Manual for supervisors, reviewers and decision-makers

Here you can find information on how to create a Digital Study Plan for supervisors, reviewers and decision-makers within the Faculty of Science and Technology.

Please note that this manual is for the Faculty of Science and Technology.

Updates

2025-04-12

Under the heading "Admitted to" in the "Basic Information" tab, the doctoral student and supervisor can now enter information about "Higher education institution resources". Previously, this panel was locked to the ISP administrator.

2025-03-12

New heading - "Higher education institution resources", in the tab "Basic information" under "Admitted to".

2025-02-26

New tab - "Overview and reflections" provides an overview of key parts of the doctoral student's individual study plan.
Download PDF - now you can choose to download all information in an ISP or just information from some of the tabs.

Access to ISP in Ladok

To gain access to ISP in Ladok, you need a user account at Uppsala University and the appropriate permissions for ISP in Ladok. If you do not have this, please contact the department where your doctoral student is registered.

Log in to Ladok

My doctoral students (ISP)

On the Ladok start page, there is a tab called “My Doctoral Students (ISP)”. This tab contains a list of doctoral students that you are the principal supervisor, reviewer, or decision-maker for and that you are linked to in Ladok (1). (If this tab is missing, contact the administration at the department where your doctoral student is registered).

Click on the doctoral student's personal identification number to access their ISP. The link serves as a shortcut to your doctoral student, even when you do not have a current work task in their ISP.

Notifications

Ladok has an automatic notification function for the digital ISP. When an ISP reaches a step in the workflow where you have a task to perform (write, approve, confirm), a notification appears in the "My Doctoral Students" tab (2), and a notification email is sent to the email address registered for you in Ladok.

In the notification in Ladok (2), you can see your current work task, and by clicking the blue link, you will be transferred directly to the doctoral student’s ISP.

The doctoral student’s ISP in Ladok

When you enter the doctoral student’s ISP, you will land on the "Workflow" tab. On this page, you approve/establish the ISP after editing or reviewing it, or you can send it back to the doctoral student if corrections are needed.

The content of the ISP is filled in under the tabs from "Basic Information" and down. The "Timeplan" provides a summary of the information entered in the other tabs.
"Completed work tasks" show previous steps in the ISP.
"Current work task" tells you where the ISP is currently at, this is also where you sign and approve the ISP.
"Upcoming work tasks" contain the coming steps in the ISP.
"Established versions" store previous versions of the digital ISP that have been established in Ladok.

Reviewer and decision-maker can read the content of the ISP, but not revise it. If you as FUAP have suggestions on how the tab “Thesis work” should be used, notify the supervisor and doctoral student in good time.

First assistant supervisor and principal supervisor can revise the ISP when the ISP is in revision mode (i.e. before the doctoral student has approved it). The principal supervisor is responsible for that all other assistant supervisors (with read-only access) have understood that the ISP is to be revised and established and have taken part of the ISP content. You can send a link to the doctoral student’s ISP by copying the web address when you are in the ISP-system and then paste it into an e-mail.

Reviewing the content of the ISP

In the "Workflow" tab, in “Current work task” you find a description of your work task (6). Enter the tabs "Timeplan" and "Overview and reflections" to get useful overviews of the doctoral student’s planned education and progression.

If there are significant changes that requires attention from Head of department they should be clearly stated in "Overview and reflection”. Doctoral student, first assistant supervisor and principle supervisor can revise this module.

Aver review by first assistant supervisor and the principle supervisor, the ISP is to be revised by the FUAP. FUAP now has to decide if there are significant changes of the ISP compared to last version, so the ISP requires attention from Head of department.

If it is a new admission or if there are no significant changes from the previous ISP, the FUAP will both approve and establish the ISP and this is done in two steps in Ladok. That is, FUAP needs to send the ISP forward two times in the work flow.

If it is an ISP with significant deviations from previous version, the head of the department establishes the ISP. It is the responsibility of the FUAP to notify the head of department when this is the case. Significant changes should be clearly stated in “Overview and reflection”. The FUAP then forwards the ISP to the head of the department to be established and has then finished the work task.

If FUAP or the head of department find information in the ISP that has to be corrected, the ISP has to be sent back to the doctoral student with a comment on what has to be done. The ISP will then again be sent to a decision-maker for approval.

