As part of your final dissertation or applied doctoral project proposal, your work will be reviewed by the Academic Reader (AR). The following resources can assist you in preparing for the AR review.
The Academic Success Center offers varying levels of proofreading services. The goal of these services is to provide students with a trustworthy alternative to hiring outside editors who might not be familiar with our institution's process or align with our academic integrity. The ASC proofreaders understand the expectations of academic writing and equip students through written and video feedback toward their authentic scholarly voice.
All ASC proofreaders have earned doctoral degrees and are experienced in supporting diverse writing needs. From citation requirements to heading hierarchy, from passive voice to verb tense, and from unclear antecedents to anthropomorphism, the ASC can help. See the link below for information about the different proofreading services and prices.
Alignment is such a critical part of the final Dissertation or Applied Doctoral Project proposals. To review critical issues related to alignment, revisit the Doctoral Center resources on alignment.
Your Dissertation Journey: A Roadmap to Success
This video walks students through the elements of a dissertation or applied doctoral project proposal.
NU Skill Up Series (Producer). (2024, Aug 27). Your dissertation journey: Roadmap to success [Video file]. National University.
The Doctoral Student Experience (DSE) refers to the five-chapter dissertation experience for doctoral students in the following programs:
All PhD programs at National University and the DBA, DCJ, and DPA degrees.
If you are enrolled in one of these programs, please read on for resources pertaining to your Dissertation Proposal Presentation.
When you complete your Dissertation Proposal, you will create a presentation of your proposal to present to your Chair and SME. This is called the Dissertation Proposal Presentation. The meeting is not as formal as the Oral Defense. The purpose of this meeting is to present your Chapters 1-3 and have a conversation with your committee members regarding your proposed study. It is a 60-minute meeting scheduled at a mutually convenient time for the Chair, SME, and student. As you are preparing your Dissertation Proposal, talk with your Chair about how and when to schedule this meeting.
Students are required to use the PPT slide deck for their degree program. The slide decks for this presentation can be found under the "Program Specific Resources" page under your specific college/school and program.
The title of your dissertation or applied doctoral project is important, and it requires some thought. You should not spend an inordinate amount of time early on working on that task, rather, you should keep in mind that the title will likely evolve over time. The more you learn about your substantive topic, substantive issue, research methodology, and research design, the more informed you will be to write your title.
The title may be the only thing a scholar reads when looking for scholarly papers as part of a literature search strategy. It serves in a gate-keeping role as part of the decision as to whether the abstract will be read. A colon and semicolon format, which is called a title/subtitle format, is possibly the most common format for scholarly writing, especially the reporting of scientific findings. It certainly is the most informative. The title generally identifies the substantive topic or issue, and the subtitle generally identifies the methodological approach, or sometimes a hint of the study's findings. There are other combinations of things that can be identified or emphasized in a title/subtitle format, but that approach serves as a nice starting place.
The more information you can provide your reader about the nature of your study at the onset, the better. Not only do readers have to make decisions upfront about whether they are going to read your research, they also make continued reassessments of whether they are going to continue reading your research, and they use the title to evaluate how the information you are discussing reconciles with their idea of your study purpose, as manifest in the title. Scholars tend to be both curious and skeptical. Such is part of the scientific method. Scholars will not take what you say at face value, rather your words are under constant evaluation and reevaluation, and your title is the first impression you will make on your potential scholarly readers.
Most scholars can get all of these questions answered with varying degree of certainty from that title, though determining the research design and analytic technique from that title would take inference and a knowledge of what the body of science in that area of inquiry finds acceptable and not acceptable for analytic techniques. Do you see the places that might be rewritten over the duration of writing the paper itself? How would you rewrite that title to be more informative?
All said, the more information you can provide your reader in the title about the nature of your study, the better. The more you think about what your title is conveying, the better handle you will have on your research, and the better you will be able to describe it to your reader.
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