Bachelor thesis / master thesis Archive - Page 2 of 5

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

What exactly is plagiarism in the thesis?

Plagiarism is the fear of many students in their thesis. After various scandals about Gutenberg and other politicians like Schavan or Steffen, the fear is greater than before. I am writing the article because lately numerous students have asked me about plagiarism in my office hours and I felt a real fear. First to definition: a plagiarism is the presumption of other people’s intellectual achievements. This can include the adoption of foreign texts or other representations (e.g. newspaper, magazine articles, photos, films, sound recordings, music), foreign ideas (source: Wikipedia ). It applies, among other things, to the adoption of ideas, texts, quotes and images. Plagiarism is really about deliberately stealing and displaying other people’s texts as your own. For example, adopting the definition from Wikipedia without citing the source is plagiarism. If I do not give a source, one could assume that I developed this definition, although it is copied…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

How is a bachelor’s or master’s thesis assessed?

It’s the big moment before graduation: submitting your bachelor’s or master’s thesis. Many students want to gild their grade again with it or they just want to see what they can do and get the best possible grade. Lately I have received numerous calls about what to look for in an assessment and how a bachelor’s or master’s thesis is actually rated. I want to show my experience in this article. In my opinion, there are formal and informal criteria. Formal criteria The criteria of the formal evaluation are often precisely documented and you can find them on the respective pages of the university. In my case, for example: structuringReasoningContent clarityLiterature processingComplexity and novelty of the topicCorrectness of the statementsQuotes and formattingspelling, orthographyStyle / linguistic expressionContent (this is the largest block and is explained by me in the non-formal criteria) You can actually meet these criteria yourself very well. Make…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Tips for writing good texts

I wrote a lot of text during my doctorate and texts are very important, especially in an academic context. In the following I have summarized my findings from 5 years of doctorate. It may help one or the other. language It is our ability to generate and understand language that makes us special. Our perception in society also determines our language. Of course, other forms of life such as animals also coordinate with each other, but this language is used more for mere information and is nowhere near as deep and complex as human language. Reading tip: Meaning of language Language can arouse emotions and control the reader’s impression of the text. From open to populist – anything is possible. My findings are: Avoid superlatives and unambiguous statements (all companies)Use open languageAvoid causal relationshipsIntroduction of clear terms, subsequent definition and permanent use of the uniform termPut terms in the right…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Basics of empirical research: what is research?

For many students, the thesis is initially a book with seven seals. The tasks are clear: should you do research and not write a term paper and find a topic? Quite a lot of effort! In this article I would like to provide the basics of empirical research so that you can understand: What is research? Reading tip: Find topic There are many types of research. I am concerned with empirical social research in this article because it is the dominant mode for business informatics and economics. Empirical social research mainly deals with social and human issues (Döring and Bortz 2015). Use cases in the context of companies and society are: Research into behaviorResearch into doingExploration of coexistenceExploring the experience of people. Research means collecting data Your goal is to scientifically investigate facts and to obtain so-called reliable knowledge. To investigate such issues, you need to collect empirical data through…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Help! I’m desperate for my thesis!

You have been writing your thesis for some time and now you are slowly beginning to despair. Then you have put the topic too far or the supervisor criticizes you all the time and you just don’t know what to do? I would like to give you two tips on this. Tip 1: take a little distance! Most of the time you are in tunnel vision yourself and can no longer think clearly. You’re stuck and can’t really come up with a meaningful idea. My tip would be to take a break for 1-2 days and go for a drink with friends. Then talk to your supervisor in peace and watch the work from a distance. Tip 2: less is more! I often notice that the students keep the subject far too ready and complex. Interviews should be paired with a survey, which lead to an ultimate framework. This framework…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

How much effort should you put into a thesis?

Are you starting your thesis soon and are you looking for a topic right now? Are you also currently planning to develop a framework similar to the Nobel Prize and to agilize the whole of Germany or to re-prove major theories? That’s great, but also a lot of effort. You are a young researcher! Start with small steps! You always have to keep in mind that this is your first (bachelor thesis) or second (master thesis) real research work. If I used a research method in my doctorate, I usually first attended a 3-day seminar and learned it properly. So you first have to learn a lot in the empirical and research theory basics. Ask yourself the following questions: What is a structured literature analysis according to Mayring?How does this differ from Webster and Watson?How do I perform a correlation analysis and what is the difference to regression analysis?How can…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Mixed method approach in the thesis

You don’t know exactly how you want to proceed with your thesis and you are considering whether it should be quantitative or qualitative? Then I have good news: just do both! Reading tip: Qualitative and quantitative research Mixed Method combines the advantages of both types The mixed method approach means that you use various quantitative and qualitative research methods (Kuckhartz 2014). The advantages are that a research question can be illuminated by several research methods. The advantage of the thesis is that you can shed light on a question in two ways and make findings that were not possible on purely qualitative or quantitative research (Roch 2017). Different variants of the mixed method approach There are different versions of the mixed method approach. To do this, look at the following illustration. The mixed method approaches usually have a dominant research method. This can be qualitative or quantitative. It is seldom…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Advantages and disadvantages of research methods – limitations in the bachelor thesis

Research methods each have advantages and disadvantages, and you have to consciously choose them accordingly. A selection of the research method is usually justified by the advantages and then sensibly limited by the disadvantages. In the bachelor thesis, for example, you have to argue why you preferred an expert interview to the survey. Since your method does not, of course, reveal the entire knowledge on the topic, it should also be sensibly limited. In this article I show the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology. Tip: Use the advantages to justify your choice and pack the disadvantages into the limitation of your work. Literature analysis Literature analyzes form the foundation of any research and summarize similar findings. It helps in understanding, structuring existing knowledge and finding research gaps. Nevertheless, the following points should be limited: Novelty: Often literature analyzes only summarize existing knowledge and do not generate any new knowledge.Incompleteness:…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

What are the requirements for a bachelor thesis?

You know that: The bachelor thesis – you start and want to change the world: Build a framework that completely changes companies or a new type of theory to scale agility in the company! I think these visions are really great, but perhaps as a young researcher you should narrow it down a bit in your first research paper to only 30 pages. I often get calls and inquiries for help for one Bachelor thesis in my telephone hours . I would therefore like to shed some light on the dark in this article. Let’s be honest: The primary goal of the bachelor thesis is to learn something and to get the degree. You can still change the world afterwards in your doctorate. Mistake 1: A bachelor thesis does not solve a practical problem or utopia At the beginning, many of you spoke to a practice partner or supervisor and…

Bachelor thesis / master thesis 21. March 2021

Case study methodology tips

The case study is a possible approach to depict certain processes and circumstances within an organization or a situation. The aim of a case study is to supplement the findings from theory with those from practice. The strength of case studies lies in the fact that complex processes and procedures within a company can be clearly illustrated and can be used as examples. A point of criticism of a case study is often that general deductions from the individual case to the whole are not always possible or only possible under certain aspects. The reason for this is the strong contextual relevance to the respective case. Types of case studies There are two types of case studies. Case studies consider a case with a mostly critical, unique, typical or previously inaccessible nature over a longer period of time (Bodendorf et al. 2010). In doing so, you examine a company or…