Prof Laura Black teaches students at the Master of Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and Management how to write their master's thesis.

1. Second-year Thesis Workshop
Laura J. Black, Ph.D.
April 2014
©Greer Black Company 2014

2. What would help me most…
•Times daily
•My thesis time daily
•Find the right topic
•Revising my scope sheet
•What do I write based on my subject
•I hope it will give me a more structured
approach to tackle the project.

3. What would help me most…
•Outlining chapters
•Describing the features of each of the steps on
thesis giving examples. Like giving the skeleton
body of each chapter in terms of contents
•The actual layout , researching and research
methods, referencing…
•Thesis layout and presentation

4. Do you need a clearer picture of
what you are trying to accomplish?

5. From Wikipedia.org
“A thesis or dissertation is a document submitted in
support of candidature for an academic degree or
professional qualification presenting the author’s
research and findings…. The required complexity
and/or quality of research of a thesis or dissertation can
vary by country, university, or program.”

6. From Wikipedia.org
•What is the document’s content?
The document reports “on a research project or
study, or an extended analysis of a topic.”
•How is the document structured?
“The structure of the thesis … explains the
purpose, the previous research literature … on
the topic …, the methods used and the findings
of the project.”

7. From Wikipedia.org
•“Most world universities use a multiple chapter format :
–a) an INTRODUCTION, which introduces the research topic, the
methodology, as well as its scope and significance;
–b) a LITERATURE REVIEW, reviewing relevant literature and showing how this
has informed the research issue;
–c) a METHODOLOGY chapter, explaining how the research has been designed
and why the research methods/population/data collection and analysis being
used have been chosen;
–d) a FINDINGS chapter, outlining the findings of the research itself;
–e) an ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION chapter, analysing the findings and
discussing them in the context of the literature review (this chapter is often
divided into two—analysis and discussion);
–f) a CONCLUSION.”
–Also: a comprehensive bibliography of all REFERENCES used in the thesis

8. What are you trying to accomplish?
•The thesis document is finite: It has 7 sections,
plus an abstract.
–Aim for 50 to 75 space-and-a-half or double-spaced
pages with reasonable font size

9. Why is the Thesis Scope useful?

10. Basic Premises

11. Basic Premises
The WHAT
•In a thesis you do not write what you already
know…You write WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING.
•The HOW
•Some parts of the thesis can be assembled
before, and simultaneously with, other parts.

12. Basic Premises
PROGRESS HELPS PROGRESS
Bless yourself by doing lots of freewriting, taking
notes with citation info, respecting the evolution
of your thoughts

13. The Linear Approach Is a Myth!
From Conklin, J., 2006, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, John
Wiley & Sons, citing Guindon, R, 1990,“Designing the design process: Exploiting opportunistic thoughts,”
Human-Computer Interaction, 5: 305-344.

14. From Conklin, J., 2006, Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems, John
Wiley & Sons, citing Guindon, R, 1990,“Designing the design process: Exploiting opportunistic thoughts,”
Human-Computer Interaction, 5: 305-344.
The Linear Approach Is a Myth!

15. Many Cycles Are Useful!
Act
Observe
Orient
Decide

16. Clarity Increases with More Cycles
clarity of writing
clarity of thinking
+
+
How do I know what
I think until I see
what I say?
R

17. Therefore what?
•The thesis is finite, addressing a specific
question in a particular way.
•You want a research question that
–Interests you
–Allows you to do something tangible (research) to
produce a plausible answer/insight/solution to it
–Is pretty darn specific

18. Focusing the Research Question
Topic ≠ Research Question

19. Focusing the Research Question
Topic
•Noun phrase
•No verbs
•No increasing or
decreasing, before or
after, more or less
Research Question
•Ends with a question
mark
•Has nouns and verbs
•Starts with something like…
–To what extent…
–What are…
–[not a yes-no question]
Topic ≠ Research Question

20. How to Focus the Research Question
•Write a question about the topic (even if it is not
a good question) in the middle of a page
•“Lasso” each main word and off to the side write
what that means (also what it doesn’t)
•Write another, more specific question based on
what you learned from seeing what you wrote

21. Project Planning
•The value of planning lies not the plan, but in the
ways that the act of planning changes your
thinking.
•Plan—and share your plan
•Executing your plan badly is far better than not
having a plan!

22. Working with a Supervisor
•Ask early—be specific about why you are asking
THAT person
•Set regular meetings / for asking questions,
sharing drafts, getting feedback
•The more specific your questions, the more
helpful the answers
•After EVERY meeting, immediately send an
email to your advisor summarizing what you
agreed to do next, and by when.

