>> Mr. Chuck Radke: Hi.
My name is Chuck Radke.
And, here at Fresno State, I serve as the Dissertation and Thesis Consultant, which
means that I have the privilege really of reviewing and approving all of the Dissertations
and Master's Theses that our students write to, complete their Master's and Doctoral Degrees.
What I want to share with you today are some of the criteria that I use to assess your
documents.
I want to go through a little bit about the electronics admission and review process,
then introduce you to some resources that are going to help you get your dissertation
or thesis approved in a timely and efficient manner.
The first thing I do is I access a document in light of what we call, the Title Five Education
Code, here in California.
The Title Five Education Code was established for a lot of reasons, but one of them was
to set forth the criteria for what a dissertation or theses should look like.
And there's some very general things that the dissertation or thesis should do.
But, primarily, that document needs to -- evidence, original thinking, critical thinking, and
those are some subjective things.
I kind of come in on the objective side.
I'm looking more at things like formatting, accurate and thorough documentation.
So I'm looking at where the margins are, where the line spacing is, where your page numbers
are placed.
All of those objective things that I can help you through efficiencies, built into something
called, a Thesis Template, that I can help you format your document, and we can get it
ready to put it on the shelf.
In the old days, this used to be done when your moms and dads and your professors did
their dissertations and theses, this used to be done through somebody called, the Ruler
Lady.
And she was literally called, The Ruler Lady , because she had a ruler in her hands.
And these folks would bring in their documents, they would place them down on her desk, and
she would literally measure the margins to see if they were accurate.
And if they weren't accurate, it was doomsday for the student, because, the student then
had to go back and retype -- this was in the day before computers, of course, -- retype
their entire thesis or their entire dissertation.
Well, we've gotten rid of all that old school stuff now.
And I'm kind of like the high-tech ruler lady.
I do measure margins and I do measure page number placements and line spacing, and things
like that, but I do it in a much more technologically savvy manner.
To begin with, the way you submit your thesis or your dissertation is you go online to my
Website.
And the Website is listed for you at the bottom of the slide there.
In the semester that you intend to submit your document, you need to go to my Website
and register.
And that's just me capturing your bio demo data, your name, your address, your faculty
committee members, those types of things.
And really important on that registration page, you're going to tell me what documentation
style you're using.
So for example, if you're in education or psychology, you'll be using the APA Sixth
Edition Style Manual.
If you're in English, perhaps you might be using MLA.
Or maybe you're in biology and you're using one of the more arcane biological journals
there.
You're going to type that information into that registration page as well.
Once I capture that information, I'm going to send an e-mail to your three committee
members who you identified on that registration page.
And those committee members are going to be informed that you the student have registered
to submit a thesis in such and such a semester.
And when those three committee members are ready to approve it, they're going to Step
Two of the registration process.
And they're going to electronically approve your document through the Website.
They're going to read a statement.
And the statement's going to say something to the effect of we the undersigned agree
that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of Scholarship for
the University, and it's ready to be reviewed.
They're going to type in their name, their e-mail address, type in your name, and hit
submit.
And once that submit button has been hit, they're done reviewing your thesis.
What they're telling me there is, as far as they're concerned, that thesis is ready to
go up on the library shelf.
And the only person after that who can tell you -- or can help you make changes would
be me.
So once I get all three of those approvals from your committee members, I'm going to
set up a review folio in Blackboard for you.
It's just going to be the two of us in Blackboard.
And I'm going to send you instructions on how to deposit your thesis into the Blackboard
folio.
And once you get it deposited there, then I do all my review online.
Once I've completed my review, then I'll take your thesis back to you.
I'll let you know where some changes that need to be made.
And I usually give you guys a couple weeks to make those changes before you resubmit
your document.
So it's a pretty easy process.
And, really, it can be done from the comfort of your own living room sofa.
It used to be that you'd have to drive the thesis in, plop the paper copy down, go home.
