Curricula

Objectives

Purpose of the course:
The student prepares a working life oriented thesis as part of their bachelor's degree in which they demonstrate their competence required for expert duties in the field as well as general working life skills.

Course competences
Learning and information management competence
Entrepreneurship, innovation and working community competence
Internationalisation and communications competence
Ethical competence

EUR-ACE accredited degree programmes
Research and information retrieval
Engineering practice
Communication and team-working

Intended learning outcomes:
As a student, you recognise development needs in working life and in your own field. You plan a development assignment or research related to them, which you implement as your thesis. You use reliable and research-based information from different sources in compliance with source criticism and the principles of good scientific practice. In your development assignment or research, you apply your competence in the field as well as your development and research competence. You are able to communicate about your thesis at different stages of the process to different target groups in an illustrative way, both in writing and orally. You act in compliance with the principles of ethical research.

Content

Thesis process and practices (thesis topic proposal, plan, implementation, reporting, publication, open science)
Information seeking and source criticism
Writing the thesis and drawing up a theoretical framework
Thesis assessment

Time and location

Thesis process begins when you have made an electronic proposal for the thesis topic and you have been named the main supervisor. The main supervisor schedules the small group and individual supervision of the thesis with his / her group. Small group and individual counselling meetings are on-line and face-to-face.

Learning materials and recommended literature

On the basis of systematic information seeking, the student obtains scientific literature suitable for the topic, problem solving and development or research methods of the thesis, which are referred to in the thesis in accordance with JAMK's reporting guidelines

Teaching methods

Small group and individual meetings held by the main supervisor online and also face-to-face contact
Peer discussion and support
Presentation of the thesis topic and plan in small group meetings
Information seeking workshops held by an Information Specialist
A separate implementation of thesis writing provided by the JAMK Language Center
Independent work: systematic information seeking, writing a thesis plan, taking care of agreements and research permits related to the thesis, implementing the functional or empirical phase and collecting and analyzing material or data, writing a thesis according to JAMK's reporting or project guidelines, presenting the thesis, self-evaluation

Practical training and working life connections

The thesis is done as a working life-oriented research-based development work or research. It can also be connected to RDI project.

Student workload

1. Thesis planning 81 hours (3 cr)
- Information seeking workshops - carried out by an Information Specialist
- Systematic information seeking and familiarization with source material independently
- Writing and presenting a thesis plan and participating in small group and individual meetings
- Management of agreements and necessary research permit issues

2. Thesis writing conducted by JAMK Language Center 54 hours (2 cr)

3. Implementation phase 162 hours (6 cr)
- Empirical and functional phase, data collection and analysis
- Participation in small group and individual meetings

4. Thesis reporting and evaluation 108 hours (4 cr)
- Thesis writing, presentation, evaluation, archiving and publishing

Total 405 hours (15 cr, the workload of one credit is 27 hours)

Content scheduling

0. The thesis process begins with an electronic topic proposal and the appointment of a main supervisor.
1. Thesis planning: information acquisition workshops, small group and individual supervision. presentation and approval of the thesis plan incl. data or material collection instruments, thesis agreement and necessary research permitions
2. Writing a thesis, a separate non-stop implementation by the Language Center, to which you register
3. Thesis implementation: empirical or functional implementation phase of the thesis, data collection and analysis
4. Thesis reporting and evaluation: Thesis writing, presentation, evaluation, archiving and publishing

Further information for students

The thesis is assessed with separate thesis evaluation criteria.
The main supervisor of the thesis provides developmental feedback throughout the thesis process.
Assessment methods: self-assessment, thesis statement - host company or organisation, supervisor's assessment, the assessment decision based on these documents is made by the thesis working group according to the degree regulations

Evaluation scale

0-5

Evaluation criteria, satisfactory (1-2)

The thesis evaluation criteria at levels adequate 1 and satisfactory 2 are described in the thesis evaluation criteria form.

Evaluation criteria, good (3-4)

The thesis evaluation criteria at levels good 3 and very good 4 are described in the thesis evaluation criteria form.

Evaluation criteria, excellent (5)

The thesis evaluation criterion at level excellent 5 is described in the thesis evaluation criteria form.

Prerequisites

Sufficient familiarity with own professional field and mastery of development and research methods.

Further information

Thesis writing (2 cr) is a course offered by the Language Centre that is part of the thesis. The student chooses an implementation suitable for them from the offering. The most suitable time for this is when you have familiarised yourself with the sources and are writing the theory part of the thesis and have 3 to 5 pages of text based on sources ready.