Delivery Process

OK… here’s a signpost… an escape route: a process for saving one’s ‘neck’ as we say…

So what might a process for surviving your ‘rapport de stage’ or thesis/mémoire look like?

I have a series of 10 mini lectures on all aspects of this (10 – 20 mins each).  I strongly recommend that you view them and take them on board.  Here is the link:

http://www.tonyversity.com/students/mulhouse-fsesj/m12-intro-to-research/video-lectures-on-research/

Here I am trying to give you a roadmap to follow from the moment you have got the placement / internship/’stage’ in your ‘pocket’…

• Make a ‘bid’ for an academic tutor / prof. référant.   Most programmes allow you to make contact with a tutor to see if he/she is prepared to take you on as an academic tutor during your work experience.  Some however do not and they allocate you a tutor.  Neither mode is of particular concern because all tutors are responsible for trying to help you through the process of your project rather than being a source of content knowledge

• Read the Handbook / Livret.   You need to be very clear as to what is in there. Usually there is significant and helpful detail and guidance…. sometimes there will be very specific requirements regarding things like word/page length, structure, format, submission date limits, marking criteria etc.   You ignore these at your peril: we are all bound by what the handbook/livret requires and must respect it in the way in which we award marks.

• Get in touch with your tutor in the second week or so of your work experience.  Just to remind the tutor that you have started and to check contact details and of course discuss any immediate concerns.

• Keep a notebook. Right from the beginning you should make a note of the questions that come to you or the problems that you see.   Questions like: ‘why do they do it this way?’ … ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we did this?’  …. etc.   Quite often the innocent questions you ask when you arrive are the questions which no-one inside the business can see and they can make very interesting research projects.   Keep this going and you may well have a wealth of potential good ideas by the time you have been there a couple of months…

• Choice of a title.  First and foremost, you need to be interested in this title. You also have to ‘sell‘ this to your academic tutor and your workplace supervisor.  You need to look for a win-win situation.
  • for your academic tutor, he/she will be interested in the win situation for you: will it give you a rich learning experience
  • for your workplace supervisor, he/she will be wanting to see a ‘return’ on their investment in you: what could this project do for the company???  [Think in terms of Efficiency, Economy and Effectiveness – visible / measurable improvement – financial and/or otherwise]

• Proposing your title to your academic tutor.  Please do NOT just say: « Can I do something on this subject? ».  That does not help us to give you any helpful advice at all.  The response is likely to be: « Yes, but WHAT exactly? »   At the bottom of a webpage on Tonyversity, I have created a Project Proposition Form.  Please use it, complete it and send it to your tutor and then follow it up for discussion.   The level of information that the form requires will be enough to help your tutor to help you and hopefully give your project the ‘green light’….

• If the academic tutor thinks it is a good idea – propose it to your workplace supervisor.   Sell him your idea with a clear ‘win’ situation for your boss and you are likely to get his support.  Then you are on your way.

• Write the Introduction.  Don’t wait!  Get underway!  You will feel much better for having actually started writing!  This doesn’t require research so much as thought.  What does it entail:
  • the title: clear and unambiguous
  • explanation of the title: definition of key terms in the title and of limits (what is inside/outside the scope)
  • rationale: why are you doing this, what is your interest, why you are well-placed to be able to do it, what is likely to be the outcome (better performance in some way or other)?
  • aims and objectives that:
    • are arranged in a logical order moving from the general to the specific
    • are clear and discrete (no overlap)
    • add up to 100% coverage of the title – not 80% – not 120%
  • your general ‘approach’ / how you are going to go about it.
  • the structure of your report and what the tutor will be turning the page to next.

• Send the Introduction to your tutor for comment: are you on the right track / is it abundantly clear what you are intending to do and how / have you set the project up well.   If there is a problem of some sort (things in your title not picked up in the A&O, for example) you can address this right away – better to do that now than to try to include things you have missed at last minute.

Then you are on your way: follow through on the ‘Driven Process’ that I have explained on my Intro to Research video lectures.  If the tutor was happy with your Introduction, then you should be able to do the Literature Review and identify the Research Gap(s) with confidence. At the point at which you are considering your Methodology and designing research instruments (surveys, questionnaires etc) it would be sensible to run your ideas past your tutor …….

• Send a brief summary of your ‘research gap’, your methodology ideas and your draft questionnaires etc to your tutor.    This is a point where things can go wrong if you are not careful…. we have more experience than you in doing research and creating questionnaires: we can maybe see shortcomings in your methodology or questionnaire design that you can’t see.  Your problem is that you can’t put it ‘right’ after you have run your survey – if you haven’t asked the right questions you simply won’t be able to address all of your research gap…..

Then you need to deal with your data collection, data presentation, explanation, analysis, evaluation and move on to conclusions and recommendations (as per your handbook and my video course instructions).  Obviously you should talk to your tutor during this period regarding any concerns you feel you might have.  Do not, however, expect him/her to read every chapter: rather ask questions in relation to areas where you are perhaps unsure.

• Once you have taken your ‘pen’ off the ‘paper’ at the end of the recommendations and have finalised pagination, indexing, bibliography etc, the:-
  • re-read your Introduction.   Did you do, in the end, what you promised at the outset?   IT is not unknown for writers to suffer from a bad case of ‘mission drift’ (setting out to do ‘x’, but delivering ‘z’).  Make sure that you are consistent.   You may have to ‘tweak’ the Introduction and A&O in order to represent what you actually produced.
  • proof read yourself by reading ALOUD!  You will find you ‘catch’ more errors this way, especially in terms of punctuation and poor expression…  Also use GRAMMARLY -free online software –  to check your language precision (spelling, grammar, expression).  Grammarly also has a free plagiarism-checker you might usefully use to make sure you haven’t forgotten to attribute any sources.
  • ask a parent, sibling, colleague to read your work and tell you if there is anything that perhaps is unclear / doesn’t make sense, isn’t well explained.  They don’t need to know about the content – they are reasing it for ‘sense’.
  • check the handbook / Livret again to make sure you have compled with the instructions.
  • Hit the submission deadline – there will almost certainly be penalties for not doing so.  (Even if you are having problems with printing and binding – send an electronic copy before the deadline to prove that the work was finished).
  • If you are a MICAI student (and provided your work is not subject to a confidentiality order) – drop an electronic copy of your work on the MICAI Moodle M2 Compilation plagiarism check dossier.

Now stop worrying and get on with the viva / soutenance preparation!

Good luck!

TJ