I would review the paper copy with a red pen and then you'd have to come back and pick
it up.
None of that's in play anymore.
This is all something that you can do from your computer.
So what am I looking for when you've submitted your thesis, once you've got it deposited
into Blackboard?
The first thing I'm going to look for is the format of the document.
And, by format, I'm talking about things like margins, line spacing, page number, placement,
organization of the preliminary pages.
And these are all important factors because what we're doing is we're creating a book
for you that's going to go on the library shelf.
So for example, if your left margin is not at an inch and a half, which is what the guidelines
require, your text is going to disappear into the spine of that book.
So I need to make sure that all of those objective things are satisfactory, that, when we create
that book for you and put it on the library shelf, the pages aren't crooked, and things
like that.
So I'm looking for those types of format issues.
I'm also looking at documentation.
So for example, if you're an APA student, I'm going to make sure that the documentation
within the body of your thesis matches the documentation in the references list.
So for example, if you put Johnson 2010 in your thesis, I want to make sure that it says
Johnson 2010 in your references list and not say Johnson 2011.
So I'll just make sure that according to the California State Title Five Education Code
that you are exhibiting within the body of your thesis accurate and thorough documentation.
Also in that documentation piece is currency and credibility.
I want to make sure that the stuff that you're citing is recent.
It's current.
I want to make sure that the most recent thing you've cited isn't 1989, because, I'm going
to say well, there's been twenty something years of research that's gone on in that area
since then.
On the credibility piece, I want to make sure that you're using peer-reviewed journals for
your sources and not Wikipedia.
Okay.
So let's make sure that when you are doing a lit review, for example, that you're going
out there and you're getting stuff that's out of peer-reviewed journals, professional
journals, written by people who are professionals in the field.
After documentation, then I'm looking also for plagiarism.
This is, of course, a big deal in thesis and dissertation writing these days.
I want to make sure that the work that you're putting out there is truly representing you
and truly representing the University.
Now sometimes students unintentionally plagiarize.
If that happens, for example, you know, I would have ways to help you fix that.
But what we want to avoid doing is we want to avoid a situation where you're cutting
a bunch of stuff from the Internet and pasting it into your document and then representing
those words as your own.
The University does offer plagiarism workshops six times a semester.
And if you feel like that's going to be a problem for you, I would certainly recommend
you looking into one of those plagiarism workshops so you can figure out what exactly plagiarism
is, what it isn't, and we can get that work that you're doing -- make sure that it's truly
representing what you've done.
Copyright infringement.
That's another issue where some students will be wanting to use, say, scales or surveys
or pictures, things that there's a federal copyright protection against.
Now there's a difference between use and reproduce, and I want to make sure that I get that across
to you now.
You can use things in your thesis.
For example, you can use a survey, and you can cite that survey within the body of your
thesis.
It's when you want to reproduce that survey entirely and, say, put it into an appendix,
that, you may run into some trouble.
I want to make sure that you're not violating copyright law by taking somebody else's copyrighted
protected work, reproducing it in your thesis and then disseminating it.
So I'll look for that and make sure that you don't get into trouble doing those types of
things.
Finally, I'll look for basic grammar and mechanics.
Now I want to tell you that I'm not going to read your master thesis or doctoral dissertation
word for word, every single page.
I will read quite a bit of it.
And I want to make sure when I'm looking at your basic grammar and mechanics that you
do have a command of the English language and that you're able to express yourself clearly
and articulately in your research in your writing.
If, for example, I've read twenty pages of your document and I see that it clearly hasn't
been proofread or edited, I won't go any farther.
What I will do at that point is I'll just draft a letter to you and your thesis chair,
and I'll send it back to you.
And I'll say hey, this one's not ready to go yet.
Okay.
We're just going to have to have this -- make sure that this document's proofread and edited
before we can move on any further.
So do make sure that before you submit that document, that you have proofread it; that
it has been copy edited, and then it's nothing that you'd be embarrassed about.
