okay folks we're going to get stuck into this dissertation um dissertation there you go into this presentation on dissertation writing um what it will say from the very beginning is that this is not about your particular subject this is a very general framework in how you can prepare organize and execute the production of your thesis or your or dissertation or whatever you're actually doing which fits into this particular area and what we do is that more about planning organization but most important we're taking the pressure off you we're trying to limit the amount of work you're doing but also maximize your writing time we're looking at a variety of different visual ways and to use the natural senses in gathering data also I might let's let me make clear from the very beginning is that I'm someone who in there in undergraduate degree actually ended up doing five visitations in two years obviously since earned a number of other dissertations and stuff but within those two years at periods I had to produce very very quickly two weeks four weeks from scratch because of circumstances I had to produce very very quickly so when you think that you've only got four or five weeks to produce a dissertation I will say to you it's possible and the story that I always give as of a dear friend who was producing a history dissertation and this person actually was in a wheelchair a lot of things going on at the time and also was epileptic but managed to write a 10,000 word dissertation in about 36 hours and come out with the first so what I'm saying is is all about organization and ordering the tasks that you have to do so in my mind anything's possible because I've seen it happen so let's go let's begin to this start on this right okay so this presentation is about preparing for the dissertation process simple simplifying the writing process how to prepare ahead of time plotting your progress etc how to become what I call a spider your multitasking hens with the octopus you've got a number of legs you're doing a variety of things at the same time how to utilize your supervisor this is a very very important thing especially for postgraduates master's students who are here over the summer period and invariably what happens you suddenly find out that you're trying to contact your supervisor and he's on holiday nightmare situation that happens every single year so we tell you how you can actually take that into account and are able to kind of consider that when you're doing your planning and also your writing so for those who had come along to my presentation on exam revision then one or two of these things obviously will sink in your head I've moved them around I've kind of like organized in a way they have other meanings but that's basically the same this is very important eating elephants as I've always said a late professor who was here dr. Maura pillow who's now advising for universities across the country her philosophy was that for any task no matter how large or how many small you break it down you can't always see the whole big picture you can't see the whole elephant because it's bigger than us so all I'm seeing is the side of an elephant when the rest of it is around me that is very much how we see a dissertation it is so big is a frightening thing it starts sprouting horns etc etc is actually quite scary because you don't know where to start and what I always say to students is this if you've got 10,000 words don't see it as a 10,000 word dissertation see it as a number of essays and other writings inside so if you've got 10,000 words you may have a thousand words for the introduction you may have 2,000 words for three chapters or four chapters and finish off with a thousand words for a conclusion hence the ten thousand words I've already broken it down haven't I and within each of those chapters you can break it into subsections and you can then break those into other sections and the paragraph but what you're always doing is that you're always breaking it down into digestible pieces that you can see and you can stand back and you can see what you're actually dealing with hence what I said at the very beginning of this presentation is that if you're really pushed and you're up against a wall you have to write very quickly you've got all those little tasks in place and you can bang it out really really quickly but you've got to break those things down hence eating elephants the first thing that I always say the students is that you've got to prepare the ground you've got to prepare the environment for writing your dissertation organization and planning is the most important thing here why because if you're able to order your week you will possibly and hopefully write ahead of time so as we know the summer term in this university and a lot of universities worldwide for postgraduates and masters students is that they begin to go very quiet people go on holiday things shut down various departments that may have helped you with various things they're shut or they're on half slow etc etc so the quicker you knock this thing out before that begins to occur the quicker you can actually begin to do the editing process it's the editing process for me is the major thing here if you've got time to edit it then it's like tightening up a screw you're tightening and tightening sharpening and sharpening tightening until you've got a really good piece of work and heads that's where your big marks come in so you need a big divide your weekly writing and research schedule you need to think of what kind of learner you are are you a morning person are you an evening person are you an afternoon person utilize that time when your brain is sparking when it's kicking off when it wants to do something when it's a bit more tired or a bit more relaxed then maybe do some research but it's when you're at your height of energy and at the height of organization that's when you start firing off your clever ideas so do please use that moment of the day to really express yourself within your writing and other things you have to do so what's important is that by