Topic outline

  • General

    There are occasions when it makes more sense to develop thesis ideas towards thesis plan without participating in contact teaching. Such occasions are for example if one is doing the thesis abroad or has already extensive experience in academic writing and is prepared to work on their own. In such cases the course can be finished in a do-it-yourself manner by submitting a selection of assignments which are designed to guide student through the initial steps of thesis work. Workload-wise there is not much difference between the contact teaching seminar (intensive) and DIY (remote) Thesis seminars.

    In practice student chooses 
    either to develop thesis ideas towards thesis plan for one week intensively with the support of discussion and feedback from the peers and teachers + finishes thesis plan independently + presents thesis plan and thereby gets the plan approved in their MA Programme 
    or student can choose to do a set of assignments independently, out of which one is a draft for the thesis plan + finishes thesis plan independently based on feedback from seminar teacher + presents thesis plan and thereby gets the plan approved in their MA programme.

    Workload wise both of the ways are 2 credits = 54 hours of work, which is required for the student to start building a solid and actionable thesis plan that communicates what the student is about to do to the MA programme in a manner that helps programme to approve the plan, or ask revision, and to  select supervisors and advisors for the thesis.

    The workload in the DIY version is of different quality because most of the hours the student works independently, whereas in the intensive contact teaching version nearly half of the hours are spend with discussing and learning with others.