Video Tutorials Are Here!

You'll find a new page at our Thesis and Dissertation Office website: Video Tutorials!  Robyn and Fred spent the summer designing step-by-step guides to some of the most frequently used Microsoft Word tools for theses. Here, you'll find videos on:

• Page Numbering: Proper pagination (creating page numbers and hiding page numbers) in your document

• Leader Dots: Creating rows of leader dots (......) to build a professional-looking Table of Contents and other tables

• COMING SOON, Landscape Pages: Working with landscape pages to accommodate your tables and figures

Don't get as frustrated as Fred! Watch our videos!

We use on-screen help plus live video of real people (us!) to guide you through every step of these processes. Watch the videos at full speed, slow them down, or watch as many times as you need to in order to learn the processes. Also, we have carefully captioned each one so you can watch without sound. We chose the videos we made based on what we've seen come through the office -- page numbers out of control, margins obliterated by big tables, and Tables of Contents with MS Word weirdness everywhere. When we see these problems, we sometimes have to tell a student the last thing he wants to hear: "We need to start from scratch." With these videos, we're trying to nip bad formatting in the bud. 

Fred's award for his blockbuster,
"Page Numbering"

We try to have a sense of humor to help lighten up what can be a boring and lengthy process. We don't love formatting either, but we'll help you learn to like it just a little better!  As one of our recent graduates said after spending weeks formatting his dissertation, "I should get a degree just for that!"

So before you throw the laptop out the window, avail yourself of these new videos. And if that doesn't work... come see us! We'll be glad to help in person, too. (No autographs, please.)

Have You Seen Lynda?

, that is!

*As of last November, NIU provides all students, staff, and faculty with this service. You can read DoIT’s introductory write up here.

 

Today’s blog post intends to “introduce” you to Lynda.com, in case you haven’t tried this tool.

Basically, Lynda.com is pretty cool. Here’s how it works.

You log in with your student or employee ID and its corresponding password. You get to Lynda.com either through NIU’s A-Z link or by typing http://go.niu.edu/lynda in your browser’s address bar.

This site contains many video tutorials. Most are mini-courses, taking an hour to several hours to complete, but each course is broken up into minutes-sized segments. You do not need to view an entire course. Each course includes a transcript and exercise files, should you wish to practice a specific task. And Lynda.com keeps track of your viewing history and place.

I suggest that you start by hovering over the library button on the top banner next to the Lynda.com name, and browse the larger categories of Business, Design, Education and Elearning, Photography, Video, Web, etc. Each of these categories breaks down into specific topics and applicable software tutorials. If you click on the library button, you will get an A – Z listing of the larger categories’ subtopics and the number of tutorials available for each.

Within the subtopics, you can select specific applicable software tutorials or a specific author to see all of his/her videos. You also choose a skill level from Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Appropriate for all.

How can Lynda.com help with a thesis or dissertation?

Well, it can’t—not directly. However, most of us are preparing our documents in Word. 

The Thesis Office receives a lot of formatting questions for Word, but we find that students have different versions of Word running through different operating systems on computers that are purchased from all over the world; these often have unusual default settings. Add Word’s styles and hidden formatting into that mix, and sometimes, it’s hard to untangle what is going on in a document.

Also, Lynda.com is available twenty-four hours; while we try to respond to any inquiry quickly, we can’t always help you right when you’d like. 

So we want to direct you to the 59 Word Processing courses containing 2647 video tutorials on Lynda.com.  

Don’t be overwhelmed with those numbers; you can search for specific tutorials on any issue. For instance, I searched: “inserting page breaks in Word 2013,” and though I received two thousand results, I could see quickly that the top five were most applicable. You may want to look through some of the various courses’ tables of contents just to get ideas about how to phrase your searches too.

There is more to Lynda.com; I’ve only begun to explore the site. Our office will provide you with updates as we discover any helpful tips.

Have fun exploring Lynda.com, and feel free to post a reply on this blog post or on Facebook if you have found or find anything helpful there.We'd love to hear from you.

Welcome Back!

We hope your new year is off to a good start and you’ve had a good break!

For our first blog post of 2016, we want to be sure you know about our upcoming events and remind you of our open office hours, which are Monday – Thursday, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM; stop by Adams Hall 104 anytime with questions regarding theses or dissertations.

Let’s look at the events we have lined up.

