Master Thesis Writing and Planning Workshop
Summer semester started two weeks ago and at the beginning of the third week students from IBMBA and GHRM programs got a chance to attend a Master Thesis Planning and Writing Workshop. Speaker and lecturer at this workshop was Jennet Achyldurdyyeva, the doctor degree student here at NSYSU. She originally comes from Turkmenistan however she has stayed in Taiwan already for four years.
Workshop was divided into two parts. First part was theoretical followed by the practical one after short break. This time the whole workshop was held in computer classroom because of the practical part. That was very convenient for students who decided to attend this event because they did not need to bring their laptops for participation in the practical part of the workshop.
Most of the students have the same problem at the beginning of the whole thesis writing process which is answer for a question: “How to find my supervisor and how to search for information?” Everybody has different opinion but according to Jennet the best is to go through profiles of professors and look for their publications which can give us brief idea in which area are they specialized in.
Second step is to create a plan. We should schedule exact day and time every week which will be dedicated for thesis. Without schedule mostly no action is done. Jennet’s tip is to use some jar and fill it with pieces of paper as parts of our thesis are done. Remember that writing a good thesis requires one or two semesters of big effort and time flies very fast, so don’t waste it, sooner you start, the less stress will you have.
Use supervisor effectively and ask him any question which could be helpful for your thesis. Avoid the mistake skipping the meetings with your supervisor. Even you think you didn’t do any progress, you should still go and consult your situation and get some useful tips. There are usually only seven to eight meetings with your supervisor during the semester so don’t waste them, in advance it will help to avoid procrastination too.
Do your own search for related topics in library to find the right journal for your topic but be cautious to not use outdated journals. To write good thesis, the latest journals available in related topic should be used.
As the end of the theoretical part Jennet introduced eThesys service which can be found under NSYSU library website. eThesys service offers very good downloadable workshop handouts package and pdf file with pre-prepared formatting and all necessary information.
In the practical part of the workshop we tried to think out and polish title of our thesis, select appropriate keywords related to our topic, write an abstract structure and get main points of introduction/background and aims for our thesis.
The workshop was successful as the classroom was full of curious students. Everybody got many good advices, ideas and tried to make first steps in writing own thesis. Since there was too much information to be covered in this workshop, we are looking for the next one!