If an action plan is needed for a doctoral student, this can be uploaded in the ISP as a separate attachment in “Other documentation” (in “Basic information”).

Approving or establishing the ISP

After reviewing the ISP your task is to approve, establish or send the ISP back to the doctoral student for revision.

Click on one of the blue boxes under the heading "Current work task."

If you choose to approve/establish the version, that means you are signing the ISP, and it will be forwarded to the next step in the ISP workflow

The head of department reviews and approves ISP if there are significant changes compared to previous planning. It is the responsibility of the FUAP to notify the head of department when this is the case. Significant changes should be clearly stated in “Overview and reflection”.

If an action plan is needed for a doctoral student, this can be uploaded in the ISP as a separate attachment in “Other documentation” (in “Basic information”).

Filling in the ISP
(Applies to ISP supervisors with editing permission)

Once an administrator has started an ISP version in Ladok, information can be entered in the tabs from "Basic Information" down to "Overview and reflections" in the left menu. The panels "Admitted to" and "General syllabus" in "Basic information" are locked to the ISP-administrator.

The "Timeplan" tab is a summary of entered information in the other tabs, and no new information should be added here.

Basic information

Admitted to (1)

The information in this panel is retrieved from the student´s admission data in Ladok. Thus, the “Subject instance, start date” is the date when the doctoral student was admitted to the doctoral education in Ladok. The “Subject instance, end date”, is a template date calculated 4 years from the start date in Ladok.

"Higher education institution resources": According to the "Guidelines for Doctoral Education at Uppsala University”, the ISP must specify the commitments (in addition to supervision) made by the parties to ensure a functional education. Enter which resources the institution provides in the education and to what extent these can be expected to be available to the doctoral student during the education. For example, access to experimental measurement equipment, cohorts of collected biological material, or databases.

This information is entered by the ISP-administrator when initiating the digital ISP. The information is transferred from the Admission documents and decided by the head of department and must not be changed.

General syllabus (2)

The ISP-administrator enters information about the general syllabus.

Milestones in third-cycle studies (3)

Select milestones from the predefined list to plan the doctoral student's education per calendar half year.

Supervisor and doctoral student fill in this information together (that is if more milestones are to be added in comparison to the Admission documents).

Use the available milestones options as far as possible and avoid free text. The idea is to plan the doctoral student's education with a basic structure of timed activities. For milestones that have been completed or will be completed in the near future, fill in the date as well. The milestones can be changed as the doctoral studies progress.

Study activity and funding (4)

Planned activities and funding are entered by the supervisor and doctoral student on a half-year basis.

Reported activities and funding are retrieved from Ladok.

Supervisors and doctoral student plan study activities six months at a time (use appropriate semesters). Note! This does not replace the activity report on actual activity that is done separately and then entered in Ladok and transferred to the digital ISP.

The study activity is related to personal work effort in the third cycle studies, where full-time (100%) corresponds to 40 hours/week on average during six months.

During audit, any planned activity reported as actual activity is removed.

Funding codes used at the Faculty of Science and Technoloy

Funding codes used at the Faculty of Science and Technoloy can be found in the Admission documents (note that in Ladok there are more to choose from than are actually used).

DTJ = Employment as doctoral student at a higher education institution irrespective of how the post is funded (also with other institution than UU).

HTJ = Other form of employment (than a employment as doctoral student) that implies that doctoral education can be pursued within the epployment, e.g. Marie Cure doctoral student, employment as assistant with doctoral student duties, employment as adjunkt or administrative staff.

FTG = Industrial doctoral student, i.e. a doctoal student employed a company and pursues doctoral studies as part of this paid employment. [Employment withing the university financed by a company is not included here.

AUH = Other forms of employment outside the university that implies that doctoral studies can be pursued, e.e. employees at public authorities, municipalities, schools and county councils or trade unions.

STP = Stipends (even from outside Sweden).

BSL = Allowance provided by Sida, for example sandwich-doctoral student.

Departmental duties (5)

Here a doctoral student´s departmental duties are documented.

Supervisor and decision-maker

In "New supervisor input," the principal supervisor specifies agreed supervisor input per calendar half year, such as the organization, percentage, or hours of supervision.

Use "Change information" to add a note if there is relevant information that does not fit within the supervisor input.

Here the distribution of tasks between different supervisors are described, which according to Guidelines for Doctoral Studies at Teknat must be entered in the ISP.