devising a weekly write writing research schedule as we will see in a minute you are able to kind of not just write but research researching is not about just reading for most of the time for doing a dissertation you have to get background reading background knowledge you have two choices you either sit for five to ten hours in a library and try to push all this data text into your head or you can actually begin to target your reading but after you've watched things on YouTube on kind of Harvard Yale Berkeley youtubes or for example you can find things on the University on the kind of blogs and also more importantly you can then sit down and take that information in takes a couple of days but that is your basic research and then you can go on to the writing and doing all the other activities but you need to get that grounding and that's a problem because that takes time usually you can spend weeks and weeks doing your research know that there's an alternative to that we have the technology as I use the terms from the bionic man you have we have the technology let's use it the Internet is a wonderful place we've gots many many academic sites there that you can get data very quickly and watch especially when it comes to problems so sometimes you can find information from a professor or someone who will simplify the kind of things that you're trying to write about hence you can then sit down watch it take a few notes stop start it go back and then begin to put it into your own words and that's actually a very important thing we want to reduce your reading time through other ways as we said we want to kind of visualize the process you can listen you can do all manner of things as I will show you in a minute and of course the biggest thing is you want to give yourself breaks I always say when you're writing a dissertation write or work between 6 & 8 hours a day but breaking that down into 2 hour slots so I've got two hours nice big long break two hours nice big long break and so on you're not wasting time when you have that break you're sitting down in a cafe or sitting down in a restaurant even they actually kind of place yourself in a cafe on campus all day writing and then having a coffee looking around you but it's that time as I have found in the past it's when all the little ideas begin to kind of shake down and it's begin to filter down and they're making sense of what you've watched or you've read and also more importantly your brains in the back going right how am I going to write this baby how am I going to put it in order and that's that's the important thing so for example when we are preparing our our basic week plan we take the lectures out you can use those lectures as maybe study times but you've also got you put in your meals so you're regulated you're organized as I kept saying in the other presentations this week it's not about how clever you are about how organized you are and in actual fact this is has a lot more relevance to dissertation writing sometimes than exam revision because you've only got a certain amount of time to write it it's like I said to most of my students because I teach students who are dyslexic or who have a number of different learning differences I'm Dyslexic and I've also got a me so I'm tired half the time but if you utilize those hours then you're not tired you have a lot of energy but the other thing is and it's most important here is that you're able to kind of take a step back throughout the process of writing and researching and see where you are and that to me is actually very very important so do so planning week I always say 20 out 28 hours a week writing researching that works out about six to eight hours a day not too much so if you're a morning person me I get up at 6:00 work too late have your lunch and breakfast until 10:00 pop for a bank go for a walk come back 10:00 to 12:00 have your lunch two to four have a break and then you've got six to eight and have your dinner or the other way around so you get the bed early you get up early but obviously depends on the individual here but what you're doing is you're creating a really core organization process so when I was a few years ago when I did my first Masters I was working of course I was absolutely exhausted but I was writing a dissertation 20,000 words and I had actually only had about ten weeks from beginning to end so I was working two until five o'clock every day from about ten o'clock so I would get up in the morning about five o'clock I would work for two hours till 7:00 have some lunch some breakfast go back and write for another hour go to work until five o'clock come home write until seven o'clock have a break then right from from 8:00 to 9:00 and then I would start again so I've got six hours I produced it so I was working a lot and I had my particular illness to deal with as well but the point I'm making is that I can do that anyone anyone can do it and hence why I gave the example at the beginning of this lecture space yourself to our in to our work schedules list tasks ahead of the day or week what am I going to do this morning what am I going to do this week what am I going to do tomorrow of course what you can do so I will show in a minute you can begin to have little kind of post-its on this and that I will show you in a minute but basically then what you're working up then in with is that you've got a whole thing here so here we go I've got six hours of study there during the day and I've got some video work while I'm sitting down and watching a documentary or some youtube or lectures or whatever on my subject and then I get into writing I'm better actually in the afternoon so and sometimes in the morning so I might actually begin to write from from 10:00 to 12:00 and then maybe have an hour video where it researching think about it have my dinner my lunch and then straight in the game in the afternoon I've got myself an order I've color-coded it so I know exactly what I'm doing by nine o'clock I go to bed or I going out with some friends and relax treating yourself to me isn't it is as important if not