Guidelines & Templates
Formal requirements, guidelines, and resources for bachelor's and master's theses as well as internship projects.
Documents & Templates
LaTeX Template of the Department
The official template for bachelor’s and master’s theses of the Department of Applied Computer Science is available on the RWTH Aachen Git server:
👉 git-ce.rwth-aachen.de/fd-fbai/templates
Use of this template is strongly recommended, as it already incorporates all formal requirements of the department (title page, declaration, bibliography).
Older Guidelines (2013)
An older version of the thesis guidelines is available as a PDF:
2013-07-01-AI-Hinweise-BA-MA-Arbeiten.pdf
Formal Requirements
Length
- Bachelor’s thesis: Typically 40–60 pages (excluding appendix)
- Master’s thesis: Typically 60–100 pages (excluding appendix)
- Internship report: According to the internship guidelines (see below)
Language
Theses may be written in German or English. The language should be agreed upon in the initial meeting.
Recommended Structure
- Title page (mandatory, per template)
- Statutory declaration (mandatory)
- Abstract (DE + EN)
- Table of contents
- Introduction (motivation, objectives, outline)
- Background / Related Work
- Concept / Design / Methodology
- Implementation / Evaluation
- Discussion of results
- Summary and outlook
- Bibliography
- Appendix (if applicable)
Academic Writing
Literature Research
- Prefer primary sources: conference papers (ACM, IEEE, USENIX), journals, RFCs
- Tools: Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, ACM DL
- Citation style: IEEE or BibTeX/natbib as per template
Academic Integrity
Every thesis must include a statutory declaration. The use of AI writing tools must be transparently declared in accordance with the current guidelines of the department.
Internship Project (Praxisprojekt)
The internship project (Praxisprojekt) is an integral part of the bachelor’s programme. Full guidelines for the process and the report can be found in:
📄 Praktikumbericht_Richtlinien_HS-Fulda.pdf
Key Points
- Practical phase at a company or research institution
- Company issues an employment reference (Arbeitszeugnis)
- University assigns a supervisor (professor at the department)
- Report is submitted after the internship phase ends
- Assessment based on both report and employment reference