Research Lab: Preparation Thesis

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/G_BATRSCC301

Course Objective

After finishing this course, the student: -is able to find appropriate methodological literature for designing the BA thesis research proposal.
- is able to find appropriate literature related to the proposed field and topic.
- is able to narrow down the scope of te the BA thesis research project to a manageable and sharp research question.
- is able to split the research question up into smaller manageable and sharp sub-questions.
- is able to describe the methodology that is appropriate to the research question(s).
- is able to justify this methodology in terms of the state of the art in the chosen field. Note: This course is meant to let the student understand the basic principles of conducting an academic research and what is necessary to make your research project a success. In order to reach this greater goal, by the end of the course, the student must meet the criteria above.

Course Content

This module offers a context in which the students prepare for their bachelor thesis by first of all deciding what research topic suits their academic interests the best, and then by developing an academic research proposal. Staff members and PhD students will share their research experiences and give short presentations.

Teaching Methods

During the course, you will have meetings led by a teacher, and participate in the Course as an active learner, and as a peer-reviewer for the other students. Your assignments have to be submitted on time. The seminars aim, foremost, to coach students during the process of designing their own research project. Students will present their texts in class and will give feedback on each other’s work in class and on Canvas. The thesis supervisor and teacher will be involved in this process, but the feedback of fellow students will be crucial as well. By making use of peer review assignments (a carousel) you are not only trained in improving your research skills with a view to your own topic but also trained by giving feedback to your peers. This makes the process of academic integrity, methodology and proposal writing more fun and profound. For this purpose, you will make use of course documents and online tools like Discussions on Canvas. The students will be divided into several groups based on the number of course subscriptions, profiles and thematic interests. To help the process the teacher will ask two/three students to act as mentors of the groups. The mentors will encourage to participate in (online) discussions equally actively and to react to each other's texts. Furthermore, the teacher will ask two students to act as assistants during the classes and to start computer and beamer before each class and to manage it during the class. Before each class where the written assignments are discussed, the mentor chooses the texts that already have passed the peer review on Canvas to be discussed in the class and passes the order of the chosen text to the teacher's assistant. This will be increasingly important during the course.

Method of Assessment

Students have finished the final version of their full thesis proposals by the end of the course. Due to the fact that students need to contribute to each other’s proposal, class attendance is obligatory. The grade is based on the full proposal (60%), a short presentation (10%), and written and oral course contributions (30%). All assignments have to be submitted in time. Students are required to participate in the Tutorials and on Canvas as a peer-reviewer for the other students. For the peer-reviewing of the assignments, students will use course tools like “Discussions” on Canvas.

Literature

will be made available through Canvas.

Entry Requirements

Students need to have completed at least all courses of the year 1 and all courses from the first semester of year 2. Students from the cohorts that started in 2019-2020 or earlier also need to have completed Academische Vaardigheden (G_ACVA1).