Presentations

We have five informational presentations scheduled:

1.      Dissertation 101, Monday, February 8, from 2 – 4 PM (almost full!)

2.      Thesis 101, Tuesday, February 9, from 2 – 4 PM (almost full!)

3.      Writing a Dissertation in Education, Saturday, February 20, from 9 AM – 2 PM (Naperville)

4.      Writing a Thesis in Engineering, Monday, February 22, from 2 – 4 PM

5.      Demystifying the Submission Process, Wednesday, March 9, from 4 – 6 PM

Information about topics covered, exact event/room locations, and who would benefit from each is found on our website.

Workshop

We also have a hands-on workshop, scheduled twice. * NOTE * Our Wednesday, February 3 workshop is full, but you can still attend on Monday, February 29, from 2 – 4 pm.

This workshop is called Tables, Figures, Pagination, and it obviously helps with those tricky topics! It is held in Adams Hall room 103, and almost everyone writing a thesis or dissertation can benefit from this session!

  

Please REGISTER for any of the presentations AND for the Tables, Figures, Pagination workshop by emailing thesis@niu.edu . Put the name and date of the event that you would like to attend in the subject line please.

Introducing, Brown Bag Discussions!

We are now offering discussions over lunch (bring your lunch please) in Adams Hall, room 103 from 12 – 1 PM. These talks will cover a variety of topics and may include guest speakers.

Our first Brown Bag is scheduled for Tuesday, February 16, and it is aimed at faculty who are directing a thesis or dissertation at NIU, especially for those who are doing so for the first time!

Other Brown Bag topics include Writer’s Block, Open Access, and Writing a Proposal.

Please see the schedule on our website, and stay posted in case we add new “menu” options!

Questions? You can always call us at (815) 753- 9405 or email us at thesis@niu.edu. 

Hope to see you at one of our happenings soon!

“I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know.”

The title of this post is a quote from a student who attended our “Writing a Dissertation in Education” Workshop of October 3rd.

We often hear positive comments after our workshops, either through email or in person. Typically, students report that the workshop they attended was very helpful.

So what is it that we do at our workshops?

Well, let me tell what we did at our fall workshops then alert you to some of the changes we have in store for the spring.

Typical Fall Workshop

This fall, we offered workshops for specific discipline areas and departments. Some focused on thesis preparation, and others focused on dissertation preparation. By “preparation,” we mean the actual construction of a document according to the appropriate Guidelines (←link to “Thesis Format Guidelines”) found on our website. Content issues are a matter for students and their committees, of course.

A common core at our fall workshops was to walk students through the appropriate Guidelines (←link to “Dissertation Format Guidelines”) in great detail, as the instructions do seem daunting at first. Yet these Guidelines are the publication conventions for theses and dissertations written at NIU, and they need to be followed closely.

We explained the rules, such as the correct placement of tables, and illustrated the rules by way of example, after which students better understood what they needed to do and felt more empowered to get it done. Hence, the positive reviews! (Not to boast, but here's another student quote: "Your presentation was fantastic and very much appreciated!")

We also directed students towards important areas on our website and the Graduate School’s website, such as where to find — and how to read — the Graduation Deadlines for Graduate Students.

Finally, we left time for hands-on manipulation of documents where we helped students address specific problems.

Workshop Issues

We found that many of these workshops were too extensive for some students to complete. In some cases, workshops were presented over two or three sessions. We also found that some disciplines require individualized information, while most do not. So in the spring, we are changing things up!

Spring Ahead! 

In 2016, we will split the sessions into A) ones that mainly present and cover necessary material, and B) ones in which students work right then and there on the formatting of their documents.

A) Presentations

Our presentations will be divided into “Thesis Requirements” and “Dissertation Requirements,” and anyone in any discipline can attend either as appropriate to their degree. Each will last approximately 75 minutes and will finish in one sitting. We will still offer a couple discipline-specific sessions, but our general presentations will give all writers a wealth of information in short order.

B) Workshops

Our workshops, which will be held on different dates than the presentations, will address specific formatting issues, such as problems that arise with tables, figures, and pagination. During these workshops, students need to bring their document on a laptop so they can implement format changes. These two-hour long sessions are open to writers of both theses and dissertations. They will be particularly helpful for those nearing their graduation semester. And, the first one is already scheduled!

Schedule of Events

You will find the dates, times, and locations of all of our events through our website (click Workshops and Support) or through NIU’s Events Calendar, where you can also subscribe to our RSS feed “Thesis-Workshops.” We will be listing more soon!

For any questions, you can always call us at (815) 753- 9405 or email us at thesis@niu.edu. 

Finally, one last student quote: "I will be encouraging all of my peers to attend your workshop in the future." We hope you'll take this student's advice, and we'll see you at one of our happenings this spring!