1. The Final Chapter: Developing
students’ skills to successfully
undertake their final
year project
LILAC Conference, Monday
25 March 2013, University of
Manchester.

2. What’s in it for you?
Use Create Inspire
• Use all/parts • Create resources • Working
within your own yourself for collaboratively
institution dissertation with staff/
• Blended students students on
learning or future resources
completely • Using video
online content

3. This workshop will cover
What it is Why we did it How we did it
Feedback we
Future How we
got from
developments marketed it
students
Most importantly: A chance for you to explore and discuss the
resource!

4. What is The Final Chapter?

5. Why we did it
“ skills and provide students with opportunities to put
All programmes will actively develop students’ independent
research
these skills into practice. At the culmination of the
programme, students should be able to undertake, with
supervision, an autonomous piece of research work
”
University of Leeds. 2012. Curriculum enhancement project. Available from: http://curriculum.leeds.ac.uk/rbl

6. Don’t students already have these skills?
520 Student
students concerns:
voluntarily attended Writing
dissertation Criticality
workshops Project planning
(Writing a literature review, Planning
your dissertation, Writing your
Confidence
dissertation) (concerns expressed in workshops and
2011-2012 & 2013 so far (average 44 drop-ins)
students per session)

7. How we did it
A small project team was set up to support the
main project lead, Sally Dalton
Existing material from workshops were brought
together and adapted
Staff and students from across the University
were videoed
Articulate Storyline was used to create the
package

8. How we marketed it

9. Your chance to explore
Go to: http://bit.ly/Q7Lzrh (or Google The Final Chapter Leeds)
• Think about the following:
• Is it too generic?
• Do the videos enhance it?
• Would you use it (in whole or in part?) or create something similar?
• What do you see as the biggest gap?
• Any other thoughts….

10. What our students thought…
8932 hits (17th September 2012- 3 February 2013).
I feel much more confident about the next
stages that I need to achieve for my project. I found this a really useful resource,
Also I have already used many of the Academic even though not everything was
Writing resources in other essays which I feel relevant to my project. Its nice to
has definitely helped develop a clear argument hear other students views as its
and stay precise, which is something I struggled reassuring that I'm not the only one
with in the past who has done it, or indeed who has
faced problems.
Encouraged me to plan more/ Videos from students are especially
start NOW- from the advice of good as it gives real tips from students
the students on the videos. who have already been through the
process. I also found what they had to
say quite reassuring.

11. Future developments
Add examples of Consider adding
complete sections on
dissertations from methodology and
broad subject areas discussions
Add more examples
throughout the
resource