Speaker 1: Hey everyone and welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, my name is Amina and in today's video we are going to be going through how you can write a first class dissertation in just a matter of a few weeks. And I'm going to say four weeks because I think that is pretty realistic to be able to write a strong first class dissertation. In today's video I'm going to be going through the structure of the dissertation, the different chapters and the different sections that you need to include, a few top tips about each of those chapters as well and also I'm going to be sharing with you a perfect blank Word document template that you can download with the link down below and includes everything you need to give you that starting point for you to start writing your dissertation. So if you want to see more videos like this then don't forget to press the subscribe button to see more from me and yeah, let's get right into it. So I know that this is the time, it's December now, I know that dissertations typically tend to start around the January time point, so the last semester of university and now is the time when you are probably thinking about the title, what you're going to be writing about, maybe you're doing a bit of research and you're going to start writing a bit later on. So it's a really good time now to know what to expect and kind of pre-empt what are the things that you're going to be including in your dissertation. And dissertations are worth so much. If you're in your final year of university, it's probably worth a good chunk, sometimes even 50%, sometimes even 100% of your final year mark. So it is really important that you're taking the time to not just rush it at the last minute, but actually take time to make sure that all the sections are done really, really well. So let's start off by going through the organisation and the structure of what a dissertation looks like. And for this, I'm going to be sharing my screen so you can see everything over here to see the structure. This is actually a template that I have developed myself. And like I said, the link will be down below. So you're more than welcome to go and download it. It's got all the top tips there as well. So let's go through and look at every single chapter that you need to include in your dissertation. Okay, so let's start off with the title page. So you need a title page, which obviously includes your title. It includes your name, your year, the year it is now, or even like the fact that you're a third year student, the word count, and look out for any other details that you might need to include in this as well. So that also could include like your student ID number. Sometimes the university requires different things at the front of your title page. Just make sure that you're checking the requirements of your university, that it matches what is actually on your title page, because these are things that will lose you marks and other things, little things that mean that you won't get a first. Okay, so moving on to the next page, the next page is our contents page. And this is the contents page that includes all the chapters and the sub chapters of your dissertation. So as you can see here, we have the declaration, which I'll go through in a second, the abstract, the introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion. Then you've got your supplementary parts, which are the list of tables, list of figures, list of charts, abbreviations. And by the way, these are things that people always forget to include, but they are what is going to make your dissertation look like a PhD thesis, because this is how you would present your PhD thesis. And then obviously your appendix as well. So including all of these things in this order just means that you have a very concise plan and a very concise set of chapters. So moving on, you have your declaration as well. So the declaration essentially says that this is original work, I haven't plagiarized, and I'm saying that I've done all this work myself. So I've also left a bit of a comment here saying that if you have collaborated with anyone else, you should really include that like this work has been done in conjunction with this person. And that is also important to declare there too. Then moving on, you have the abstract. So the abstract, I have a ton of videos about the abstract. So if you want to go into more depth about that, you can. And yeah, abstract is like a good 200 to 300 word summary about what you've done. Then the next thing is the introduction. So the introduction typically includes a literature review, which forms the body of your dissertation, which forms like the background showing that you understand like the literature and the field that you're working in. And it's one of the kind of biggest parts of your dissertation and also the most challenging, I would say. Then you have a research question, also a hypothesis. The hypothesis essentially states that this is what you're doing. So I think if I do this thing, this thing's going to happen. So that's what your hypothesis is. Then moving on, you have your material and methods. So this is where you'd include any experiments that you're doing, your analysis, your stats, your procedure, your inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria, all of that good stuff is included in this section. Then you have your results. So think of it like a little story. You've given your background. You then say what the method is. You then say what the results are. So here you'd have like results depending on how many results, sub results you have. This would be three headings, four headings, five headings. Then you have your discussion section. So this is where you would say you'd go into more depth. So your methods and your results are typically just like descriptive. Then your discussion is a lot more analytical and critical and your conclusion, of course. And then you've got your list of tables, as I said, list of figures, list of charts and abbreviations. And then finally, obviously your references, which I also have a link here for a video. So this template I've done quite, I think quite in depth. It took me quite a long time actually to get it all together. And essentially what it includes is a hyperlink for all of these chapters in the contents page here. So what you can do is once you've like included that information, you've edited it, you've changed the titles, maybe the subheadings, whatever, you can very easily just refresh. And what it does is it refreshes the contents page for you. And it means that everything is aligned in terms of the page numbers and like your titles and headings and everything. So like I said, that's available to download down below. So let's move on and talk about how you would actually organise and how you're going to actually write your dissertation. So I would always recommend starting from the methods and materials section, because this is the one where you usually would have the methods already set out. It's probably one of the first things that you start to think about. So you can write those things down. They typically don't tend to change that much. Once you've picked your participants and once you've picked your research group or once you've picked your method, that tends to be quite stable, secure, and that doesn't really change that much. So you can start writing your methods and materials really as soon as possible. Then I would recommend going on to writing the literature review. So this is something that you kind of will do in conjunction. So whilst you're doing your research and you're looking at your methods and you're trying to get some results, you can also obviously read some papers and gather those papers. You might have like a reading list and you've written down like the sources, what their methods are, what the limitations are, what's missing from their research and the critical discussion and kind of put those together into a literature review. So you're writing your methods and whilst you're doing that, you're writing your literature review or you're reading papers at least to get yourself started. Then once you have done your methods and you've started to actually apply that and you're starting to do your research or your experiments, you then will have some results pop up. So this is where you start to develop those results. So as soon as you get some results, put them into charts, put them into graphs, put them into tables, start to compile them. If it's a survey, start to make it look nice. Think about how you want to present it. So that's all going on in the background. So you're reading your papers for your literature review and then of course you're writing your literature review. You're starting to think about the different chapters and at the same time you're thinking about your methods and you're starting to develop your results as to whatever's coming in. Then you want to make sure that you've now finished your literature review and that everything that reflects in the results is reflected in the literature review. If you are not talking about it in your results or you're not really discussing it, then it shouldn't really go in your literature review and vice versa. So just making sure that everything matches. Then once you've done those three main sections, you then want to think about the conclusion. So how are you concluding this research? What is it that you've found? What are the takeaway messages? What are the limitations? What has happened in your research? The conclusion is the next thing. Then the last thing of the main chapters is the abstract. So the abstract is the absolute final thing that you do that is essentially a summary of everything. So the abstract talks about what your research aims are, what the hypothesis is, what the missing gap in literature is, and then the methods, what approach you're taking to overcome that gap, then your results, and then the conclusion and the future implications and directions. So that is your abstract. And that is the last thing you do because that is something that is determined by everything else. So you can't write the abstract first without having the results and without having the discussion and the conclusion. Then you want to, of course, obviously format. If you use this template, everything's basically there for you. So all you need to do is add in your references. Now, adding in your references is something that you should be doing throughout, and this will save you a ton of time. If you were to ask me, how can I write my dissertation really quickly? I would say, sort out your references before you even start writing. So what I'd recommend is when you download this template, I would recommend downloading the Mendeley plugin, the Word plugin. So you can use it side by side. So as you are writing your literature review and as you're writing your results and getting all your data in, you can also input your references at the same time. So it's very, very easy. I have a whole video about this, and I've also talked about a little bit in the guide as well that accompanies this template. And I think it's the easiest way possible. If you delete a reference, it deletes automatically. If you have to change your references from Harvard to APA or something else, it does it automatically. It lists it all for you in alphabetical order. To get a first, the thing that you need to understand is that for the top level for a first, the key characteristic of a first in a dissertation for final year is that it is publishable. That's like the top. So if you ask yourself, is this work publishable? There's a few things that mean that it's publishable. Firstly, it needs to be accurate. It needs to be clear and concise and written academically with the correct structure. But the most important thing is also the fact that the references have to be written really well. You can't publish a paper without references being strong. So if you can guarantee that your references are written well using something like Mendeley or any others, EndNote, there's a few other ones as well, but I would recommend Mendeley because it's free. It's easy to use. It seamlessly gets added into your Word document, so you can use it at the same time. Those are little things that will mean that you are aiming towards a first. And so keeping your references clean and up to date and updated is something I'd highly recommend thinking about before you even started writing anything. So we've spoken about the organisation and the structure of your dissertation. We've spoken about the order that you want to write things in. And we've spoken about referencing. The last thing I wanted to mention is that to be able to get a first, your dissertation has to be very heavily critiqued, especially in the discussion and not in the results. And now this is something that I've spoken about again in the guide, but I really want you to remember that the results section is purely you stating what the results are. I am wearing a black jumper. That's it. That's a result. There's no critique. There's no she's wearing black because it's winter and she wants to be a little bit dark, because she's in a bad mood, because she's feeling low, because she likes the colour. No, I'm just wearing black. That is my result. In the discussion, that is where you can say she's wearing black because, right? So if you have a result and you're doing an experiment, the temperature increased. In the result, all you need to say is the temperature has increased by five degrees. Look at figure one. In the discussion, as you can see in figure one, the temperature has increased by five degrees, which could be a result of the fact that it is winter now, right? And that is a critique. And then you want to expand on that and say, also, Jonas et al have also similarly reported that the temperature increased by five degrees when they looked at it in mice, right? And so you're adding extra layers to it. And that is what happens in your discussion. In the results, it's purely, purely descriptive and evaluative. So you're just evaluating, describing. You're not going into any detail as to why you think that happened at all. So that's something that you want to really think about when writing your dissertation. It can be an afterthought. So I'd recommend just like getting started, get started in your research and then take a look again, go back and look again at your results section and your discussion and make sure that you are being really distinct in the way that you write those two sections. I am going to do more detailed videos on each of those chapters. This video is very much just kind of going through the overall structure and making sure you have like a start point from where you can start from. But I am going to be doing videos in all through January, a full series on each of those sections for the dissertation. So if you do want to make sure that you catch those, then please subscribe to my channel and I'll make it into a nice little playlist for you. But otherwise, I hope that you found this video helpful for giving you a start point as to where you can even begin when it comes to writing the dissertation. Because I do feel like just that initial, like having the title page, having something on paper is sometimes the most difficult part. And I'm providing you with a template that I have designed myself. So that hopefully will give you that first step up. And then you can obviously go from there, do your research, add them in. And yeah, that's a dissertation done, hopefully in a few weeks. Yeah, let me know if you have any other tips and if you want to see any other templates from me as well. And I'll see you guys in my next video. Okay, bye.