Colloquium
MBI Colloquium
The master of business informatics (MBI) colloquium is an event in which students of the MBI program present their master thesis work. Fellow students evaluate the topic and performance of the presented theses. Colloquiums take place in a bi-weekly rhythm on Mondays, 9:00h-11:00h.
The MBI Colloquium is a meeting in which students interact about their thesis progress. It usually takes place every two weeks. A regular colloquium meeting lasts 2 hours and consists of 3 student presentations. Participation in the MBI Colloquium is one of the requirements to graduate from the MBI program.
You are invited to join the colloquium from the second study year on. It is not necessary to have started the thesis already. Join early to make sure to collect all required attendance tokens until the end of your study! It often happens that students have finished all their courses and the thesis, but cannot finish their study because the colloquium is not completed yet. Give your own presentation during the study year, not right before the summer holidays, because then presentation slots are rare and you might not get a presentation slot any more.
To join the colloquium, write an email to the colloquium organizers at mbi-colloquium@uu.nl including your student id and the title of your thesis and thesis supervisors, if already known.
Dates and rooms can be found in the “Calendar” section at the bottom of this page, and in the MS Teams calendar associated with the “MBI Colloquium” team.
(The entries in myTimetable may not be accurate, because they show the weekly allocation of the room and make no difference between dates on which a colloquium takes place and on which not.)
To complete the study program, every participant is expected to attend and actively participate in 11 sessions or more. These can be a minimum of 8 colloquium sessions, additional 3 attendances can either be more colloquium sessions, thesis defenses by other students, or attendances to scientific talks given at a university or a conference. Every attendance is counted as a "token". The current number of collected attendance tokens is shown in Blackboard.
How an attendance token is received:
In colloquiums (8-11 tokens): Before the colloquium session, prepare a question about each talk by looking at the long proposals of the speakers. Find the link to the long proposals and the question submission form in the MS Teams calendar entry of the colloquium session. Your submitted question could be selected to be answered by the speaker after the talk.
After or during the colloquium, fill in an evaluation form for each speaker during a colloquium session, which typically means giving 3 brief evaluations of the presented talks in a structured online form.In thesis defenses: write a half-page abstract about the talk and send it to the MBI colloquium coordinators to request the token
In scientific talks: write a half-page abstract about the talk and add detail information about which talk you attended, this could include a link to the program of the scientific event or a photo of the talk
There are usually 3 speakers per colloquium session. Every speaker gives a presentation of about 15 minutes, followed by a Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis of about 3 minutes by the following speaker (discussant) of the colloquium session. The first speaker will be the discussant for the last speaker’s presentation.
If there is a different number than 3 speakers, the principles for structuring the session remain the same and are adapted to the number of speaker.
The presentation will be about the problem, research questions, research method, and the study of the literature. The presentation can be given only if the student has passed the first phase of the thesis (and it is registered in Osiris Zaak), after the first supervisor has explicitly given the student permission to present.
After the presentation, there will be 5 to 10 minutes for the discussion:
The discussant presents the SWOT analysis
Follow-up discussion takes place including the entire audience
You’re welcome to join any colloquium session indicated in the calendar (see “Dates and rooms”).
Before the colloquium, read the long proposals of the presenters and enter qualified questions or comments in the corresponding web-form. (The URLs for the long proposals and the form are included in the MS Teams calendar entry).
During the colloquium, listen to the presenters’ talks and enter feedback in the corresponding web-form. (The URL is also included in the MS Teams calendar entry.)
After the colloquium, you will receive an attendance token which will be indicated on the MBI Colloquium attendance token web-page. Please note that this may take some days, because the process of giving tokens involves manual checks.
After finishing phase 1 of the thesis project, i.e., soon after your thesis proposal is approved by your supervisors, you are expected to give a colloquium talk. This should happen between month 3 and 5 of your thesis project. To do so, send a request to the MBI colloquium coordinators. The request should include your long proposal in PDF format, with your first supervisor in CC. Please indicate a suitable date for your presentation. We will assign the date if not all slots are already used. Colloquiums take place every second Monday 9:00h-11:00h. To plan for the date of your talk, look at the Calendar of upcoming colloquiums at the bottom of this page. Registration closes 30 days before the session, so be sure to plan in good time ahead. If your supervisor agrees and the long proposal will be approved until two weeks before the session, you can send a preliminary version of your long proposal with your registration and update it with the final version two weeks before the session.
Before presenting, find a free slot to present in the MBI colloquium calendar. Synchronize with your supervisor if s/he is available on that date, then write an email to the MBI colloquium coordinators to apply for your talk. Make sure to include your thesis long proposal in your email. It will be made available to all colloquium participants, who will send questions and comments beforehand.
During your presentation session, please first give a SWOT analysis about the previous speaker’s thesis (if you are the first speaker, you will give it at the end of the session after the last speaker), then there will be 15 minutes for your talk, and 5 minutes for questions afterwards. These numbers are flexible; nobody will be punished if a talk is one or two minutes shorter or longer, but please try to reach about 15 minutes.
After the colloquium session, you will receive the questions and comments that had been submitted by the colloquium audience about your talk. This may take some days, because it involves manual checking. Please send the slides of your SWOT analysis to the speaker whose thesis you have reviewed.
Presenters receive an attendance token for their presentation, they are not obliged to fill in the questions and feedback forms for the session in which they present.
Note that students can fail the presentation. The lecturers attending the colloquium determine whether a presentation is sufficient. If not, the presentation needs to be re-attempted.
Students who are conducting their thesis abroad are also obliged to have a presentation in the MBI Colloquium, but attendance in general is subject to individual arrangements; please contact the MBI colloquium coordinators.
In the same session you will be presenting, you will also be the discussant for another presenter.
For the discussant role, you will receive the long proposal of the presenter beforehand. You are expected to prepare 1-2 slides about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) regarding the research project of the presenter. You will discuss your findings in 3-5 minutes trying to engage the audience in the discussion.
You can use the following template to do your SWOT analysis. Read the long proposal and try to identity the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the problem statement, the research question, the research method and the literature study. The format to use to present your finding is up to you.
Problem statement | Research questions | Research method | Literature study | ||
Internal | Strengths | ||||
Weaknesses | |||||
External | Opportunities | ||||
Threats |
The discussant role will be assigned to you by default. If you’re scheduled as the first speaker, you will be the discussant for the third speaker. If you’re the second speaker, you will be the discussant for the first speaker. If you’re the third speaker, you will be the discussant for the second speaker.
When you have given your presentation and collected 11 attendance tokens, contact the MBI colloquium coordinators shortly by email to get 3 ECs registered for the INFOMCBI course in Osiris.
The final thesis defense is independent from the colloquium. Students organize it themselves. See Thesis project.
The only connection between thesis defenses and the colloquium is that all colloquium participants are invited to take part in the defense and to acquire an attendance token for this, see above. Therefore, the time and place of thesis defenses should be entered in the MS Teams calendar in the “General” channel of the “MBI Colloquium” team by the presenting student.
Everything else about the final thesis presentation is up to the student and the supervisor(s), the colloquium organizers are not involved and will not take part in the thesis defense.
Colloquium calendar
The colloquium calendar is available via the Colloquium information channel in MS Teams. For reasons of privacy protection it has been removed from this web-page.