Dissertation is an essence of the learning you acquire throughout your educational period. Whether you do bachelors, masters or doctorate, dissertation, also known as thesis, is an essential feature of your academic degree. In fact, your educational period does not end unless you complete the dissertation successfully.
Reaching the point of writing dissertation in your academic period means you’re close to finish a significant chapter of your educational life. It’s like an academic milestone that represents your skills and capacities in your chosen area of study. A well-written dissertation add a lot more to the academic community by providing valuable information and findings.
While dissertation is much important for educational purposes, many people find it quite overwhelming. Writing a dissertation is completely different from attempting an assignment or conducting a project. Thesis is always based on facts and figures hence students cannot write it on the basis of mere assumptions and opinions. From topic selection to material collection to writing draft, each and every step of writing a dissertation require efforts and devotion. Above all, dissertation writing is a time-consuming task hence students who ignore it initially and waste time, always face serious problems in completing their thesis before the session ends.
Although supervisors help students throughout the dissertation writing span, here is a step by step guide for those who have no prior experience of writing a thesis:
1. Choose Topic
When it comes to writing a dissertation, topic selection is the first and most important step. You cannot just pick up any topic randomly as your dissertation is going to be a valuable work of your academic period. Think and then decide! Look for the topics that interest you and worthy of being discussed. It’s always better to choose topics that have a potential of bringing some good to the society. Apart from choosing topic, you will also need to set its limitations and make it more concise and clear. One more thing, the title of dissertation must describe the essence of your writing piece and should not be vague at any cost.
2. Write a convincing proposal
After topic selection, you will need to write a fine proposal. A proposal is required to convince the authority members to allow you to conduct a research on your chosen topic. A dissertation proposal explains the reasons of choosing a certain topic and how it will make a valuable addition to the educational and scientific community. It also describes the problems addressed by your research and methods that will be used to find solutions. Try to choose a simple question for your dissertation that will lead you to a testable hypothesis. A complex and difficult problem question will take you a dead end, leaving your research incomplete. To write a good proposal, follow this structure:
• Title: your proposal should represent the final topic as you will not be able to change it afterwards.
• Objective: In this section, you will explain the objective of your whole. The objectives should not be more than three else it would make your dissertation look less focused.
• Literature: mention a few references related to your dissertation and also describe the school of thoughts essential to conduct the research.
• Research question: in this section, you will briefly tell about the research question and its area.
• Methodology: whether you’re using qualitative or quantitative method, empirical or non-empirical ways, you will need to mention it all in this section.
• Expected outcomes: tell about the results you expect from the research.
• Timeframe: at last, your proposal will also mention the timeframe required to complete the dissertation.
3. Conduct research and gather data
Once the proposal is accepted and you get a green signal from the higher authorities, you are good to begin the research! To write a strong dissertation, you will have to gather authentic data by going through all the previous work done on your chosen topic. Use internet, books, journals, newspaper and previous dissertations to gather all the relative information required to achieve what’s needed to complete your dissertation. Try to get your hands on all the recent reports and discoveries to come up with something totally new and innovative.
4. Create outline
After collecting information from all authentic resources, it’s time to compose a proper outline. You can also skip this step but if you want everything to go smoothly in a fine order, preparing an outline is a must-do! An outline will let you work in a flow without any pauses or confusions. A dissertation outline involves:
• Introduction: it’s the first chapter of dissertation describing the background of your topic and statement of the problem. Apart from explaining the purpose of the research, the terminologies used in the dissertation are also defined in this section.
• Literature Review: this chapter mentions the previous work done by popular researchers in the same area.
• Methodology: this section involves all the information about methods and ways opted by researchers to gather the data and analyze it.
• Findings: this section holds the found results and also answers the question of the dissertation on the grounds of your findings.
• Conclusion and recommendation: here, your dissertation will be concluded concisely. A good dissertation doesn’t only come with a summarized conclusion but also includes some recommendations to bring a fine change.
4. Write first draft
Once the outline is prepared, you can finally start writing the first draft. As you already have done the essential work in previous steps like proposal writing and data collection, writing the first draft will not be much energy consuming. Just follow the outline and begin writing process!
5. Proofread and edit
After completing your first draft, you will need to proofread it because a dissertation should be free of minor and major errors. There should be no grammatical or sentence structure issues. In short, the language and structure of your dissertation should be flawless! Proofreading will enable you to detect mistakes and edit accordingly to make it just perfect.
6. Obtain feedback
After proofreading your dissertation, don’t submit it unless you get feedback from supervisor and senior fellows. They will read it and inform you to make necessary changings if required on the basis of their experience.
