Speaker 1: Thanks for watching. Hello, my name is Dr Derek Watson from the University of Sunderland and I've come along here today to talk to you about dissertations or how to successfully complete a dissertation for your undergraduate or postgraduate degree. So what I'm going to be doing is, I'm going to be sharing with you some techniques on how to successfully complete your thesis. First of all, we'll start off with the title. The title of a thesis or your research area is instrumental in two ways. One, you've got to pass your degree, a postgraduate degree and secondly, you've got to create a gateway to employability. So what I'm about to say today is possibly going to shock you or surprise you. Most students will pick a topic of interest to themselves and they pass. But then when they start applying for a career, a credible career, they find that they struggle in the interview. So what I'm suggesting is, pick a topic that will appeal to organisations, almost any type of organisation. So a key area that you might want to think about is potentially quality. It affects all organisations. Or how do we motivate staff without paying them extra? How do you motivate staff through non-monetary mechanisms? But try to pick a topic whereby once you've completed your qualification, you can actually use it. And what I mean by using it is taking your thesis along to an interview and presenting that to the panel so they can see your theme, your topic, your contribution and also the professional structure of what you're capable of doing. So bear that in mind. So after the title, abstract. Abstracts, I would suggest that you leave it till the end. It's the last section that you feed in. Although it's at the beginning of the structure. And it's a bit like going to the movies. You will see clips of future movies to whet your appetite to come along to watch them at a later date. Your abstract has to be concise. It's got to summarise your research contribution. But it's got to be motivating. It's got to inspire the reader, particularly your first marker, your second marker and also your external examiner. And it should be a paragraph, approximately 150 words, rather like the abstracts for journal papers. Next section. Introduction. Introduction has to be very concise. Why are you writing the thesis? What is the purpose of your research? And more importantly, what is the aim and your objectives for researching that particular area? And bear in mind, a future employer may want to read your thesis. Hence the importance of your title. After your introduction, what you have is your literature. Your literature review. Now once again, from experience, and I've read many theses, many dissertations, students tend to, because they've got such easy access to the internet and electronic journals and also through university internal intranets, there's potentially too much information out there. So what I see in many submissions that I haven't supervised is whereby students simply shotgun the information into the literature review. And the literature review has to be concise. You have to justify what are the key things in the literature. So what I recommend students do is create diagrams throughout your thesis. And once again, this will help signpost your assessors and the external examiner on what your thought process is. So the literature review, you'll create a diagram. You will have your question in the middle. And this will be figure one. And what you will do is, from reading the journal papers, your first journal paper, what you'll do, you'll add key themes on that. Then when you come to read your second journal paper, use a different pen. And then, if you come across additional subject areas, you can add to them. However, hopefully, you will be duplicating current themes. And as you build up this diagram, make sure you put your reference, your reference source, so the reader, the examiners, can identify, this is your diagram, this is your question, these are the key themes relevant. And you've duplicated it because you've been reading various journals. And you've identified that these are the key themes. And they're referenced. So what you will then do in your literature review, you will talk about these themes and how they are connected. They're not in isolation. How they are connected in a logical structure within that. Next section is your methodology. Your methodology. And if you can imagine your methodology, which sometimes students struggle with, many students submit theses or dissertations with a weak methodology section and lose marks. So it's critical that your methodology justifies the tools in which you're using. So think about a plumber. A plumber receives a call to go around to a property to fix a leaky pipe or a leaky radiator. The plumber will attend with a box of tools. They are your research tools. The plumber then looks at the problem and decides which tools they are going to use. And it's very similar to your research methodology. You will have to justify your approach. You will have to justify why you are selecting specific tools to answer your research question. In addition to your methodology, you need to think about how we're going to test. This is what we've read about in the literature. This is what the literature says. But what does the commercial environment say? So what we need is gateways to try and collect data. So, for example, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups. And this is one technique that you need to adopt, which will enhance your overall grade. Having looked at your literature review, which have identified key themes, you will then develop a set of questions. And this is what students don't do. Most students don't do. And they're missing out on marks. What they need to do, they need to develop a table. And on the left-hand side, you will write your questions. Questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, up