more than writing itself so before we go on to I want to talk about dealing with the supervisor this is something that I've actually put here because otherwise it would fall down at the bottom of the presentation but usually this is the most difficult thing for some students especially for masters students as I said earlier on because half the time it appears that during the summer time it is very hard to get hold of your supervisor they're on holiday which is fair enough they've been working all year but it's hard to track them down but also sometimes you don't know what the balance is how much do you take from them how much do you feel they should contribute to your writing how much of their expertise should you tap into how much which would you have to use them their work yourselves in your own work these are kind of key things I think with balance I mean to me it's always a 50/50 it's always trying to kind of get them to give you the information but obviously not going to write anything for you they're not going to do the work for you but they can guide you however if the supervisor in your mind is not guiding then do ask do not be afraid to ask it is a cooperation thing here the more they cooperate the more you're able to fulfill your outcomes of your dissertation writing so it's quite important that from the very beginning you create some kind of schedule or some kind of working relationship with your supervisor so you know when they're going to be enjoying the week not just turning up and they're gone so and maybe every two weeks you want to submit something in some departments they will only see you a number of times you're only allowed to submit pieces of work a number of times so put that into the context of the plan as I will show you in a minute you have to do again no one on holiday get writing drafts and are done ahead of time and find an alternative if necessary to have proofreading it if your English is your second language or you have a learning difference or we just want someone who can see that there's some kind of order or some kind of organization in it then there's lots of options in the university here for example we have our study surgeries we have our English Cafe on a Thursday night we'll be doing this stuff all over Easter but generally most universities will have something where you can get something proof read even a friend possibly in English speaker you can get to go and proofread it and make sure that you're actually your sentences etc and making sense and you're making a point right okay so before we get actually into planning when you put things in what order when you plot when you're organizing your your pieces of work during the week and drawing the terms I think that's something that I've been using with students and most students who have been using this method found it very very useful it's called the latte principle so if you have a spare piece of paper there I recommend that what you do is that you draw yourself a kind of a latte glass a beer cup etc or nook on that piece of paper and then you break that into about three or four strips so one two three four five if you want to so begin to put things into order and this is ideal for a proposal it's for a little review and it can be used for anything an essay you name it it can be used I had trouble drawing a latte this morning so I couldn't put it onto the PowerPoint but it's quite simple so you get a glass and you a glass shape and you break it into sections now obviously for it for a dissertation as I will show in a minute a kind of an optional order and you gain you can find these on the internet very easily just put in dissertation template literary review template and actually on our own um our own study skills and English Cafe face book we've got all this information that we've been putting together now so you can look at it there however so you begin to order these things so you get an idea of what it's going to look like so you may have your introduction you may have your first chapter your second chapter third chapter if you're doing a proposal you may have your introduction your title your introduction you may have your literal review you may have your methodology and so on is like Heinz baked beans there's 57 varieties and more so there's not one way to write a dissertation hence you've got to find out for your department and the look what it asks you to put in there usually give you a nice little list we want you this this this this and this and this so you create that into your latter glass and then you begin to put different things into each of those little blocks into those categories subsections until you've actually got a complete plan I'll show in a minute what these kind of plans a variety of things but generally that's how we do it it helps you again to stand back and to see what you have to do again you're eating the elephant you're breaking it down I can see the trunk I can see the leg I can see the ear I can see the the tusks or whatever I'm actually able to see each bit that I've got to write what you can also do with that is begin to put next to that subsection or section how many words you feel you want to put into it so as I said back to a thousand words for an introduction possibly you might want to put two thousand if you've gone up to the 20,000 mark of a masters you may want to put each chapter say you know three or four thousand depending on what what type of degree you're doing you may also want for it sound Porter kind of have a literature review methodology you might do a much more science or management based degree which will have your results etc etc and I will show you that in a minute so there's different requirements for different departments so you need to know that and then you can begin to break it down and see what you have to do but remember this is your key to writing as we will show in a minute where you begin to plot each of your activities through your weekly plan and through the term plan that we will do so your deconstruct until you find the right size for you to digest so if you've