Dissertation Experience: Tips for researching and writing your dissertation
Our Library Student Team have compiled their handy tips on researching and writing your dissertation.
Contents
- Introduction
- Literature Review
- Making the best of your relationship and meeting with your dissertation supervisor
- The Writing Process
- Proofreading and editing your dissertation
- Conclusion
- Other Helpful Resources
Introduction
You have completed or are about to complete your coursework and are faced with writing your dissertation. You are not alone in this — The Library Student Team has gone through this process just like many more students before them. Dissertations are a key part of university degrees and students’ needs vary across faculties, courses and degrees. The Library Student Team, with members drawn across all faculties and degree levels in the University, share their dissertation experience and tips in this post. They talk about what worked for them and key mistakes to avoid.
You can hear from them on:
- How they approached their literature review
- How they made the best out of meetings with their supervisors
- How they approached the writing and proofreading processes
Literature Review
Literature reviews are an important part of some dissertations because they communicate the state of knowledge to the reader. Literature review means searching through literature i.e. textbooks, articles or any previous research that has been done on the topic of your dissertation to understand and establish the current state of knowledge. They help to identify gaps in what’s been done and what methodology and theoretical frameworks have been used.
Engaging in a literature review will mean that you have to:
- Search the literature
- Review and read the literature
- Analyse what you have found
- Write about what you have found
Naman confirmed that engaging in a literature review helped him understand the current state of knowledge on his topic. It also helped him set realistic expectations and goals for his dissertation. Fatimah has this to say about engaging in literature review:
“ I found searching for resources for my literature review interesting. It opened me up to a new world of knowledge, some of them conflicting. I struggled with not being drawn into the rabbit hole of searching for more and not knowing when enough was enough. I managed this by working with the 5 Ws and H questions to restrict my search. I also created a table of sources and classed my findings as either relevant or interesting but not relevant.”
You may have to include literature review chapters in your dissertation after reading through several sources. However, not all dissertations will have a literature review chapter. Having a literature review as a chapter in your dissertation will depend on what you are researching. Your supervisor/advisor is the best person to advise you on whether you need to write a chapter on literature review.
On this, George said that:
“ I was advised by my supervisor early on that due to the nature of my dissertation topic I should write a ‘contextualisation chapter’ instead of a literature review. It serves the same purpose as a literature review in that it sets the scene and creates a baseline for understanding. The way I like to view it is putting up coat hooks that later you can hang your arguments up on. My topic dealt with cultural history, so the contextualisation chapter was more about painting a picture than establishing facts and pre-existing evidence. By dedicating my first chapter to a moment in time which then became the ‘coat hook’ for the rest of the dissertation, it meant I didn’t have to keep going back and forth in time throughout.”
A contextualisation chapter is similar to a literature review. It provides a narrative structure and creates a baseline of understanding which the dissertation builds upon later.
Below are other tips on doing literature reviews:
- Make a list of ideas and questions: Having a general plan of ideas and questions will help guide your search so you don’t lose your focus and get sucked into the world of information. If you wish, you can walk through this list with your buddies or supervisor.
- Use the library ‘search’ option: The library gives you access to literature on a vast number of subjects. You can also access specialised databases on the website. Browsing through these materials will not only help your literature review, it will also set you in the right academic frame of mind for the writing task ahead. The ‘search’ option is available on the University Library website.
- Use Google Scholar: If you struggle with finding papers for your dissertation, Google Scholar can provide you with background research ideas and access to open access journals and books.
- Ask your supervisor for help: This is their area of expertise, they know more about where you can find useful resources.
- Use the Funnel Approach: This helps if you struggle with how to structure your literature review. According to Olivia, you start off with the broad research area (i.e, schizophrenia) and then you increasingly focus on the finer details in a graded manner. You then go on to talk about working memory deficits in schizophrenia, and the neuroimaging correlates of these deficits. Then you move onto the link between working memory deficits and negative symptoms and so on.
Making the best of your relationship and meeting with your dissertation supervisor
You are not alone when writing your dissertation, your supervisor is there to support you throughout the process. They are usually experts on your chosen topic area so it’s an opportunity for you to draw from their wealth of experience. It is important to make the best of your relationship and meetings with your supervisor.
In Lili’s words :
“I wasn’t confident when it came to speaking to academic staff and I didn’t enjoy my undergraduate degree, so motivating my own research was difficult. However, a supervisor can really help to guide you and it’s important to see them even if you don’t have a clear idea or specific questions. While they are not there to come up with a topic, they can help you narrow it down and hopefully make you feel a little less lost if you are in a similar situation. Don’t avoid contacting them as it will only make it worse.”
One takeaway from Lili’s experience is that students must take ownership of their dissertations. This means asking for support from supervisors whenever they need it. Asking for support from your supervisors will make the process more enjoyable and you can be assured of a better result.
