Academic Writing Assistance: a Dissertation Work Plan Template
One of the most challenging tasks that you will be asked to do in school is to write your dissertation. It is a lengthy paper that will test the knowledge that you have acquired over your entire education and not just one course. It is designed to ask you to add to the knowledge pool for your major.
This is one of those papers that will probably take you the entire last semester of school to complete and will be the longest and most complex paper to date. Therefore, it is essential to create for yourself a work plan. Here is a work plan template that you can use to create your own work plan for completing your dissertation. The template also includes some notes on how best to utilize and accomplish each step in the process. You can delete this information and print your plan to use as a reference.
Dissertation Topic: _____________________________________________________________________
(This is going to take up a major part of your time. Finding a solid topic to write about is really important. Make sure to do some preliminary research on a general topic that you are interested in first. Then after doing some research narrow your topic down to a research question that you would like to answer about that topic.)
Research Question: ____________________________________________________________________
(This is going to be what your dissertation is trying to prove. It should be something that has not been discussed by another author. It has to be completely original unless it adds to a study that has already been conducted. This will need to add knowledge to the field.)
Resource List:
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(This is simply a list of your resources. You should have an additional copy that will include the name of the resource, the citation information, and a brief description of the source. This will be helpful for the dissertation proposal section where you have to list the resources that you will use to prove your point.)
Main Point:
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(List the five main points that you will discuss to prove your thesis statement. If there are more points, you can always add to this list. Each of these points need to be rather substantial so that you can write enough information to create your paper.)
This template should help you get started on your dissertation. It will also help you stay organized.