got the right things in 500 words you think about you could write 500 words in one day hence back to my wonderful colleague who had been an ex-soldier a sergeant major actually and he was so organized hence why he was able to put that order an organization into writing it in basically 30 six hours because he knew how to break tasks down regimented he was you're doing its lucky the same thing here you know what you've got to do each day and each hour so ordering we've been giving a couple options here again this is for a for a literature that's true for a dissertation proposal so what I've got is that again this could be applied into each of you little sections on your latte so for a proposal I've got a title a statement of the problem the background history literal review a theoretical framework methods and procedures proposed chapter outline so what is the problem what am I looking at what's the thing I'm trying to solve what am i approaching what is what is the subject matter that I'm trying to deconstruct and present to my supervisor what's the background in the history of this subject it's a middle of that before is it perfectly new have we kind of discovered this area or field before if so who's been talking about it why is it in the news what is important for me to write about it why is it important for the department literature review who's been writing about this thing who are the authors the key authors that I want to take into account who are these people that I want to kind of deconstruct and talk about their main theories their main findings and how do I compare and contrast this with other people how to compare and contrast as with other studies are there other studies again that's something you got to find out because as I found out to my shock and horror when I went into it this is into a PhD kind of upgrade but um there was actually someone who wrote something almost on the same that I was proposing but I didn't know about it so you've got to be able it's quite a shock for me and I go back to the drawing board well it's all about knowing your literature so it's very very very important that you dig like a mold of fine what's out there and compare and contrast what's a theoretical framework with this how you're going to use this piece what can the theories do you want to bring bring into this particular and piece of work what's the methods and procedures wash your methodology are you going to do mostly archive work are you going out into the field using qualitative or quantitative work are you doing interviews are you doing surveys you're doing kind of in-depth interviews we'd be traveling where you'll be going home where you'll be doing your your research in a foreign country in degrees or somewhere else where are you actually going to do this thing explain it obviously you give you a proposed chapter outline what are my main chapters what are the main things that I'm going to be doing and finally obviously you're looking at bibliography you're looking at they're kind of putting down the main sources that you'll be using this is very much for a proposal obviously again look in your hand books in your department and find out what they suggest but you're breaking it down this would work in about two pages when I was teaching music go breed this is what this is something that we did every year for undergraduate students and they had to put it on to two sides about 500 words to a thousand words easily done okay so let's look for example if you were writing a dissertation this is how it kind of begins to break down you've got a little abstract this should include a summary of your results and the possible implication of your research for a future study in this in the field however this doesn't need to be very long but it could be for some departments not that long but it could be anything from 30 or 40 words up to about say 100 it dependent you've got to look at your handbook and they will explain it also don't forget to put your contents page it looks very nice you've got a variety of little ways you can do this you can either do it you know one point to 1.3 then the next chapter ibly 2.2 2.3 again it's helping you to break it down into little bits so you're giving each title roots kind of overview of each of those sections again it looks smart it looks organized and more most importantly it looks professional and more professional it looks for a dissertation there may be a chance let's all hope that you get published we all know someone who's had a dissertation published if if it goes down well with the department so that's your aim because that's where the big marks are okay so you need to introduction you need to give a kind of overview what the subject is go back to your proposal what you do want to do what's your justification for it you need to actually then begin to look in the context and what context are you writing what's going on around are using different theories is there a problem you're trying to solve etc you need to kind of have a research question justification methodology literature review you don't have to have all these but dependent on your subject matter you may want a research question you may want to aims and objectives again look online for options for your discipline this is very very important because you're using the Internet to guide you you're not plagiarizing you're not copying anybody else's stuff what you're looking for is for guidance and information to make yours very very spot-on with what you're trying to say so you can be a little review a methodology sometimes you may not have a little review your methodology may sometimes be very very small half a page a reverse of that maybe five or six pages I did 20,000 words evolution review 20,000 words for this review I think I must have aged 20 years during that period but I actually did 20,000 words so it can go from different levels main body of your research you want to break it down into your chapters you may have a methodology chapter you may have a results chapter discussion chapter all these are substantial Aptos you may