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:
3.Writing a Dissertation in Education, Saturday, February 20, from9 AM – 2 PM(Naperville)
4.Writing a Thesis in Engineering, Monday, February 22, from2 – 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!
PleaseREGISTERfor
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.
This last blog before the Christmas break was meant to be a second installment of Dissertations/Theses in the news.
However, I find myself in a rather familiar situation -- prioritizing other work over finishing my dissertation.
I have one last chapter to write -- One. Final. Chapter. And then . . . all I have to concern myself with is reviewing the content with my committee, relying on their feedback as I revise the entire thing, and then submitting all important required graduate school paperwork to defend my dissertation and graduate.
Instead, I am using the little free time that I have grading student papers, making up quizzes, grading quizzes, helping my kids with their homework. . . Okay, that last one does not count. But you know what I mean.
The problem is that it is just too easy to rationalize finishing all of this other work before I focus on my own. And that is when I fall into the all too familiar abyss.
Thus, concerned that I will not use any of the Christmas break to make any progress on this final chapter, I wanted to offer some thoughts about writing groups.
A dissertation/thesis writing group is not some formal gathering of graduate students reading and critiquing each other's work. That is the last thing anyone needs. Besides, you will receive all of the feedback that you need from your director and committee members. Do not let the name "writing group" fool you. This is just three or four people at a coffee shop, a bookstore, a diner, a library, or some other designated meeting space where you can write. Nothing more.
A writing group is a kind of support network. The three or four of you make a formal agreement that once a week -- or once every two weeks, or once a month, whatever your schedule permits -- the writing group will meet at a pre-arranged time at a designated place (and the time and place must be agreed to beforehand and will not be changed for any reason). This time has been set aside from your busy schedule specifically for all of you to write your dissertation/thesis. Not research. Not read sources. Not collect data. But write. Anecdotal evidence and research shows that graduate students prioritize every other aspect of their dissertation/thesis EXCEPT THE WRITING!
Therefore, the second part of the writing group's agreement is that no other distractions are permitted. No texting, no going on Facebook, no checking Twitter feeds, etc. Every member of the writing group keeps the other person on task. WRITE! As Richard Castle's screensaver tells us:
Anecdotal evidence does indicate that writing groups help. Further, the evidence suggests that writing groups are even more effective if the other members of your writing group consists of peers from different fields/departments. This protects individuals from unconsciously evaluating the worth of their own topic in their chosen field to someone else's topic who happens to be in the exact same field. This leads to panic and writer's block, and the next thing you know: another year goes by and, once again, no work done on the dissertation.
You have your topic. You have done the primary reading. You have conducted your experiment/observation. You have your research and data. Now it is time to write.
It still may take a great deal of time to write the entirety of your thesis (see previous post on being a non-traditional student for data on average length of time to complete a dissertation/thesis). At least the support of a regular writing group will help keep you on task.
Feel free to comment on this blog about writing groups. Feel free to share your thoughts about writing groups on our Facebook page. If you want to try and set up a writing group and need help doing so, feel free to contact the office.
Oh . . . and on a related note: There has been some debate in our office about scheduling regular writing days -- perhaps, once a month in our office or in one of the classrooms in the library -- for graduate students who want all of the benefits of a writing group, but cannot seem to put one together. Office sponsored writing days would offer the same benefits -- get together in a quiet, safe space, no distractions allowed, and write. The only difference would be, Thesis and Dissertation office staff would be on hand to help if someone has a question about something in their document. Would you want our office to offer writing days? Would writing days help you plan time in your busy schedule to focus exclusively on writing your dissertation/thesis? Let us know in a comment or on Facebook.
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!
As
Halloween arrives, and as you hand out candy or get dressed up for the
holiday, think about giving yourself a real treat: find a writing partner or
another source to help keep you on track for your study.
In the MOOC
“How to Survive Your PhD,” developed by Dr. Inger Mewburn and the Australia
National University
Online team, the moderators begin the course with a discussion into
why PhD students quit (applies to thesis writers, too). As
expected, “intellectual isolation” and “stress/exhaustion/mental health issues”
were among the several reasons given for quitting. Other reasons, such as
“mounting debt” and “being made to do non-thesis work,” were given, but the first
two I mentioned can be addressed with a small amount of
effort.
