Arja Suikkala and Mika Alavaikko
The curricula of Diaconia University of Applied Sciences (2015) include multidisciplinary Participatory and Research-oriented Development (referred to as PROD) in order to serve both learning and working life. Cooperating with working life or project parties and the supervising teacher, you may carry out your thesis work individually or work together with a group of other students, implementing a research and development -oriented, reflective, cooperative process in your professional environment. It is possible to process a thesis integrating the work into the learning tasks included in your studies.
A thesis consists of partial achievements completed during the thesis process; partial achievements may consist of e.g. blogs, learning tasks based on interviews, and literary reviews. All these are written assignments as is the final report. Other methods for developing and documenting your competence include videos and photographs, posters, oral presentations during professional conferences or training events, and statistical treatment of the subject. Thesis implementations consisting of partial achievements can be seen e.g. in Opas Helsinkiin saapuneille turvapaikanhakijoille : Kielinä englanti ja arabia (Kelahaara 2017) as well as in Human Library: An Anti-oppressive tool : Implementation guidelines for a Human Library (Pardasani and Rivera 2016), in Living On The Edge : quality of life in Balkhu Squatter Settlement, Nepal (Khanal, Anup, 2014) and in “Some of them come to see how the Africans are” – Children’s perspective on international volunteering in children’s homes in Kenya (Joutsijoki 2015).
This type of process is the preferred method for completing a thesis. If you cannot complete your thesis as described above, you will need to complete it as a monograph published independently in one part only.
Partial Achievements for a Thesis Portfolio
The thesis process progressing through PROD courses offers many options for subject matters and implementation methods. See the section Bachelor's Thesis Process. The partial achievements for a thesis implementation (e.g. a blog, article, video, poster, oral presentation) deal with the same subject matter but study it from different perspectives. You should make a tentative outline for the entire thesis at a very early phase of your thesis work. As you progress along the path you have planned for your thesis, the background work or results of a certain learning task may change the perspective required of you for the next task. The thesis always contains a report which is an independent section and deepens your treatment of the subject and results. The report condenses the contents of your thesis portfolio into an integrated whole. It is also possible to discuss the rationale for the key theoretical and methodological contents in the report section (see Valo 2013). The thesis will be graded on the basis of the report.
If you are planning to use e.g. an article, poster or brochure as a partial achievement for your thesis you should familiarise yourself with the basic implementation methods of that type of output as early as the planning stage of your work. All partial achievements must be based on data collected by you or your group (through e.g. interviews, statistics) and the proper analysis of that data, or, for example, literature reviews. Information acquisition and familiarisation with various implementation and publication methods form an essential part of a thesis writer's work in addition to the actual thesis contents as the writer labours to make the subject matter appropriately visible.
An article may be a research article, a review or an expert article. By research article, we mean an article that discusses new research results of your own. (The Virtual UAS i.a.) In a literature review, you combine information from various individual studies and form a unified whole using scientific methods (Laaksonen, Kuusisto‐Niemi & Saranto 2010). Reviews collect current, valid information; we often speak of meta-analyses, as reviews filter for us the most relevant data out of perhaps dozens of previous publications. In professional articles, the structure of the text is less stringently controlled than in scientific articles; professional articles may deal with e.g. working-life studies or projects carried out in working life. Writing professional articles is recommended for novices as well; young professionals and undergraduates may hold the newest information and freshest views.
An expert article as such may form a thesis. In such a case, you do not need to write an evaluating, reflective report. This is possible if your article is a refereed one for a journal, or an extensive, empirical or literature-review-based article in a professional magazine. When writing your article, you must take care to discuss it with your supervisor to agree whether the article will suffice for a thesis or whether it will form one partial achievement in your thesis portfolio. If you are aiming to write a refereed journal article, you and your supervisor should be aware of the possibility that the article might not be accepted for publication or the publication schedule may delay the completion of your thesis and your studies.
When considering writing an article, you should also consider your eventual publication forums in good time so that you may learn where your options are the best. Your thesis supervisor will be able to help you. Publishing an article on an appropriate forum will provide visibility for your subject. It is good to regularly follow scientific and professional magazines and other publications in your field.
When planning an article, you should first study the intended publisher's instructions for writers. All publishers have their own instructions on e.g. layout, references and other practicalities. Articles can often contain your most essential points only, because they are limited in length. Therefore, you must present issues such as the theoretical framework very succinctly. Theses published in the form of articles offer a possibility for collaborative writing with e.g. the supervisors and working-life representatives.
