next »

[science_expat]

There's some discussion in my place about the value of requiring all undergraduate students to complete dissertations - broadly divided between those who want to "uphold standards" and those who want to be spared the misery of supervising unmotivated students in an exercise that is unlikely to benefit them.

I'm wondering what the practice is across the UK.

Any thoughts? Or references I should be aware of?

Thanks,
SE

[babbinacara]

In my department, we have an optional dissertation, but most students do choose to write one. Some make the choice because they really are interested in the subject, others because it gets them out of one exam at the end of the year. The effort involved in supervising these different types of student (and their mark spread), well, I'm sure you can imagine.
Where I currently external, the dissertation is required, but it seems to me that the mark spread and the students' degree of engagement with writing and research is about the same as in my own department. But I've no idea how much supervising effort and handwringing has gone into some of the disses.

As far as benefits for students, I believe we flog the dissertation as a "transferable skill" in our current outreach literature and as evidence of "progression during the course" in our teaching review literature; this kind of BS will become more and more necessary as we head into the world of Key Information Sets (and thus having a diss requirement becomes a benefit for staff...).

[britmom]

We require single honours students to write either a dissertation, or take a year-long, 'special subject' that requires them to do independent primary source research (I'm in History). It's taught in small groups of no more than 12 and expects students to take a lead in shaping the direction of the teaching.

These are options for joint honours students, but not a requirement.

Our reasoning behind us asking students to do a dissertation/special subject is that it represents the capstone of a History degree. It tests the skills (independent research, engagement with other historians' work, critical analysis) that they have been developing throughout their undergraduate years. I think that something like this is crucial in a Humanities degree.

[the_walrus]

There's some discussion in my place about the value of requiring all undergraduate students to complete dissertations - broadly divided between those who want to "uphold standards" and those who want to be spared the misery of supervising unmotivated students in an exercise that is unlikely to benefit them.

We used to have an optional one, but take-up was so high among students who had no business writing them, that we actually decided that barriers to entry needed to be put in place.  So, we now require a certain minimum average as a requirement for being allowed the privilege of writing a dissertation.  We also give information sessions where we make very clear the expectations we have and that there is meant to be something original.  Take-up has dropped drastically.  At the same time, those who *should* be writing them still do.  This saves staff the time of marking dissertations that never should have been written, and students who wrote those bad dissertations from the bad marks that they were getting on them.

There is now some discussion, being initiated by people outside of our department, about whether our department has perhaps gone a bit too far.  I don't think any of us think we have, but it may well be a position that we have to defend.

On edit, some context, if it matters: broadly social science type discipline in a non-Oxbridge RG university.

[expatinuk]

Standard in my field is a year long project with an accompanying five chapter report that's more like a US thesis than a UK dissertation.

[totoro]

Standard in my field is a year long project with an accompanying five chapter report that's more like a US thesis than a UK dissertation.

What is the difference between a US thesis and a UK dissertation? I would have thought they were very similar?

[expatinuk]

Standard in my field is a year long project with an accompanying five chapter report that's more like a US thesis than a UK dissertation.

What is the difference between a US thesis and a UK dissertation? I would have thought they were very similar?

In the UK (in my experience) there's a pretty strict word count... not so much in the US. In the UK the word count is usually much lower. An essay in the UK is about 3000 words (12 pages double spaced)... in the US a 'term paper' is usually about 20 pages double spaced.

[scotia]

Standard in my field is a year long project with an accompanying five chapter report that's more like a US thesis than a UK dissertation.

What is the difference between a US thesis and a UK dissertation? I would have thought they were very similar?

In the UK (in my experience) there's a pretty strict word count... not so much in the US. In the UK the word count is usually much lower. An essay in the UK is about 3000 words (12 pages double spaced)... in the US a 'term paper' is usually about 20 pages double spaced.

I think your experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. Our undergraduate dissertation word count is 10,000 words, and this was also the case at my previous university. I have just finished grading a dissertation (a resubmission and, mercifully given the content, shorter than it should have been) of 35 pages. A quick survey of a few of my contacts in other (social science and arts) departments has shown that their dissertation lengths vary from 10K - 15K words. Our dissertation is currently run over one semester, but we are looking at moving to two semesters to give the students more time to collect their data.

Our essay lengths are very different to our dissertation lengths. A 3,000 word essay may form part of the assessment for a module, but would not be the only assessment.

[britmom]

Standard in my field is a year long project with an accompanying five chapter report that's more like a US thesis than a UK dissertation.