If you are
reading this, you probably know that the Thesis Office tries to help with
isolation through our Facebook group (NIU Theses and Dissertations) and this
blog. However, I’m of the opinion that nothing beats face-to-face interactions, at
least occasionally!
And not
long ago, a colleague, who recently earned
her PhD (congratulations, Professor Probst!), offered me a related piece of
advice for making progress. Dr. Probst said she found it very helpful to have
weekly meetings with a partner. Here’s how she describes her experience:
“A fellow Ph.D. candidate and I decided to dissertate from afar while we
assumed full-time positions. We understood the challenges of writing a
dissertation being removed from constructs, particularly peer support, at the
university. We planned to continue our regular writing sessions that we began
at NIU, but difficulties in arranging our schedules to make time for our
dissertations presented themselves. Our weekly meetings held us accountable to
write regularly, one of the most important habits for completing the
dissertation. Rarely did we review each other’s work—that is not the support we
needed. We needed consistency, and a guaranteed weekly opportunity to write
meant we had to prioritize that work over other tasks or interests.
Furthermore, our meetings encouraged us to write and revise outside these
sessions because our writing mindset never lapsed, however tired and
discouraged we sometimes felt. We learned that allowing too much distance from
the dissertation would make returning to it more challenging. Additionally, the
emotional struggles of writing a dissertation are real and can be detrimental,
so the emotional support we provided to one another often was more important
than carving out time in our schedules to write.”
Wow! I think Dr. Probst’s words offer some good advice!
If you cannot find a partner or cannot work out the logistics, though, NIU offers other
resources that might be of benefit.
For
instance, if you are experiencing stress, anxiety, or any other condition such as depression, NIU’s Counseling and Consultation Services,
located in the Campus Life Building (corner of Lucinda and Normal) Room 200,
offers free groups and programs for NIU students. One of their offerings is a
“Mindful Monday” group, which meets from 12 – 12:45 for meditation and
relaxation, thus reducing stress while offering camaraderie.
They
also have therapy dogs every 2nd Monday from 6:00-7:15 pm in Stevenson
Hall. See one good dog in the photo to the right!
NIU
counselors can get you to an appropriate anxiety/stress management group by referral
from a walk-in appointment, available Monday through Friday from 11:00 – 3:30. For
more information, see their website or call them at 815-753-1206.
Finally,
don’t forget about us, the Thesis and Dissertation Office. We are here in Adams Hall 104 Monday through Thursday from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm, and we have a quiet
workshop area in our adjoining room (AH 103) where you can work anytime we
are open. Stop in, call us (815) 753- 9405, or email thesis@niu.edu. We will be glad to help in any
way we can.
Once I woke this morning, I reached for my iPhone - my technology addiction may just be a potential topic for a future blog post (i.e. when to stop researching on my laptop and go get lost in the stacks at Founder's Library). I opened my podcasts app and . . . lo and behold, NPR TED Talks has a new episode devoted to Open Source.
For those of you who are interested in learning about how Open Access (or Open Source) impacted the genesis of the World Wide Web, you should check out Tim Berners-Lee's talk:
If you are studying history or, like me, you are fascinated by history, there is a TED Talk with Clay Shirk about how Open Access started . . . in the 17th century!
If you are studying political science, you may find Pia Mancini's talk interesting. She used Open Access to try and change democracy with the mobile platform Democracy OS:
If you are studying art and architecture, Alastair Parvin has an intriguing talk about WikiHouse:
Finally, for those of you who are engineering students, you may find David Lang's talk about relying on Open Access to build his own underwater robot to go hunting for buried treasure:
On the other hand, if you are not sure which talk you may or may not be interested, I can definitely recommend NPR's TED Radio Hour with guy Raz abridged version of the talks (click here).
As always, if you have any thoughts or concerns or questions about Open Access, please feel free to share them by offering a comment on our blog, or post a comment on our Facebook group page.
Attention would-be December 2015 graduates! October 30, 2015 is almost upon us! This means -- for those of you paying close attention to the Graduate School's deadlines calendar -- that the last date to submit the postdefense version of your thesis/dissertation fast approacheth! Well, that and ... it's almost Halloween.