have a chapter with graphs and findings and pie charts all the lovely little things which make it very colorful I also say a turtleneck color is that when possible and when it's applicable bring in pictures bring in graphs liven it up because I tell you something with someone like myself who's supervised about five or six dissertations over the last few years and also teach this subject it can be very very boring just to see black and white for about you know 40 or 50 60 70 80 pages worth so brighten it up make it bold the titles make a bit of pictures when necessary lots of colorful graphs if need be but bring it alive it's important because the reader and the supervisor may want it may help them to actually digest and understand your subject obviously a conclusion within that conclusion a summary of the main contributing ideas and of course other and future research where are you going with this can it be connect contribute might might say something for what's going to happen in the future regarding this particular field you are giving a nice understanding but more importantly showing the reader that you're very aware of where this research is going hence you know your onions you know your subject even if you feel you don't you are telling that reader in writing that you are so again this time you're blowing yourself up to be an elephant and not a max even if you feel you're an only 2nd or 3rd year student writing a thesis the way that you write in the way that you express yourself illustrates to me and to them that you know your subject ok so let's look about yes a literal review because I know people been worried about this again same kind of thing so let's review the matter how big or how small you'll have an introduction introduce a literature how much literature is there is it new is it old is there any new literature on the subject who would the key authors possibly that may be coming into this breakdown into your main body again use your last a principal break it down into themes you've got different key themes you may have let's say for example if you sat down into your research you may find that there's three or four key themes or areas that can produce what I call mini chapters so you may have four or five authors in each of those semi chapters and you can then compare and contrast within that again look online from models and guidance on this because there are hundreds if not thousands of opportunities for you to see the phraseology the way that information is written and the way that they actually kind of order and compare and contrast how do I write it how much information do I write on each author do I write more on my key authors do I write more on my secondary authors nearly every University I found online is beginning to actually give you examples of the writing style that they want an initial review it's actually a couple of youtubes that I've actually put on to our own our own Facebook page so please join up and look at those by some professors in America it really is good really helps future research again what may be coming up also going to be more stuff write written on this don't forget when you're looking for your sources for this review don't limit yourself just to the library Google has it's wonderful Google Scholar loads of stuff on there and lots and lots of other archive metal etc etc within the library don't limit itself just to the to the books or the bibliography in your department okay so we've got all that information we've got all our lattes we've got all the stuff that we got prepared we know what we want to do how it's breaking down how our review looks how a dissertation looks etc etc etc so now we need to do the biggest game of all we need to begin to plan it when do we do what hence the first thing I say to you is this bang it out get it done really quickly I don't mean that in a way that you know you make mistakes but get it done quickly hen so quickly you get it done the quickly you've got time to really begin to put clothes on it you get time to breathe tighten it up make it look good make it the best piece of writing that you have ever done so it's not about just writing it it's about making it editing it especially if English is your foreign language or my case dyslexic I put in my first thesis and I went from my ver they love my ver but my thesis was all over the place because of my writing I didn't I didn't find the time I didn't get the help to actually edit it and correct it the second time they loved it because I then spent all my time and rewrote it actually and banged it out and then I spent months editing it at 80,000 words I edit it until I was blue in the face and they loved it so I'm telling you don't make that mistake bang it out quickly make it look good get the order even if you put in brackets adding quote adding quote get the story down on paper that's a most important thing so you need to divide the snake as we will see here in two weeks this is obviously for the academic term you can you can draw one of these or print the one off all off the Facebook and begin to make your own weeks what weeks when your holiday where the holidays are how long you've got 12 weeks 14 weeks two terms or whatever but you're able to give yourself as we said tasks for each of those weeks maybe two weeks for research three weeks for research one week to write the introduction another week to write maybe a literature review or whatever and then you can put that back as we said before - are under a week plan so we know that what we've got keep using moving around policies for this there you go we can then begin sit ok on the Monday Tuesday and Wednesday I've got 2 4 6 8 10 12 hours I'm going to write my introduction bingo is off on Friday Saturday and Sunday well Saturday I've got my day off on Sunday so I can go for a little walk let all the little things settle but Friday and Saturday here we go again I'm going to knock out my initial review now for the gentlemen sitting in the in the audience who has four weeks to write their dissertation and he knows who is this is how you do it you