I want to talk about format requirements and I talk about general format requirements,
again, things like margins and line spacing.
There's a document on the Website called, The Guidelines for Thesis Preparation.
That's available as a PDF.
It's free for download.
What I would do, if you're at the beginning of the thesis process, is just go to my Website,
grab it, place it on your desktop and start reading it.
It's probably about 20 to 25 pages in text.
And there's a lot of images and a lot of graphs, a lot of things that -- a company that -- guidelines
that will help you, as far as models.
Margins, like I said, 1.5 inches on the left.
That's a very important margin because that's the side where we put your book into a spine.
We don't want to -- we want to make sure that, that left margin is clearly an inch and a
half so you don't have your text disappear.
Headings.
Right now, the University's guidelines call for headings that are centered side, and what
we call a third level paragraph heading.
Those are all underlined.
And those rules for headings will override your style manual's rules for heading.
So for example, I'll use APA again.
A first-level centered heading in APA is a boldface heading.
And the guidelines for thesis preparation, that first-level centered heading is not boldface.
It's underlined.
And the reason for this is that the University wants to create a blueprint, if you will,
where all the master's theses look the same.
They have the same style for headings.
So this is kind of like a Fresno State style, if you will.
So that's what the guidelines for thesis preparation governs in that regard for heading.
The order of the elements.
The guidelines for thesis preparation will dictate an abstract followed by a guard sheet,
which is a blank page, followed by a title sheet, followed by an approval sheet.
And all this is set up for you within the thesis template.
So you don't have to order this at all.
All you have to do is follow the map that I've created for you in this thesis template.
Pagination is also governed by the guidelines for thesis preparation.
We begin numbering the pages on page 1 of the first page of the thesis proper.
In the thesis template, you'll notice that there are no page numbers appearing on the
first pages of any chapter or section.
So the first page number you'll see is actually page 2, within the body of the thesis.
Font style and sizes is another thing the guidelines govern.
But what I don't want you doing, of course, is going out and getting a Times or a Courier
New, size 16 Point thesis font and trying to make your thesis really long when it doesn't
need to be.
There's, in fact, four styles on the thesis Website that you can choose from.
There's Bookman, there's Times New Roman, Palatino, and Courier.
You can use one of those four styles for your thesis template, and that's what we give you
a choice of.
Finally, table figure and placement.
What we do with the guidelines for thesis preparation is we have you embed your tables
and figures within the body of your thesis.
So for example, in one paragraph, you might reference Figure One.
Figure One needs to follow as closely as possible to the paragraph in which it's referenced.
So if you have Figure One referenced at the top of your page, the paragraph ends maybe
a quarter way down the page, then Figure One will sit right there in the middle of that
page and the text will follow Figure One after that.
So then the process of embedding would go on throughout the thesis until you're all
done.
So some guidelines for style journals will tell you to put your figures and tables at
the end of the document so they can embed them for you.
We're just asking you at the dissertation of the thesis office that you do the embedding
process.
And if you need help with doing that, I'm certainly available to meet with you and help
you do that.
Now, in addition to the general format guidelines, that you find in the guidelines for thesis
preparation, there are some specific format guidelines that you're also going to have
to follow.
And this is where your style manual or your journal comes in; the APA, the MLA, the Turabian,
the Journal of Animal Science, whatever it is that you're using to document your sources.
And the most specific format requirements will, again, govern the documentation both
in text and at the end of text.
So the way those sources appear within the body of the thesis -- so for example, APA
will use an author, comma, year format.
MLA will use author, page number format.
Those are the guidelines that will govern how those sources will look when you cite
them in the body of the thesis and at the end of the text.
And all that minutia that goes on in those references list, you know, last name followed
by a comma, followed by initial, followed by a period, followed by another initial,
followed by a period, all that stuff needs to be followed to the letter when you're doing
your documentation.
Numbers and percentages is another thing that these style manuals will tell you how to do.