to 15, 20 questions. Now, these can be open-ended or closed questions. However, these questions have to be linked to your literature review. And many students simply pluck questions out of the air, construct a questionnaire, ship it off to an organisation. But when they come to submit the paper, the thesis, comments come back. Lack of linkage to the literature review. How have you justified these questions? So what I'm proposing is, you list the questions on the left-hand column. On the right-hand column, you justify why you've selected that question. But you also reference it to a reference source which is identifiable in your literature review. There you have the linkage. That's what many students don't do. So let me just repeat that. You justify the tools that you're going to use. You then, having reflected on your literature review, you extract questions. Those questions go into a table. On the right-hand side, you justify a sentence or two sentences. Why have you selected those questions? And you make a reference that you've specifically referenced from your literature review. You have the linkage. Next section. Findings. Or data analysis. Or discussion. Or a combination of all three. But your title is relevant to employability. You've got your introduction, concise, which has identified your introduction, your aims, your objectives. Your literature review has been justified as in figure one. You've got the structure. And you know you're talking about the key areas because you've superimposed different journal papers. And you've identified the relevant areas. From that, you develop questions, which has been identified in your methodology, via the table. Now your findings section. Your findings section is very important. Because it will identify themes. And what many students do is they distribute a questionnaire. They get the responses back from the organisation. And then their findings section is nothing better than a regurgitation of that data. For example, question one responses were, and students do a nice pie chart. 70% of the responses said this. 30% of the responses said X, or the opposite. And they systematically go through each question. A cure for insomnia. And also a mechanism not to demonstrate your analysis. So this is what I suggest. You look at the feedback from the question. And what you've got is you've got various responses. What I suggest that you do. You identify themes. So, for example, theme one could consist of answers one, three, five and six. Theme two, you've clustered the responses into two, four, eleven and fifteen and so on. And what this shows the assessors is that you have the ability to look at raw data and cluster it into key themes. So what you'll do is you'll create a diagram. Or better still, you'll have a diagram where you've got your table. You've got the raw responses. And then you have clustered them into key themes. And when you come to write it up, you've got specific sections or specific paragraphs. Addressing each of these themes going through your finding section. However, what students also fail to do. They will talk about the findings, but they will not link it to the literature review. So what you've got to do as you're working through each of these sections systematically through your finding section. You need to make reference to your literature review. You're not repeating your literature review. But what you're doing is, for example, theme one. The data supports the commentary of. And you link it back to a researcher which you've referenced in your literature review. Theme two, maybe. The data is very interesting. This further supports or casts doubt or raises a question mark about what's being said in the literature. You are demonstrating that you have the ability of analysis and application within that. The next section. Your conclusion section. A bit like a court case where the judge summarises. What are the general findings of the research? What did you find? And what are those implications for an organisation or particular market or service sector? A key area which is also neglected is the recommendation section. Quite often, I will look at theses as an external and I will say, at best, a paragraph. Now, really, to a certain extent, as academics, we know the literature. We know the different types of methodology. We don't know how you can structure the theming. So if you can do that, you're going to get extra marks. Yes, you can demonstrate your ability to summarise in a conclusion, which should be approximately half a page. But then comes the recommendations. And this is the key part of your contribution. It's your thumbprint. It's what you can contribute to the bedrock of knowledge or your community of practice within that. So, recommendations. Recommendations. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you a technique to make sure you can't just submit a paragraph. So going back to the diagram of themes. So this could be, if we've got figure one there, this would be figure two. What you would create in here, in your recommendations, is a diagram. And what you would do, you would have theme one, two, three, theme four. They're your issues that you've identified in your findings that are linked to your recommendations. Your recommendations are, well, so what? You've identified the problems. What are you going to recommend? What are your commercial, viable recommendations that you can present to the organisation or to the market sector? So this is what I suggest students do. You create another diagram. You've got your themes there. You create an organisational structure. With STO. S stands for Strategic. T stands for Tactical. O stands for Operational. So what I'm doing is I'm creating a diagram where you've identified the themes. We've got the organisational structure. Strategic, Senior Management. Tactical, Middle