break it down you've got a big task every day hence the lot a principal comes into being here you take that latte and you turn it into a snake and vice versa it's the menagerie of visual learning you are creating options here to help you to write more succinctly but also on time within the deadlines that you've got so as we can see you want to plot these weeks and then you know when your deadline is you can put the deadlines that say sometime in September or wherever and get that done now I did two dissertations in my undergraduate degree we were lucky then that I could actually do them during the summer at the start at the end of June and submit it by the beginning in the middle of September I had 12 weeks roughly and I did it I did two of those over the summer period I had to start from the very beginning and I had to get it written even the research I hadn't done so it can be done four weeks six weeks if you plan yourself along this way or a similar means then you're able to see yourself on your rushon and you get the task done quicker again we're back to the O idea of learning of using my other lectures as you can see we only remember 10% of what we read so we need to use the bottom of that pyramid we need to look at things we need to watch things we need to listen to programs there's so many websites and radio stations documentary sites where you can actually listen to data on your subject I knew one one student blessin who actually spent all summer watching The History Channel absolutely loopy but he got so much background information on the subject he was doing he was able to kind of give a very good baseline on his topic and then obviously add his targeted reading also if we bring into the idea of visuals we need to see where we are apart from just writing things down obviously piling things that forget when you're writing your little sections that morning you get all your little papers you put things in the order look at your latte you put the things in the order that you're going to write them so you've got to know what's going to be the first paragraph and you put your piece of paper or your author at the top and you work your way down and so on that is the quick way of writing okay so the thing is we also need to be able to see that information and see how it fits together because it may change and one way of doing that obviously is to create yourself a map so you can create a map of sections and paragraphs choose a technique suitable to yourself you know sometimes people make things come alive and obviously use lots and lots of colors so it may turn up to be something like that this is from IQ maps in America who I've used before and this give us permission to use this but basically this gentleman is producing maps in a way that helps you gives you ideas of how you can begin to segment different sections or parts is this isn't just for exam revision this could be my whole dissertation actually the last piece of work that I wrote some years ago I had a huge a 0 a 1 piece of paper on my wall and every day I broke it down right what am I going to write a day but I've already actually put all those things on there remembered it photographed it stuck it on to me on to me computer and then when I'm writing if I got something forget up it comes again got to write that and I can mark it 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 I know the order the paragraphs again back to writing quickly back to banging it out so for example what I all say to the students is this if you're doing a preparing for a dissertation next year hence you've got to kind of get it in 2014 I will say banging out during the summer do your research knock out the framework get it all there and then you can add to it over the following in your third year or whatever because then this map will be help to guide you through that and write quite quickly right so getting towards the end what I will say regarding the stress busting because it can be very stressful writing a dissertation is this again eating elephants break it down break it down into little bits spoil yourself in terms of sleep food and activities writing a dissertation can be absolutely exhausting it directly dragging out data screaming and kicking and hanging on to the doorknobs not wanting to be moved at all I don't want to budge I'm tired I was writing six hours yesterday I've been watching a documentary for two and a half hours etc so you need to get yourself at least six to eight hours sleep but more importantly you need to maybe rest you in the afternoon I actually go to bed between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon wake up and bang out a thousand words because I'm fresh and I'm ready for action be able to stand back and see where are you where am i with my information where am i with my work what have I performed does that is that consistent with what I've just written does that make sense does that fit with this does that fit with my introduction sometimes you may write the introduction last you may write it first doesn't matter but you need to be able to see where you're going and finally be a lateral learner and use all the devices that there are in the book okay what is there what can I use to make this task simpler as I said to someone the other day they're doing some work on engineering on alternative energies well the first thing you do is go down to a place where they're actually working with it and see it use their archive etc etc etc that's a lateral thinking process then you're going to come back with a lot more brighter and fresher ideas find a conference online find a place where you can talk to the people that you're going to be using this is what I call lateral thinking okay and then finally I'm just going to show this is that this is where you can find some information we will be putting this website this video again onto Gries del site but also most important this is this video and all the other things I've been talking about various other youtubes we put on our Facebook page as the English cafe and study skills thank you very much
