervise you on a project in which you have shown interest. If it is your project, they must show interest before they can select to supervise you. This is to reduce mistakes in agreeing supervision.

After supervision has been agreed the proposal accepted will become unavailable and the students' other proposals will also be marked as unavailable. A member of staff can make their own proposals available again, if they think there is sufficient scope for more than one student to work on different aspects.

If you do not select a proposal by deadline then you will be assigned a random supervisor shortly after the deadline. You must then agree on a project with this supervisor, which is likley one of their projects still available. At that stage there is no other choice. This is not in your interest as you may well get the worst possible arrangement. Even if you cannot find a perfect proposal and/or cannot find a supervisor for your own proposal, it is still better for you to select a proposal than not selecting anything at all. Note, the deadline cannot be extended as there are no supervision slots available after this has been completed.

After supervision is agreed supervisor and project cannot easily be changed anymore. Many projects have a range of possible directions or approaches, which you can still select from, and these should be indicated in the proposal/project description.

A major topic change, that is not within the remit of the project proposal agreed upon (and potentially refined in the project description once the project has been created) requires agreement between supervisor and student. Otherwise, even a successfully executed project may result in failure due to working on a different topic. Usually supervisors are flexible and projects can be adjusted, in particular if there is a good justification for it. However, they must remain suitable for the module and degree scheme you are on and you cannot arbitrarily change the project.

A change of supervisor after the deadline of the project selection is generally impossible. It would only be considered if the supervisor becomes unavailable for a long (most/all of the term) period or for similar major reasons.