Management. Operational, Frontline Staff. On the front line of the organisation. So what we have to do. Theme one. What are our recommendations? What are we going to recommend at a strategic level to resolve this problem? What are we going to resolve or recommend at a tactical and at an operational? Now the reason I'm structuring it like that is any recommendation has to be brought in by the organisation. You've got to get the support from senior management, strategic. You've got to get support from middle management, the tactical. And you've got to get support from the frontline troops interacting on the frontline. What are you going to recommend there? Theme two. What are you going to recommend at a strategic, tactical, operational? Theme three. What are you going to recommend at a strategic, tactical, operational? And last theme. Strategic, tactical, operational. Now your recommendations need to start off by stating. You will be structuring your recommendations under three distinct headings. Strategic, tactical, operational. And justify why you're doing that. You need to do that to get the full commitment of the organisation to buy into your solutions. If you just go for senior management. What about middle management? And the operatives, frontline staff. Everyone needs to be on the same page with the solutions. So what you'll then do is, systematically, you'll have a paragraph or two paragraphs on strategic challenges. Recommendations. Tactical recommendations. And operational recommendations within that. Now, what I do recommend that you do is, in addition, which isn't always asked for, is what we call an action sheet. Meaning, you've done your literature review. You've justified your methodology with your questions linked to your literature review. You've gone through your findings section. You've clustered the key themes together. You've summarised it. You've come up with commercially viable, saleable recommendations. And this is what a future employee will look at. This is what they'll home in on. Has this student or potential candidates got the ability, not just to identify problems, but to structure solutions? But you're going to go the extra nine yards. What you're going to do is, you're going to produce an action sheet. One page, electronic. And what it has is, it's got the issue. And these are the issues that need to be addressed. You've also got person responsible. You've got to give someone the responsibility. You've got the resources required. You've got the cost. And you've also got the time frame. So many theses, dissertations, include recommendations. Although I've said very short recommendations. This avoids it. You've got three distinct sections within your recommendations. So your recommendations should be running approximately two, possibly three pages in length. And then, what you will do, you will have your themes. One, two, three, four. There might be more than four themes. There might be five, six. I wouldn't go above more than six because it would be too bulky. Person responsible. So who do we choose? You're not going to lose marks by identifying somebody in the organisation. Whereby, the ultimate organisation might say, well, that's not specifically for that person. What the examiners and the assessors want to know is, have you identified, say, someone in the, for example, the HR manager? And with regards to, if we run and keep the theme on the HR manager, the resource might be training. One of your recommendations must probably be training or repeat training. It will be, well, if everyone needs to be trained, what, how much is that going to cost? Once again, you're not going to lose marks if you don't get the exact cost right. What the examiners want to see is, have you thought about the cost? So, for example, a member of staff might work out £100 to be trained if you've got a cohort of 15. So what you would do is, you would guesstimate the likely cost. This section here, timeframe, would be short-term, medium-term, long-term. And what I mean by long-term, 12 months. This action sheet involves a 12-month scenario. So short-term could be 1 to 3 months. Medium-term could be 3 to 6 months. Long-term could be 6 months to 12 months. But make sure that you include that. And when that's completed, you can go back and say, right, that's my action sheet, that's the sheet of paper, I could go in on Monday morning and give the organisation. Those themes are linked to these recommendations, which are linked to these themes, which were extracted or clustered in your filing section from your methodology, which you have justified in the table. Your literature review is being justified because it's systematic and you've duplicated, you know these are the common themes from the journal papers which you've read and you've documented. There you can put in your abstract now. You can summarise what was your area of research, what was important about it, what did you contribute within that, in your abstract. So don't forget, your literature review links to your methodology. Your findings section links back to your literature review. Because when you're talking about the themes, you're making reference, you're not rewriting your literature review, you're making reference to your literature review there, just in reference only. Your conclusion links to your findings. Your recommendations link to your findings. And your recommendations are developed into an action sheet within that. And there you have a structured dissertation that links, that demonstrates your analysis, your synthesis, your application of viable commercial recommendations, and the extra bit is your action sheet. One page, 12 months advice, what you would recommend to the organisation to help eradicate these problems. And if you do that, you should pass your dissertation and it should give you a good crack at getting your first job interview. Thank you very much.