Master's Final Project
- How to pass
- Goal
- Student commitment
- Tutor for the researching work
- Turn-in term
- Where the presentation is
- Formal requirements for the thesis
- Academic requirements for the thesis
- Documents needed for turning the thesis in
- Thesis defending terms
- Evaluation commission
- Evaluation protocol
- TFM publishing
- How to elaborate an academic paper
- UPF style guide
- Recercat
The way of passing the 20 ECTS for the TFM is the presentation (in a public defense) of a thesis that proves the ability of researching.
The goal of the TFM is to show the student's intellectual maturity and ability of researching. It has to be an original research resulting from the student's personal work under a tutor's guidance and orientation.
The student commitment for the TFM is 500 hours. These hours include bibliographical research and data collection, discussing with the tutor on the paper and writing the paper.
Students must go through a working calendar so that the TFM can be turned in in June:
- On 30th January, the student must turn in a developed table of contents to the tutor.
- On 15th March, the student must turn in one third of the TFM writing (minimum 20 pages, 2100 characters with spaces per page.)
- On 24th May, the student must turn in the whole TFM writing (including its introduction and conclusions) to the tutor. From then on, the tutor will ask the student for the last corrections and/or extensions. In case that the tutor considers that the student's work is not enough, he or she will advise the student not to turn the TFM in.
All three turn-ins must be e-mailed with a copy to the coordinator.
Tutor for the researching work
The TFM is carried out under the supervision of the student's tutor, which is appointed by the Master coordinator.
TFMs can be tutored by doctors teaching at the Master's degree or doctors from the department. In any other situation, the Master coordinator will ask the department's Comissió Acadèmica de Màster for the corresponding approval.
TFMs must be turned in within the term established in the regulation (Normativa):
It must be turned in by June 12th 2023.
No extra time is allowed. Students who don't turn in or pass their TFM can enroll it again next year, with the corresponding subcharge for the matriculation and providing that they meet the requirement of the permanence rule and the maximum number of times they have enrolled the TFM.
Where the presentation is
At the Secretaria from the Departament de Comunicació: [email protected]
Formal requirements for the thesis
Abstract: 150 words long, written in your project's language.
Key words: a list of words about your project's content (200 characters)
Front page with:
1. The document's title
2. The document's author or authors
3. Publication date: Year 20--/--
4. Collection name: Treballs de Fi de Màster dels programes de postgrau del Departament de Comunicació
5. Subcommunity name: Departament de Comunicació
6. University name: Universitat Pompeu Fabra
- In terms of the copy in electronic form: The document must be in a PDF format. If it has other files attached (images, software, video or audio recordings,etc.) they can be sent with the text files. They are recommended to be known formats. The files must be under 40Mb, which is why there can be as many files as needed per document.
Academic requirements for the thesis
The goal of the TFM is to show the student's intellectual maturity and ability of researching. It has to be an original research resulting from the student's personal work under a tutor's guidance and orientation. It has to be a research work that investigates the study of one subject thoroughly and that will be a way of preparing and training for doctoral research. The thesis will have to include, at least, the following points:
1. A presentation of the specific subject that you have chosen and a justification of its importance, newness and academic relevance;
2. Goals and/or hypothesis;
3. A methodology specifying the object of study and the researching techniques;
4. Application of the methodology on a narrowed researching field;
5. Bibliography, filmography or documents needed for the researching goals.
6. It must be a work with an approximate length of between sixty and seventy pages, including the bibliography and filmography. Note that a standard page has 2100 characters with spaces per page. Therefore, the work should have a maximum length of 147,000 characters with spaces, but depending on the number and size of the images it could be more than seventy pages.
7. The research can be accompanied by an audiovisual piece presented in any type of digital format (from 4 to 26 minutes long). In the case of an applied research carried out by two students, the theoretical part of the two parts cannot exceed 70 pages. If signed by a single student, it must be 30-35 pages long (2100 characters with spaces per page).
8. All searches must be preceded by an index, the pages must be numbered and the bibliographic sources must be cited correctly.
Documents needed for turning the thesis in
1. Master's Final Project sumbission document
2. A PDF copy of the Master's Final Project on an e-mail to [email protected], in conformity with the formal requierements established on the Normativa (see art.4 from the Normativa). The project must include the summary of the Turnitin report at the end.Please write TFMname.surname on the e-mail subject
TFMs must be defensed in the time terms established in the Normativa:
The term between the diposit and the act of public defense will never be lower than 15 calendar days. During this time, papers will be available to the professors from the Departament.
The project is defensed publicly. The comission which will evaluate your TFM will consist of three Doctor professors appointed by the Department.
Each student will be assigned a theme board in order to present their final project. They will have 10 to 15 minutes to give their presentation (including audiovisual material, in case they would use any). The final project presentation may be accompanied by an audiovisual essay, film clips and / or a powerpoint presentation. Next, two members of the commitee (who in no case will be their supervisor) will assess their final project by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses, in a maximum of 30 minutes. The student will afterwards have 5 minutes to reply, clarify or comment on the assessments received.
On the same board there will be other students with a final project on a related topic. All students will follow the same protocol as the first student.
At the end of all assessments there will be a 30 minute discussion with all supervisors, students, committee members and PhD students from the Department of Communication.
The defences will take place within 3 to 5 days at most.
The grades will not be announced until the last theme board has taken place.
Only for students who are awarded a grade equivalent to A (9 to10):
Authorization for the paper to be deposited at the Repositori Electrònic de la Recerca de Catalunya (RecerCat). Instructions below according to your situation: