Postgrad Dissertations Workshop Series: Structuring your dissertation
When:
—
Venue:
Online
This workshop gives an overview of dissertation structure, with particular focus on the major dissertation 'literature review' and 'discussion' sections, before considering how we might organise our ideas in the planning and drafting stages. Finally the workshop will introduce a helpful method called 'the synthesis matrix', a way of combining ideas from other writers to support and clarify your own argument.
An earlier workshop in the series focuses on preparation and planning for your dissertation, including a focus on time and project management and formulating your research question. It will be more relevant to students who have not already begun their dissertation research process and and are at the earlier stages of considering their dissertation research. Later workshops consider the writing-up stage, being productive in the writing process, and a more detailed look at the literature review.
Although the workshop may be helpful for dissertation writers from any discipline, these workshops will particularly focus on empirical research dissertations. Empirical research is usually found in scientific, social science and vocational subjects, and such dissertations use questionnaires, surveys, lab experiments and other methods to gather original data, and follow a formal report structure, rather than primarily researching from secondary literature, books and journals.
The workshop is primarily aimed at postgraduate students, but undergraduate students may also find it helpful.
The slides and a recording of this workshop will be found in the Birkbeck Study Skills Moodle Module, in the Writing Skills Resources section under 'Dissertations'.
Contact name:
Sal Campbell