What is the difference between a US thesis and a UK dissertation? I would have thought they were very similar?

In the UK (in my experience) there's a pretty strict word count... not so much in the US. In the UK the word count is usually much lower. An essay in the UK is about 3000 words (12 pages double spaced)... in the US a 'term paper' is usually about 20 pages double spaced.

I think your experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. Our undergraduate dissertation word count is 10,000 words, and this was also the case at my previous university. I have just finished grading a dissertation (a resubmission and, mercifully given the content, shorter than it should have been) of 35 pages. A quick survey of a few of my contacts in other (social science and arts) departments has shown that their dissertation lengths vary from 10K - 15K words. Our dissertation is currently run over one semester, but we are looking at moving to two semesters to give the students more time to collect their data.

Our essay lengths are very different to our dissertation lengths. A 3,000 word essay may form part of the assessment for a module, but would not be the only assessment.

12 000 words here. Essays run from 1 500 words in first year (20% of grade) up to 3500 words in final year (usually 25% of the grade). 

[expatinuk]

The point I was trying to make was that in the UK there's more of a focus on the number of words... than my experience in the US. I certainly did NOT say that a dissertation was 3000 words.

Everyone I've come across in the UK is pretty uptight about the number of words and I've seen work marked down because the word count was too high.

[seniorscholar]

At my US R-1, the undergraduate thesis is only done by people seeking honors in the major, and since I haven't directed one in about twenty years I can't remember how long they are. As DGS, however, I learned that when we ask for a writing sample under 20 pages (which, as someone has said is typical for an upper-level undergraduate term paper), people from high/fancy universities or liberal arts colleges will sometimes send along their 80-page undergraduate thesis . . . of which we pick one chapter to read.

We have no stated word limit for our PhD dissertations, though (after one person submitted one that ran to three volumes) we do take care to enforce a reasonable limit. I do remember, however, sweating hard to get my UK doctoral thesis down under the limit of 100,000 words -- which, to be honest, improved the prose a great deal.

[scotia]

The point I was trying to make was that in the UK there's more of a focus on the number of words... than my experience in the US. I certainly did NOT say that a dissertation was 3000 words.

Everyone I've come across in the UK is pretty uptight about the number of words and I've seen work marked down because the word count was too high.

I will admit to the charge, but in my case it is usually because the extra words are as a consequence of waffle and inability to summarise adequately. I have had a couple of dissertations that I suspect were probably over the word count but I did not notice because they were thoughtful and engaging.

My main reason for having maximum word counts for assignments and penalising those who go over them is pragmatic: I have very large class sizes, and there is a big time difference between grading 230 x 1500 word assignments and grading 230 x 3000 words. Even if only 10% of students write twice as much (and I have had a - truly awful - assignment at 5x the maximum word count) that is equivalent to adding another 20 students to an already daunting task. Plus, my experience is that the longer assignments are rarely better, just longer.....

We have no stated word limit for our PhD dissertations, though (after one person submitted one that ran to three volumes) we do take care to enforce a reasonable limit. I do remember, however, sweating hard to get my UK doctoral thesis down under the limit of 100,000 words -- which, to be honest, improved the prose a great deal.

I don't remember seeing a word limit for PhDs, but I agree that editing down to a sensible word count usually results in a much better product. I have found the same to be true when writing reports in my industrial job and now when writing journal articles. It may be painful excising those 5,000 words (a current task) but the article is much more focused and the message is clearer in the shorter version.

[the_walrus]

I think your experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. Our undergraduate dissertation word count is 10,000 words, and this was also the case at my previous university. I have just finished grading a dissertation (a resubmission and, mercifully given the content, shorter than it should have been) of 35 pages. A quick survey of a few of my contacts in other (social science and arts) departments has shown that their dissertation lengths vary from 10K - 15K words. Our dissertation is currently run over one semester, but we are looking at moving to two semesters to give the students more time to collect their data.

Ours is 12k over 2 semesters, pretty much identical to my experience with US honors theses.

[drspouse]

A research project (not dissertation) is compulsory for our students, as it's required by our accrediting body.

I can never remember the word count but I tell my students to aim for the length/proportions that they'd find in a published, one-experiment article.

[chaosbydesign]

Mine was 12,000 words. (15,000? Maybe 15,000. I don't remember even though I only wrote it last year.) It was pretty much the most important part of my honours degree, which I suspect is common in my field in the UK; not essential for getting an ordinary degree, but a requirement for honours.