1.Dissertation Objectives
A Dissertation is required to be submitted for your programme, the topic of which will be approved by the programme director (mainly to ensure that you don’t write about a topic that is too far out of the ordinary). First of all, you need to know the school’s specific dissertation dl and the specific number of credits it will take. In particular, some schools will set up a stage ddl, that is, you need to submit a draft/first edition/including LR/including outline, etc., so you need to plan the completion of the timeline at the beginning, generally complete a paper in 3 months to half a year!
2. Points to focus on in the early stage
➢Total word count of the dissertation: its upper & lower limits (generally +/-10% of the word count range), serious failure to meet the word count limit may result in a low score or resubmission.
➢Total word count range: – Generally includes chapter footnotes and endnotes, excludes references, interview transcripts and abstracts, and appendices must not be too long.
➢Penalties for failure to meet the deadline: If there are extenuating circumstances, you can argue with the university (supervisor) to reduce the penalty (note that you have to argue before submitting the paper late!), and you can argue with the university (supervisor) to reduce the penalty if you cannot finish the paper. ), and if you can’t finish the paper, you can weigh the time and points (pay attention to the daily deduction of points for late submission, and pay attention to the upper limit).
➢The school contact person and his/her email address for thesis issues: including the IT technical problem manager, thesis manager, and the dedicated tutor, to ensure that if there are any problems, you can contact the person at the first time, instead of sending it to the support team to transfer it.
If you are looking for a high quality dissertation, focus on school dissertation seminars, tutorials, and ask your tutor for further reading material on dissertation preparation and research methods.
➢Create a special file of thesis materials, including reading notes, copies of diagrams, meeting notes, papers, etc., as well as drafts of chapter sections, and back up all files.
➢If you are new to the dissertation, ask your school (advisor) to provide you with examples of good essays from previous years for reference.
➢Submission requirements, submission window, whether paper copies are required, and whether additional forms are required.
3. Thesis preparation stage
Topic Selection: Inspiration can be drawn from recent journal publications, reports, or organisational priorities to find a topic of interest, but be careful not to be too general & broad.
Don’t be too general, broad or vague (your supervisor will check this), and most importantly, make sure that you have a database or data collection method at your disposal.
The most important thing is to ensure that there are available databases or a method of data collection at hand.
Supervisor: Generally, students will be assigned a supervisor by their faculty, who will be responsible for providing advice and guidance to help improve the quality of the thesis. However, the university expects students to complete their dissertations independently, so the supervisor will not interfere too much (unless you are lucky enough to meet a super responsible supervisor, otherwise the supervisor will not make sure that you pass the course, so keep this in mind).
●Tutors are generally slow to respond to emails. Book the meeting time in advance.
● Send your tutor the full syllabus & progress, updated parts, bibliography, and any questions you would like to get feedback on before the meeting, especially if you only send updated parts.
Note that if you only send the updated part, the tutor may not be able to deal with the connection between the part and the whole, and then you will need to explain it again.
Regular Dissertation Timeline.
Stage 1 (1-2 months) : Start thinking about the topic of your thesis, do some broad research, find a topic for your research, get assigned a mentor based on your proposal, make initial contact with your mentor, and decide on a research question for your thesis.
Stage 2 (1 month): Introductory discussion with the supervisor to define the thesis concept, outline and research methodology.
Stage 3 (1 month) : Completion of the literature review section and confirmation of the thesis research methodology.
Stage 4 (2 months): Beginning of the independent research section.
4. Dissertation Writing Phase (Regular Mode)
Part 1: Introduction.
Normally no more than 10% of the total word count.
The conventional structure needs to cover: a) Background: Introduce the reader to your field of research (not too much detail, and not too irrelevant). b) Focus of the research: A natural link from the background information to the topic of your work, outlining the aims and objectives of the research, preferably (basically) as a question on a problem for which there is a gap in the existing literature, or a problem for which there is debate. c) A summary of the structure of the thesis: A brief introduction to the topic of the research, and an overview of the structure of the thesis (in the usual mode).
C) Overview of the structure of the thesis
Part 2: Literature Review.
The Literature Review is roughly 20%-40% of the total word count.
It is a critical assessment of the collected literature in your field of study, which allows the reader to understand the dynamics of the information surrounding your research topic, or the clash of schools of thought, etc. It identifies the gaps that your research seeks to address and is the core foundation of the Dissertation.
Preparation tips.
The articles you read should preferably be published in academic journals by well-known scholars, or in professional books or official reports, and should be authoritative, scholarly, and objective. In the process of reading, keep thinking about what gaps your research can fill, even if it’s just a small gap, such as the sample size of the previous study is not large enough, the time span is not long enough, etc. can be.
Start writing Suggestion 1.
The topic should not be very broad (there is no need to start with background information here), as well as fragmentation, because there must be hundreds of studies around this topic in the world, you need to pick the focus of the logical organisation (step-by-step construction / iterative development / mutual ….. )
Start writing tip 2.
The source of the article must be up-to-date, in addition to the basic formula theory, research-based reference is best within the last 5 years, not just direct quotes paragraph attention to critical review
Part 3: Methodology.
Points to be covered
1 -Specific problem to be studied in the thesis & Hypothesis to be tested & Overall purpose of this study Need to cover points
2 – Research design. The type of research you are undertaking, and a detailed description of the research methodology, including the conceptual framework or theoretical model you wish to apply. Then specify the method of data collection that is appropriate for the study, and the need to justify the choice of that method, which can be justified here in relation to the literature review section. Finally, the limitations of the methodology can be listed but the compelling trade-offs have demonstrated the comprehensiveness of the dimensions of the reflection.
Part 4&5: Results and Discussion
The general summary section can be divided into two sections, describing the results, and evaluating the results.
Suggestion for the Results section: Try to be as concise as possible, do not list all the source data and detailed and complex computational steps, include only the data sets that are directly relevant to the study, and include the rest of the secondary data in an appendix. The dataset can be constructed around the logic of responding to each hypothesis.
Discussion part of the tip: you can first overall summary for the results of the key findings in order to answer the research question, here pay attention to do not add new data not in the results, only observation and analysis of the assessment of the data has been derived. Avoid simply describing the data in a boring way. Do not over-interpret, speculate or even guess. You can then begin to assess the significance of the results, consider some logical explanations, make supporting arguments for the results, and place them in a larger context, linking them to previous research and discussing their implications for existing scholarship. Finally, some of the limitations are acknowledged and lessons and recommendations for improvement are made.
Part 6: Conclusion
Usually 5% of the total word count.
It is theoretically possible to repeat a summary from previous chapters, but it needs to be very brief and have a broader perspective. For example, rather than simply repeating the findings of the Discussion, it could be linked to the original research objectives to see if they met the expectations of the study. This is followed by an outlook for future research and theoretical development based on this study.
