There is a growing recognition among scholars that academic writing at all levels is as much a process as a product. The issue of getting the dissertation written, in many cases, is as problematic for supervisors as it is for students. The workshop, Assisting FFL students through the thesis writing process, aims to provide supervisors at the faculty with pre-requisite knowledge to scaffold FFL students to deal with basic problems such as understanding the structure of a thesis and the requirement of each chapter. Three presenters, within three hours, brought their personal researching experiences to life. Dr Sa Nguyen stimulated thoughts about the process of writing the Literature review chapter by presenting images of bird nest craft. According to Dr Nguyen, the act of collecting grass and sticks visualizes how students test ideas and build up problem solving skills. The birds instinctively build their nests to a design that is unique to their species just as researchers form research questions that address gaps in the academic literature. Dr An Tran made clear that Method is simply a research tool, a component of research – say for example, a qualitative method such as interviews. Methodology is the justification for using a particular research method. Having a clear idea on the methods and methodology for a Bachelor thesis can make the job of reviewing literature much more straightforward as students can more precisely target studies in their chosen topic area and critique the whole approach to similar studies, including the methods used. Dr Nga Phan, the last presenter, provided vivid examples of students’ previous work to help clear out any mysteries of structuring the results, discussion and conclusion chapters. The results section is where students report the findings of their study based upon the methodology and methods they applied to gather information. The purpose of the discussion is to interpret and describe the significance of findings in light of what has already been known about the research problem being investigated, and to explain any new understanding or insights about the problem after the findings are taken into consideration. The conclusion generally provides a succinct summary of the answers to the research questions and discusses the study’s limitations and implications. Overall, it is expected that after this workshop, supervisors will come up with excellent ideas. They may leave the workshop with their own touch points of bringing out a thinking change in students: thriving instead of surviving.
-Nga Phan-
Links to the power point presentations:
