DISSERTATION

A dissertation or final year project, as a form of assessment differs from other module assessments. The expectation is that the student assembles his or her academic skills gained from the entire programme into an area of development or Ethics of his or her interest. As such the student is assigned a mentor or supervisor but takes responsibility for his or her own learning in a process of supervision and producesa literature review, a method for undertaking field study, writing up his or her findings, discussing the outcomes and giving development related policy recommendations. Ultimately, the student will be drawing together issues of theory, method and methodology and bringing them to bear on the dissertation report. Those BA dissertations that can best accomplish this integration or even synthesis are often the most conceptually and methodologically accomplished pieces of work which are undertaken with regard to UMU?s guidelines on plagiarism, the ethics of research and supervisory regulations (which are all provided in the student academic handbook). Each Year, the IEDS faculty chooses thematic areas on which they are pursuing research and students are encouraged to choose topics and situate other problems around that thematic area to enable them receive maximum and more beneficial guidance in the research and writing process.