You should know that ProQuest -- the electronic repository for the postdefense PDF version of your thesis/dissertation -- has updated its website. How does this apply to you?
During the (what many NIU grad students have described to me as tedious) process of submitting your postdefense graduate work, you will come across a section having to do with copyright and licensing. As explained in a previous blog on open access philosophy, you will have two options when it comes to publishing/copywright: traditional or open access. For those of you who know that you will be selecting open access, ProQuest will then prompt you to decide on your licensing rights. This is where Creative commons licensing comes into play.
Creative commons offers four options when it comes to licensing your work: Attribution (a.k.a. BY), Share-alike (SA), Non-commercial (NC), and No Derivative Works (ND). Well, technically, there is a fifth option: public domain.
When you choose Attribution, you are giving your audience the right to copy your work, distribute your work, and build upon your work -- this latter part is especially relevant in the case of scientific research. The person(s) who do any of these actions are required to give you, the original author, credit. They are not permitted to simply pass your work off as their own.
Share-alike means that if anyone copies or builds upon your work (which you allow them to do in accordance with the open access philosophy), then their work is required to have the exact same license that you chose for your own work, which would be the original research in this scenario.
A Non-commercial license stipulates that you agree that the reader can make copies of your work, distribute your work, build on your research, and even display your work (on a website, a poster, a YouTube video, etc.). However, you draw the line at them making any money off of your original research.
Finally, No Derivative works stipulates that the reader has your permission to copy, distribute, and display your original material. However, they may not modify the original materials in anyway. In other words, the individual who reads your work cannot adapt your work into a top 40 hit single or an Emmy winning HBO miniseries. Your work is your work.
You may also choose Public Domain, which simply means that you are allowing your work to be freely available to everyone to do with as they choose - there are no restrictions being placed on the material.
You should know that the ND licensing option is very controversial in open access circles. Many open access devotees view ND licensing as antithetical to the core mission statement of open access publishing. The whole purpose behind open access is to make research widely available to the public and other researchers in order to further scholarship. One way to accomplish such a feat is to empower researchers and laypeople to read your original work and then build off of your theories. On the other hand, many academics and researchers feel that too much liberty is being taken with their original research. There have been instances where someone's research has been plagiarised or the original author has not been attributed in subsequent derivatives of their original research.
Be aware that even though there are five licensing options, these options can be combined in a variety of ways depending on how "free" you want your original research to be. The most common combinations include:Public Domain on its own, Attribution on its own, Attribution AND Noncommercial, Attribution AND Share-alike, Attribute AND No Derivatives, Attribution AND Noncommercial AND Share-alike, and Attribution AND Noncommercial AND No Derivatives.
If you believe in open access publishing and you wish to opt for open access publishing when you submit your thesis/dissertation, please please please . . . take the time to review your licensing options. Make sure that you are receiving the credit that you are due. After all, you are devoting a large amount of time to researching and writing your thesis/dissertation. What you need to decide is, how available do you want to make your work to the public and other academics. One issue that may influence the license you choose is whether or not you intend on patenting your work.
Before you submit your postdefense work to the NIU Thesis and Dissertation office, sit down with your director and discuss the best licensing options for you and your work.
A short video explaining Creative Commons licensing has been attached to this blog. It was created courtesy of the Creative Commons organization (click here to visit their website).
Remember, open access and creative commons is not an exclusive publishing domain for students and academics in the sciences. Open access and creative commons can impact and be beneficial for those of us in the humanities.
Creative commons licensing has become a very prominent legal issue recently. In an age where everyone posts their academic research or creative work on social media websites -- especially, YouTube -- a debate is starting about what belongs in the public domain and what is, or what should be, or what remains protected by strict copyright laws that many people argue have become obsolete in the 21st century. This debate will apply to you. Maybe not now, but in time it will. Remember: your thesis/dissertation represents a significant contribution to academia and some day someone may want to build on your original research.
As this debate in creative commons continues to receive significant news coverage, our office will try to keep you updated with links to articles on the issue.
Please feel free to share any questions or comments about open access and creative commons licensing on our blog or our office Facebook group.
This year Open Access week will be celebrated October 19 through October 25, 2015.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the above graphic, it is the official Open Access logo, originally designed by the Public Library of Science.
