https://engagedlearning.co.uk/the-death-of-the-dissertation/ Tue, 05 Jun 2018 15:08:58 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.9 https://engagedlearning.co.uk/the-death-of-the-dissertation/#comment-442 Tue, 17 Feb 2015 10:31:14 +0000 https://engagedlearning.co.uk/?p=2507#comment-442 Kerstyn,
Thanks for sharing, and the valuable point you make about relevance. The increasing importance of a public audience for student work is critical here. I can see a point, in a more entrepreneurial HE system, where the public assessment – by the impact their knowledge and skills have made – carries at least as much weight as their supervisor’s!

]]> https://engagedlearning.co.uk/the-death-of-the-dissertation/#comment-441 Tue, 17 Feb 2015 10:03:51 +0000 https://engagedlearning.co.uk/?p=2507#comment-441 Nice article. One aspect of the analysis that I think you’ve missed is that students are concious that there is no long term value in most dissertations, their purpose is simply to demonstrate to one person (their examiner) what they know. If you know you can get away with it cheating will always be a more efficient & secure method. A few years ago I completed a PhD as a mature student. it quickly became obvious that there was limited value in the final thesis other than a trophy to sit on my shelf in recognition of the toil and anguish I’d had to endure. Although a public document a thesis is almost inaccessible, generally hidden in one library and rarely on line. But the academic world is slowly introducing a better solution. At the instance of my supervisor my final thesis was the compilation of 4 peer reviewed published papers. This made the thesis relevant and independently assessed. By making it have a real value, that was carefully interrogated meant it was inconceivable to get someone else to do the work.

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