Here are some more tips on working with supervisors:
- Set expectations on what you expect from your supervisor: This should be one of the things you discuss at your first meeting. You both need to agree on what support they can give and how often you will meet before you submit your dissertation. You can make a Gantt chart to get their approval of the progress expectations and milestones for the dissertation.
- Attend each meeting with a list of questions: Go into each meeting with a list of questions you need clarification on. This is a proactive approach that will help you lead the discussion with your supervisor. Do this as much as you can.
- Stick to draft deadlines as much as possible: If your supervisor gives you deadlines for tasks (e.g. submitting drafts before meetings) stick to these. This approach helped George get comments on his drafts before he handed in his completed dissertation.
The Writing Process
Writing your dissertation may seem like a difficult task if you don’t have all you need to get started. It’s helpful to set a plan in motion and make sure that your plan is time-bound. You can see this resource on planning your dissertation to help with time management and prevent procrastination. You can also make a Gantt chart and highlight the progress roadmap. You can discuss this with your supervisor and try to update it as you go along.
Writing Tips:
- Have a rough idea of what you want to write about before you start writing: With the exception of the literature review (or similar), don’t start writing until you have a rough idea of the overall structure. This will help you save time you could have wasted on writing things that may not go into your final dissertation draft.
- Start with the main question: This will be the main question that your dissertation answers. Having a main question to guide your writing will help you stay on task. Every word, sentence or paragraph in your dissertation must help in answering this question.
- Plan sections and subsections: Coming up with the chapter headings and subheadings before you start writing can be a good way of visualising where your dissertation is headed — even if they are just placeholders until you come up with a better name, it’s a useful exercise. It can be really helpful in giving a structure to your dissertation and something to work with when you’re not sure where to go next with your writing.
- Do a mind map: This will help you structure your work and see the link between your ideas. It works best for visual learners and can help improve how you present your ideas in the dissertation. You can use software like Mindmeister, Mindmup, etc.
- Avoid procrastination: A dissertation is a big undertaking. So writing little and often is the way to go! Do not leave everything for the last moment as you will struggle to produce a good dissertation if you don’t dedicate enough time to work throughout the process. It gradually becomes less daunting as you chip away at it and can see the progress you’re making. You can join our Writing Together and Shut up and Write and sessions to help you commit to writing. Check our MLE and MRE websites for upcoming dates.
- Don’t worry about making it perfect: it’s never perfect the first time around, but if you have something down on paper, at least you have something to work with (and re-work).
- Read, read and read! Try and get in a habit of reading more scholarly articles. This will provide you with acceptable writing standards in your subject area. You can use this standard to guide your writing.
Proofreading and editing your dissertation
You have finished putting your ideas down. Yay!
However, you can’t hand your dissertation in until you are sure that your ideas are clearly communicated to your readers. Grammatical errors and poor punctuation can affect the flow of communication. This is why it is important to set enough time aside to edit and proofread at the end.
See proofreading as an important aspect of your writing. Don’t rule it out as a simple task because it can be time consuming! Rachel has learnt from her experience. She does not recommend finishing your dissertation a few hours before the deadline. In her words,
“I ended up losing a few marks due to various ‘careless’ spelling mistakes I had made, as I only had a chance to give it a quick glance over and correct maybe a few at the start of my dissertation.”
Allow yourself at least a day to proofread before handing your dissertation in.
Getting help from someone well removed from your dissertation can help. While they may be unable to help with content, they can tell you if your writing is comprehensible. Software can also help you through the proofreading process. You must use this software with caution because it will never be enough on its own. Whilst software can pick up on most spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, it still misses some errors.
Here are some tips on proofreading and editing your dissertation:
- Take a few days off: Taking some days off before returning to your dissertation will give you more clarity. You will pick up errors you may have missed previously. This will also help you structure your arguments in a simpler and more coherent way.
- Print your writing or read it aloud: It is surprising how different words read on paper. Reading a printed copy and hearing yourself read out loud will draw your attention to how readers would perceive your writing. This will help you make final edits that can improve the readability of your dissertation.
- Have friends and colleagues review your writing: You can draw from your reading and writing group for proofreading buddies. Make sure that each of you are writing about different topics so the risk of academic collusion is minimal.
- Your supervisors can help: Ask your supervisor to have a look at sections that you are less confident about and get feedback on this. Pointing your supervisor to specific things will help you get the best out of the review process
Conclusion
Dissertations are a huge part of your degree. Engaging in a literature review, working with your supervisor, writing and editing the dissertation are key aspects that you need to pay attention to. This post gives you some of the tips that helped the Library Student Team get the best out of their dissertation exercises. We hope that these tips help you get started or inspire you to keep going as you write your dissertation!