23. What goes in the thesis?

24. Kinds of Theses (not exhaustive)
•Output / outcome
–Theoretical
–Applied
•Types of data used
–Qualitative
–Quantitative
•Types of analysis
–Qualitative, statistical, model-based, simulated

25. 7 Sections [estimated pages]
1.You must explain why the research question is
important to the world
This is the Introduction [12]
1.You must explain why existing research is helpful
but not sufficient to answer the question
This is the Literature Review [15]
1.You have to describe your approach (what and
why) to designing and doing the research
This is the Methods [8]

26. 7 Sections [estimated pages]
1.You have to describe what you learned from doing
the research
This is the Findings—often includes tables, graphs,
charts, and sometimes quotations—“just the facts” [12]
1.You have to say why we should care about what
you found
This is the Analysis and Discussion—often describes
the “so what?” for scholars and for practitioners, references
to others’ research, and your own recommendations [15]

27. 7 Sections [estimated pages]
1.You have to explain the extent to which you did
what you set out to do—and what you might do if
you continued the research
This is the Conclusion [5]
1.You have to provide enough information on your
citations that anyone can find and read what you
referred to
This is the Bibliography [2]

28. Navigating the Literature
•How many….?
–Choose a goal—make it a finite number
–Recognize you will need to draw on different kinds of
articles
•Topic—context
•Different elements of research question
•Methods
•Theories about what you care about
•Practical advice about what you care about

29. Navigating the Literature
•You do not need to love all you read. You will
probably find 2 to 5 articles you really admire.
•You need to be familiar with what others have
said about your topic.
•You need to read what others have said about
your research question.
•You need to draw on methods others have used.

30. Navigating the Literature
Making the most of GoogleScholar
• scholar.google.com
•Search on topic terms
•See what appears
•Click through and read abstracts (plenty)
•Note if they are books, articles, reports,
webpages

31. Navigating the Literature
•Making the most of GoogleScholar…
•In a Word document,
–Freewrite what you learned about how other people
use these terms
–Freewrite what YOU mean
–Copy the citation for GoogleScholar entries that
pique your curiosity and write several sentences about
why you think each might be important
•Given what you see, refine your search terms…

32. Iterative Nature of
Writing and Research
•This process will help you
–Scope your thesis to something doable
–Identify the important thinkers — scholars and
practitioners — about your topic / question
–See the Big Picture of what others say about the topic
–Get a feel for methods others have used to study it
–Generate pages, give you something to work with later

33. How to Cite Others’ Works
•True or False: If you refer to the source, then it
is impossible to plagiarize when paraphrasing.

34. How to Cite Others’ Works
•Plagiarizing is presenting another’s ideas as
your own.
–Paraphrasing without citing
–Using another’s words without quotation marks,
even if you cite
•Even inadvertent plagiarism is viewed as
academic dishonesty.

35. How to Cite Others’ Works
•To paraphrase without plagiarizing, 80 percent
of the words and sentence structures must be
YOUR OWN.
•It is hard (nearly impossible?) to paraphrase
effectively when you are looking at the
quotation you are trying to paraphrase.

36. How to Cite Others’ Works
•Even when you paraphrase you MUST
include a citation to the source!
–or else it is plagiarism
•Cite when you paraphrase (put another’s thoughts
in your own words)
•Cite when you quote (use another’s exact words
with quotation marks around them)

37. How to Cite Others’ Works
•Options for citation
–Footnotes
•Superscript number in the text with full reference at the
bottom of the same page
•Complete list of all references at the end
–In-text citations
•Author’s last name and year of publication in the text
•Complete list of references, listed alphabetically by
author’s last name, at the end

38. How to Cite Others’ Works
•A URL is not enough for a reference!
–Start with the name of the author (if one is listed),
or the title of the report (if no author is named)
–Include as the date the date of the report or the
date the website was last updated
–Also include the date you accessed the website
(because web content can change!)
–Example: Economist Intelligence Unit. 2010. Enabling efficient policy
implementation: A report from the Economist Intelligence Unit,
sponsored by Oracle http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/public-
sector/economist-report-193495.pdf. Accessed July 21, 2013.

39. How to Cite Others’ Works
•Choose a style
•Be consistent
•Include at the end of the thesis ONLY
references you cited in the text
•For EVERY reference cited in the text, include
that reference at the end of the thesis

40. How to Cite Others’ Works
•https://owl.english.purdue.edu/

41. To Help You Write in English
•Read and skim journal papers; the English in published articles can
help tune your “inner ear” for English syntax
•Barter—trade favors—with colleagues willing to line-edit a section or
chapter; have them use TrackChanges in Word, so you can learn what
changes make the text easier to read
•Use online grammar guides (e.g., https://owl.english.purdue.edu/ ) to
help yourself learn
•Respect what you are doing—Not many people can do university-
level work in any language, and fewer in a language not their first!

42. A painting is never finished. It
simply stops in interesting places.
--Paul Gardner

43. Laura Black isAssociate Professor at Montana State
University, and Principal, Greer Black Company. She
teaches the Strategic Planning class at the Master of
Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and
Management (MASHLM).
You can watch highlights from her thesis workshop here:
http://youtu.be/oAyIlwxhEJg
http://youtu.be/RoNkOdlZZU8

44. Laura Black is Associate Professor at Montana State
University, and Principal, Greer Black Company. She
teaches the Strategic Planning class at the Master of
Advanced Studies in Humanitarian Logistics and
Management (MASHLM).
You can watch highlights from her thesis workshop here:
http://youtu.be/oAyIlwxhEJg
http://youtu.be/RoNkOdlZZU8