Supervisor conversation

Select "Type of Meeting," fill in the date and participants.

At least one supervision concertation per year should focus on the progress of the doctoral student’s education. The conversation is documented as “Annual follow-up conversation”.

Both the supervisor and the doctoral student reflect in “Note” on how the collaboration has worked in the past year.

Other conversations regarding the progress of the research project can be documented in the ISP, but that does not mean that a new ISP should be established.

During the doctoral studies, it is recommended that at least one “Career conversation”, that guides the doctoral student about both academic and non-academic carriers, be conducted and documented.

Thesis work

How to use the tab "Thesis Work" is determined by each department. Below, different possibilities are described.

Summary (1)

Here, the preliminary title of the thesis and basic information about it are documented, and the research plan is uploaded (PDF).

At the faculty, the professor responsible for doctoral education (FUAP) is repsonsible for how to work with the panel "Thesis work". Below are examples.

Planning and follow-up (2)

In this panel, planning and follow-up of activities related to the thesis work can be documented, for example the design of the introductory chapter of a compilation thesis.

Part of thesis work (3)

Here, parts of the thesis work can be planned and followed up. This could include an article in a compilation thesis or a chapter (select "Other") in a monograph.

Each subproject gets a separate page and a subheading, "Planning and follow-up," where more detailed follow-up can take place per calendar half year.

Document for the various parts of "Thesis work" what have been completed in the previous year and plan head for the coming year.

Ethical conditions (4)

Any ethical conditions regarding the thesis work can be uploaded here.

Courses and conferences

Courses, conferences, and other credit-bearing activities at the doctoral level are reported in Ladok and when certified they are automatically transferred to the doctoral student's ISP under the heading "Unsorted certified results" (yellow rows). The activities are then sorted under the appropriate headings further down.

Reported results at the doctoral level before 2018, which are found under "Other results" in the doctoral student's overview in Ladok, are not automatically transferred to the doctoral student's ISP.

Unsorted certifed results (1)

Certified results at the doctoral level in Ladok are automatically transferred to Ladok ISP and appear under this heading. The results then need to be sorted under the appropriate headings (2, 3, 5, 6).

Mandatory courses (2)

Here planned and completed mandatory courses are documented.

When a planned course is completed, reported and sorted under this heading it can be removed from planned courses.

“Ethics of Technology and Science, part I” (2 credits) is an example of a mandatory course for all doctoral students at Teknat. There may also be mandatory courses for the subject/major according to its general study plan.

Elective courses (3)

Here planned and completed elective courses are documented.

When a planned course is completed, reported and sorted under this heading it can be removed from the planned courses.

One example of an elective course is “University pedagogical education for doctoral students”.

Credit transfer / Credited education (4)

Credited education is automatically transferred from Ladok to here.

Conferences (5) and Seminars and other activities (6)

Under these headings are planned and completed credit-bearing conferences, seminars and other activities.

Non-credit-bearing activities (7)

Planned and completed non-bearing activities in third cycle education can be documented here.

Non-credit bearing activities included for example, activities to fulfill the degree goals.

Learning outcomes

In the field “Change information” for each learning outcome, the activities that contribute to the achievement of the outcome is documented. A learning outcome is marked as completed when it is achieved.

There can be several activities that need to be fullfilled in order to achive the goal.

Timeplan

In the timeplan the information entered in the other tabs in the ISP is summarized to give reviewers and decision-makers an overview of the doctoral student´s plans forward. No new information is entered in this tab.

Overview and reflections

This page provides an overview of key parts of the doctoral student's individual study plan per calendar half-year.

Planned activities are indicated in parentheses. If both planned and completed activities exist for the same half-year, the completed activity is shown first, followed by the planned one in parentheses.

100% study activity corresponds to one calendar half year of full-time studies, which means that four years of full-time studies gives a total of 800% study activity.

In reflections, the supervisor and the doctoral student can reflect on the student's progression at different stages of the doctoral education. This may include discussions on achieved milestones, identification of potential obstacles, and planning of future steps.

Here, the doctoral student and supervisor write a follow-up of the past year, separately, and comment on what has been good and what can be improved.

If there are SIGNIFICANT DEVIATIONS from previous study plan that require the attention of the Head of Department, they must be clearly presented here.