Even though there are no scheduled events this year about Open Access on the NIU campuses, I believe that it is important to compose a brief entry about the philosophy behind Open Access. You may not believe this issue is applicable to you, your field of study, or your research topic; however, I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Remember, after you have successfully defended your thesis or dissertation, the next step is to submit your written work to our office via ProQuest. During this submission process, you will have to choose a publication option for your academic work: traditional or Open Access. Many opt for traditional publication if for no other reason than the fact that it costs you nothing, whereas opting for Open Access publishing does involve a $90 fee.
Open Access simply means unrestrained access to research -- peer-reviewed and non peer-reviewed research articles, conference papers, theses, book chapters, and dissertations. Much of this research is not available in its entirety to the public. You may come across an article abstract or a preview of a scholarly work thanks to an Internet search, but this is not unrestrained access to the entirety of that scholarly work.
A large number of researchers and scholars receive funding -- some of it via government grants -- to conduct research in their field. Once these academics have collected their data, they publish their findings in scholarly journals. The problem is that access to these scholarly journals may be guaranteed exclusively through individual subscriptions to the journal or through pay subscription services online. In other words, this scholarly research, some of which has been funded by government grants -- i.e. your tax dollars -- is locked behind a paywall. People who subscribe to the Open Access philosophy take issue with this and rightly so.
These online subscription services might not be an issue for students and academics if they happen to be affiliated with a college or university that has allocated funds for the school library to pay for these subscription services. After all, what lay person is going to devote their time to reading some graduate student's monograph? Then again, people who believe in Open Access make the rather compelling argument that many schools -- across the United States and in under-developed countries -- might not have the funds to pay for library subscription services. Another scenario might be that a college or university has limited funds that allows it to subscribe to some scholarly journals or some subscription databases, but not all of them. In these two examples, this means that future generations of academics will have a hole in their education due to the fact that they will not have access to certain texts. The common retort to this argument is that students and researchers can request materials through interlibrary loan. The problem with this is that an article requested by interlibrary loan might have to be photocopied and sent by post, or it might be scanned and sent via email. Then again, the request might not even be fulfilled. If the literature can be shared, however, time might be an issue for the student or researcher who made the request. Open Access can ensure reliable quick access to research.
The one scenario in support of Open Access that I do happen to find rather compelling is this: outbreaks of deadly viruses. When a community of scientists and academics can share their work through Open Access, this guarantees the ability to stay on top of recent findings in the medical field. Thanks to Open Access, a doctor in Africa will be able to learn about an alternative form of treatment discovered in Europe that may prove to be more efficient treating patients suffering from some exotic virus in his part of the globe. This doctor can then build on the European research that he was able to access quickly and easily.
Elizabeth Marincola discusses how science might be advanced with Open Access publishing in her TED MED Talk:
Then again, who is to say that a lay person is not interested in reading the most recent research having to do with green energy? Or Astronomy? Or Physics? If you are earning your PhD in education, there may be legions of grade school and high school educators across the globe who are curious about successful teaching strategies that they might implement in their own classrooms. They might even wish to keep up to date with recent research related to their subject fields. If the research has been done, many people are asking the question: why can it not be made available to everyone, free of charge, via Open Access?
There is a great deal more that I could write about with regards to Open Access. For instance, there are two categories of Open Access: gratis and libre. There is "green" access and "gold" access when it comes to making your work available through Open Access publishing. There is even some controversy amongst Open Access devotees when it comes to Creative Commons copyright, which is associated with libre Open Access. There is also the history of Open Access, tracing its founding principles back to the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002.
For now, I simply wanted to introduce you to the philosophy behind Open Access with the intention of inspiring you to consider whether or not you should make your own thesis or dissertation available via Open Access. You may have noticed that a number of the scenarios I have described here relate to the sciences. This is not to suggest that Open Access does not apply to the humanities as well.
In the meantime, if you have questions about the Open Access philosophy or Open Access publication options, keep an eye out for future blog entries or feel free to contact our office directly (thesis@niu.edu). You can read up on the topic a bit more by checking out PLOS.org and SPARC. I've also taken the liberty of posting a link to a fun video from PhD Comics that is a fairly detailed explanation of Open Access. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts about Open Access in a comment, or post about it on our Facebook group page.