A lot of students don't realize that these big style manuals tell them a lot more than
just how to cite their sources.
Turabian, for example, will have you use a numeral for a percentage and then have you
write out the word percent.
APA has you use a numeral for a percentage and then always use the percent symbol.
Okay.
So you want to look up the number's section or the percentage's section in each one of
these style manuals to find out how you should render numbers in the body of your thesis.
Abbreviations is another one.
And this is really important for those who are writing in the sciences.
Those who are writing in the sciences will always be called upon to abbreviate units
of measure, like grams or centimeters or units of time, like hours, minutes, second, days,
weeks, and preceded by an Arabic numeral.
So you want to make sure that you're looking into those guidelines for authors in those
style manuals to see how those should look.
Finally, table and figure layout.
The general guidelines will tell you that table and figure placement, those are to be
embedded.
How those actual tables and figures look and how they appear on the page, that will be
governed by your style manual.
So for example, APA, when they ask you to create a table, they'll tell you not to put
any vertical lines in your table, just horizontal lines going across.
They'll tell you to center data under the column headings, those types of things.
And each one of these style manuals and each one of the guidelines for authors and some
of the more specific journals will give you guidelines on how to create and how to make
your tables and figures look within the body of the thesis.
Some of the resources that I have available for you to get this done are primarily the
dissertation and thesis office Website.
There you're going to find the guidelines for thesis preparation, which I've already
told you about.
You're going to find Word document templates that are going to be really useful for you.
Along with those Word document templates, you're going to find tutorials on how to use
them.
I've loaded onto the Website PowerPoints.
One of them is called, Navigating the Thesis Template: The Basics.
You can check that out.
Look at the PowerPoint.
And that's going to show you how to format your thesis, how to take your document from
an unformatted Word document, place it into the thesis template and style your thesis
real easily.
Along with that PowerPoint, I've put up a couple of Jing videos; so you can listen to
me talking to you and telling you how to move through the thesis template, how to format
your text.
There's also a series of online information sheets there that I really recommend that
you read.
The first one's called, The Thesis Process: Questions and Answers.
One of the things that, that one's going to tell you is that the first thing that you
should do when you're early enough in the thesis process is submit what's called, a
Committee Assignment Form.
That committee assignment form is really important.
And that's the one that I'm going to use ultimately to clear your thesis.
But that's where you announce your title.
You get your three committee members signed up, and they sign on the dotted line and letting
me know that they're on board with you; that they're going to shepherd you through this
thesis process.
So get that done as early as you can in your career, in your graduate career.
And get on my radar.
That's how you get on my radar, with that committee assignment form.
In addition to that, there's a submission review procedures page, which basically just
goes over in writing everything that I've just told you here on this video.
And there's also requirements for final thesis submission page.
That's also going to tell you how your thesis should look, how you should deposit that thesis,
and what format it needs to be in, things like that.
Finally, there's the graduate writing studio.
Right now, it's located here in the Madden Library.
And we're available to meet with you one-on-one in consultations to work on some of these
details of formatting, to work on some of the -- sort of the issues of writing a lit
review.
Through the graduate writing studio, we have one-on-one consultation sessions, last about
an hour each.
And we also do small group workshops where we'll do formatting workshops, for example,
or how to write a lit review workshop.
It will also help you with proofreading your master's thesis or your master's project or
longer papers, things like that.
One thing I do want to say is that the graduate writing studio is not a proofreading service.
It's not an editing service.
The consultants there are trained not to go through line by line and copy edit your paper
for you.
But they're certainly well-trained to help you identify repetitive errors and teach you
and empower you how to fix those errors.
So I wanted to thank you for listening in today on this thesis information session.
I hope you find it useful.
My e-mail address there, cradke@csufresno.edu.
Please drop me an e-mail if you have any questions, anything you need to follow-up with.
And good luck.
Keep writing and keep researching and do a great job.
Thanks for listening.