The Value of a Bachelor Thesis Mart Ottenheim
JETEN (Journal of the European Teacher Education Network),
12/2017, Volume:
12, Issue:
2017
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Alumni of the college of education of the University of Applied Sciences Leiden, were asked via Facebook to fill a questionnaire how they valued their bachelor thesis. They were asked how they used ...it in their work or in follow-up studies; what skill they still apply and what skills were lacking. They were asked how they felt about their thesis and if the thesis should be replaced by something else. Mostly the alumni were content and felt proud when thinking about their thesis. Negative feelings were also reported. The attitude towards doing research was moderate and most alumni would not want to replace the thesis. Suggestions to improve the thesis concentrated on the supervision of the project although in general the alumni were content about their supervision. Interpreting student test results, formal writing, and finding literature were put forward as skills still used in work or study. The results are interpreted within the Dutch Colleges of Education system. The Dublin descriptors are apparently met and many practical changes suggested by the alumni have already been made in the curriculum. Thesis supervisors need to be alert and in constant interaction with each other to uphold the quality of the supervision.
The bachelor thesis (BT) in nursing education is a significant piece of academic work for students. It serves as an instrument for demonstrating and assessing the knowledge they have gained ...throughout their education. The BT also introduces the students to the field of research. Students often write it on their own, and it has been characterized as the ultimate self-regulating learning task for undergraduate students. This study aims to explore undergraduate nursing students’ experiences of being in the process of writing their BT. It is valuable to gain information on students’ experiences in the middle of the writing process to improve the pedagogical and practical organization of the BT course in nursing education. Individual interviews were conducted with 14 students who were in the process of writing their BT. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the interviews. The theory of self-regulated learning was used to explore and contextualize the findings. The main findings are that the nursing students operated in both an individual and a social context while writing on their BT. Further, the study describes how students utilized and developed previous knowledge and organized the writing process. It also discusses how their personal abilities and motivation affected their learning process. The findings also show that students viewed discussions and feedback on their BT as being positive, and they provide information on how students experienced obstacles and unmet expectations. This study found that the most important self-regulated learning strategies used by the students while writing the BT were help-seeking, goal setting, time planning, and study techniques.
Research is essential to practice nursing and must be duly enhanced during university training. Therefore, writing a bachelor thesis may help to develop research skills and thus transfer this skill ...set to practical application.
1) To ascertain whether writing a bachelor thesis has a bearing on attitudes towards nursing research and development; 2) to establish a comparison between groups (students and nurses), and 3) to analyse other factors (work experience, advanced training, research experience) that may influence the relationship between nurses and nursing research and development.
A cross-sectional comparative study.
The participants totalled 204: 38 nursing students and 166 nurses.
Data were gathered using the instrument Nurses' Attitudes towards Research and Development within Nursing devised by Björkström and Hamrin (2001) version II validated in Spanish. This instrument consists of 33 statements grouped into 7 factors, whose responses offer 5 alternatives on a Likert scale.
Most participants were female (86.3 %), with a mean age of 36 (SD = 11.65). The participants who have written a bachelor thesis obtained a higher score (Mdn = 4.14; range = 2.06) than those who have not (Mdn = 3.98; range = 2.13), with a significant difference (U = 3959.5; p = 0.012) and a moderate effect size (Hedges's g = 0.40). The students are those who obtained the highest scores. Amongst the nurses, educational training is the element that is most positively correlated with attitudes towards nursing research and development (r = 0.340).
The results suggest that writing a bachelor thesis engenders greater interest and a favourable attitude towards nursing research and development and displays that the most interested group is the students, followed by nurses holding a degree in nursing, and lastly those with a Diploma of Higher Education in nursing. Nurses' educational training is the most influential aspect, standing above researcher or professional experience.
•Writing a bachelor thesis offers the possibility to develop research skills.•Writing a bachelor thesis improves attitudes towards nursing research and development.•Students display a better attitude than nurses (those holding diplomas and degrees).•The factor that most positively influences nurses is educational training.