The schedule of a thesis which is to be published as an article will be influenced by the fact that it is seldom if ever that a publisher accepts the text as it is. Texts require changes and they may even need to be offered to a different publisher. The rejection of an article is not a catastrophe and it does not necessarily reflect the quality of the manuscript: it is possible that a similar article was published only recently, or the focus of that particular publication forum may differ slightly from that of the manuscript. Acceptances of articles are often conditional: an article may be accepted for publication with major or specified revisions. You will need to wait for each review, but the feedback from every single referee will form a valuable addition to the feedback you receive from your supervisor and peers. When you write articles, even the first one makes your competence more visible.
Abstract for an oral presentation or a poster
A research- or development-oriented thesis or parts of one may be presented at professional seminars and work community training events in different ways, e.g. through oral presentations and posters. Putting together a poster or an oral presentation always requires advance preparation, because, most often, presentations are selected on the basis of abstracts sent for evaluation and acceptance.
Abstracts for posters and oral presentations follow the contents and form of the study itself and succinctly discuss the background, purpose, data, methods, key findings and conclusions of the research or development work. You should avoid using a personal style and, instead, favour neutral forms. Your terminology should follow the terminology of the relevant professional field. The abstract is of essence, because it gets the reader interested and convinces the reader that the suggested research or development work is important. Instructions for abstracts are usually available on the event organiser's website and explain the required contents and structure for abstracts.
The length poses challenges for writers of abstracts. The word count of an abstract is usually 150–250, and you must abide by the requirement. Accepted abstracts are published as printed or electronic books and distributed to participants.
Posters are a visual means for disseminating information about new ideas and practices as well as current or recent research or development work in e.g. professional seminars and training events. Posters also help in disseminating information in customer guidance situations in various environments. A poster should form a distinct entity readable in a couple of minutes and at a distance, with the purpose of visualising the key elements of the thesis for the viewer simply and unambiguously by combining text, pictures and graphics. Poster sessions are interactive and they allow the presenter to introduce new information and issues. Poster sessions offer presenters an excellent opportunity to improve their skills: debating, answering questions, receiving feedback and new ideas, thereby developing professionally. (Kanerva, Mieronkoski, Kauhanen, Koskenniemi & Salminen 2014.) The form of posters may vary from printed paper posters to sketches on flip boards, and they may be hung on the wall or stood on the floor or table. A poster may be presented in the electronic form as well e.g. in the internet, in which case it is possible to add dimensions to it by including audio and video. (Kanerva et al. 2014.) Good instructions for designing posters are available in a variety of sources (see e.g. Pietilä, Laakso & Paavilainen 2003; School of Culture and Arts Studies TAIKU i.a.; Ritmala-Castren 2013).
When designing a poster, take special care to make your expression concise, visually clear, unambiguous and attractive. Your poster should reflect the contents of the abstract without copying the abstract. Illustrations, charts, tables and drawings add value and provide a great deal of information about your topic in a small space. (Kanerva et al. 2014, Ritmala-Castren 2013.) However, the most important aspect of a poster is the way it is presented. Usually, authors of posters present their work to interested audiences and answers questions. Posters reach a greater number of people during a longer period of time than do e.g. oral presentations. It is a good idea to learn to present the key contents of your poster in English even if you expect to present it only in Finnish events. In customer guidance contexts, the atmosphere of your poster session should be more relaxed and you should match the information contents and the mode of your presentation to suit your customer group (Kanerva et al. 2014).
Oral presentations are a way to make your thesis or your research and development work known not only in thesis seminars but also in the work community of your client (who commissioned your work), in professional seminars and in training events. Oral presentations may be made more concrete through PowerPoint or Prezi slide shows. Be sure to prepare these slide shows with care because they are the means for you to awaken your audience's interest and to keep it..
Oral presentations often allow you 10–20 minutes to explain your premises, key findings and conclusions. In addition, there usually are 5–10 minutes reserved for questions from the audience at the end of the session. A good presentation gives the references at the end. An oral presenter should think about the eventual questions from the audience in advance and prepare the answers. A good way to prepare for a presentation is to trial it with a small test audience.
A monograph, published independently in one part, is one possible way you may use to report your thesis work. A monograph will focus on one subject and collect the key research results in that area. A monograph may be appropriate for you particularly if your learning path is very short due to the identification and recognition of prior learning (RPL) or some other reason.
The thesis plan for a monograph is expected to cover the entire work. You should familiarise yourself with the key information sources on your subject early in your thesis work so that you can appropriately specify the targets for your own thesis. In addition, in the early phases of planning your thesis, you need to make decisions on the theoretical framework you intend to apply, your research questions and your methodological choices. All data for a monograph is collected at one time or in accordance with planned phases. You may write your monograph either individually or as pair work under the guidance of a university of applied sciences teacher and an expert (working life representative).
You may consider a monograph a challenge due to its extent, but on the other hand, as the author, you may schedule your own work and may be able to complete it faster than you would complete a thesis based on portfolio materials. This type of thesis is published in total in the thesis database.