The supervision of degree theses is one of several institutional practices in higher education that are regulated by various systems of rules. However, the social roles involved in the practices may ...still be largely based on interpretation, negotiation and personal choice. Research on supervision has primarily targeted the doctoral level, but the present study targets the Bachelor level. Existing inventories of roles are based on supervisor roles, but the present study also includes student roles. Existing inventories are not always based on empirical data, but the present study uses focus group discussions with supervisors and responses to open-ended questions from a questionnaire to students as a basis for extracting supervisor and student roles. The supervisor and student participants came from two language departments at a Swedish university. The local guidelines relevant to supervision underspecify roles. The findings show a considerable complexity and a broad repertoire when it comes to roles attributed to supervisors as well as students. Some roles may be plotted along a scale, where stakeholders may have different preferences and needs, such as along transactional and interactional types, or between support and management; or between seeing the thesis primarily as a process or a product.
Writing a bachelor thesis has a central role in nursing education. Nursing students require both information and academic literacy in order to write their theses, and there is an expectation that ...these skills will contribute to putting their knowledge into practice.
To describe students' perceptions of the student and supervisor roles and to investigate students' experienced self-efficacy during the supervision of their bachelor thesis.
A cross-sectional pre-post design.
Four universities were included. All four had bachelor thesis courses organized as a group supervision process, with a student active approach. Nursing students met together one hour prior to meeting with their supervisor, in order to discuss concerns, try to solve upcoming problems, and plan the agenda for the upcoming supervision session.
A total of 472 undergraduate nursing students were invited to participate.
A web-based questionnaire was used, incorporating the Supervision of Thesis Questionnaire and the General Self-Efficacy Scale. Data were collected at two points: before and after the thesis course. Descriptive statistics and frequencies were calculated, and the independent t-test and Mann-Whitney U test were used for analytic analysis.
The response rate was 39 % (160/472) pre-course and 28 % (130/472) post-course. Nursing students had high expectations of supervision at both time points. Students reporting high self-efficacy had higher expectations of the supervisor's knowledge of the subject and the methods, compared to those reporting lower self-efficacy.
Nursing students reported high expectations for the supervision process, the supervisor, and themselves, both when entering and when ending the bachelor thesis course. Self-efficacy may contribute to these expectations. Active learning in a group (i.e., collaborative learning) may contribute to nursing students' commitment during the group supervision process in a bachelor thesis course. Further studies are warranted on the optimal group composition to support learning during bachelor thesis courses.
•Nursing students reported high expectations of the supervision process.•Active learning in a group may contribute to students' commitment.•Self-efficacy may contribute to high expectations of the supervision process.
Bachelor thesis supervision involves a supporting goal and an assessment goal, requiring more guidance versus more autonomy and freedom for students, respectively. This paper tests the hypotheses ...that the final grade of undergraduate bachelor thesis is positively related to a supervisor's (a) guidance given to and (b) affiliation with the bachelor thesis student/project. To assess these hypotheses, undergraduate students at the FHNW School of Business have been surveyed for three years about their perception and satisfaction with bachelor thesis supervision. This data (n = 189) was combined with student grades before the thesis and their final thesis grades. Our results show supervision to have a measurable impact on the bachelor thesis outcome and most effective when focused on guidance related to goal definition and methodological support. In other areas supervision can, to a certain degree, follow a more laissez-faire supervision style.
The bachelor's thesis (BT) in undergraduate education is often an autonomous and individual assignment. It aims to demonstrate knowledge gained through education, to be an assessment tool, and to ...give new learning outcomes through working on the thesis. The process of working with the BT most often includes individual supervision. There is an absence of support for teachers supervising undergraduate nursing theses, which includes a lack of national or institutional guidelines, role definitions and research material.
Given the lack of helpful guidelines, this study aims to explore what the teachers emphasize as important regarding their supervision of nursing students writing their BT.
The study has a qualitative approach, featuring individual semi-structured interviews with nursing teachers supervising nursing students on the BT. Reflexive thematic analysis is used as the method of analysis.
The analyses resulted in two generated themes, each with two subthemes, describing the patterns the teachers emphasize as important aspects of their supervision of nursing students writing their BT. The themes were "The pedagogical approach to the supervision" and "The advantages of the bachelor's thesis to the nursing profession."
The teachers balanced different roles in the supervision of the students. They wanted the students to grow through challenging them, grounded in a relationship of trust and confidence. They were role models for how to be critical thinkers and incorporated critical thinking as a pedagogical implement in supervision, wanting to raise the students to become nurses who think critically. The teachers sought to combine clinical relevance with academic literacy to secure a new generation of nurses able to be a part of the future development of the profession. They wanted to equip the students with knowledge, skills, and confidence to speak up and communicate nursing. Last, the teachers combined their clinical and academic identities in the supervision of the BT.
Este artículo reflexiona y aporta aprendizajes sobre la experiencia de trabajo que demandó la tesina por la cual obtuve el título de Sociólogo. El objetivo es abordar reflexivamente aquellas ...cuestiones que atravesaron el trabajo de campo en el basural de Mar del Plata, y, además narrar las vivencias que posibilitaron concretar las entrevistas, y la siempre compleja tarea de desplegar los resultados de investigación mediante la escritura. Al tiempo que intenta abrir nuevos interrogantes sobre todo aquello que (nos) sucede, la manera que interviene y es intervenida nuestra propia biografía en este trayecto.
The Final Degree Project (FDP) is a module that, although intended for the completion of a bachelor thesis (BT), consists of theoretical and clinical teaching. Therefore, introducing service learning ...(SL) can support student adjustments to the real-world professional role. This study plans to evaluate a teaching innovation project that combines BT and SL through Kirkpatrick's four-level model (reaction, learning, behaviour and results). It takes the form of a convergent parallel mixed-methods design study. The participants were 15 final-year students obtaining a Bachelor of Nursing degree, 4 BT supervising mentors and 4 nurses. At the request of a hospital institution, in their BT, students completed a review of evidence-based nursing protocols. For data collection, the researchers used: an SL questionnaire, student narratives, mentor field diaries and nurse interviews. According to student opinion, the results showed high satisfaction rates (4.44 out of 5), the most developed skills were Independent Work and Information Management, but they signal the need to reinforce the research methodology skills. Finally, positive feedback from all participants is that using SL promotes both the opinion that the BT is useful and also promotes a collaboration between academic and clinical settings.
Writing a Bachelor thesis is the last step in obtaining a university degree. The thesis may be job- or research-orientated, but it must demonstrate certain degree-level competences. Rubrics are a ...useful way of unifying the assessment criteria.
To design a system of rubrics for assessing the competences associated with the Bachelor thesis of a nursing degree, to examine the system's reliability and validity and to analyse results in relation to the final thesis mark.
Cross-sectional and psychometric study conducted between 2012 and 2014.
Nursing degree at a Spanish university.
Twelve tutors who designed the system of rubrics. Students (n = 76) who wrote their Bachelor thesis during the 2013–2014 academic year.
After deciding which aspects would be assessed, who would assess them and when, the tutors developed seven rubrics (drafting process, assessment of the written thesis by the supervisor and by a panel, student self-assessment, peer assessment, tutor evaluation of the peer assessment and panel assessment of the viva). We analysed the reliability (inter-rater and internal consistency) and validity (convergent and discriminant) of the rubrics, and also the relationship between the competences assessed and the final thesis mark.
All the rubrics had internal consistency coefficients >0.80. The rubric for oral communication skills (viva) yielded inter-rater reliability of 0.95. Factor analysis indicated a unidimensional structure for all but one of the rubrics, the exception being the rubric for peer assessment, which had a two-factor structure. The main competences associated with a good quality Bachelor thesis were written communication skills and the ability to work independently.
The assessment system based on seven rubrics is shown to be valid and reliable. Writing a Bachelor thesis requires a range of degree-level competences and it offers nursing students the opportunity to develop their evidence-based practice skills.
•Writing a Bachelor thesis requires a range of degree-level competences.•The seven rubrics provide a valid and reliable system for assessing Bachelor theses.•Use of this rubric system can help tutors to apply a competence-based approach to the Bachelor thesis.•Written communication skills was strongly associated with a good quality Bachelor thesis.•Ability to work independently was also associated with a good Bachelor thesis.
PDF
