Admissions Athletics Campus Resources Student Life

Thesis and Project Requirements

COML Course Descriptions Apply Now To MA-COML (campus-based)Summer Travel Center for Excellence in Media Literacy Online M.A. in Communication and Leadership International Media Italy Thesis and Project Requirements Faculty Request Program Information Forms Admissions AJCU Communication Conference

Thesis and Project Requirements

COML 680 Thesis Requirements

The thesis option for COML 680 is designed for students who want to focus on a particular area of research in which they want to explore and develop a depth of understanding and scholarship. It is highly recommended for those students who are considering doctoral work, careers in higher-education or the communication industries.

Your thesis can--and should be--the capstone of your learning experience in the master of Arts in Communication and Leadership at Gonzaga University. It is the culminating experience of your academic work and preparation for the responsibilities of the professional world or further graduate education. Therefore, your thesis should represent the very best of your work.

For your thesis, you are expected to supervise yourself under the guidance of a professor/mentor in the production of high quality, creative work. Your thesis should demonstrate serious effort in terms of the amount of new information gathered and an advanced, in-depth understanding beyond the level of expertise previously gained from course work. In the thesis, you will bring together much of what you have been learning in your classes (both theory and practice).

Guidelines

Assignment: You are to select a topic in communication and write a thesis (not less than 30, nor more than 75 pages, including your bibliography. The thesis must meet all the requirements regarding content as listed in the structure and format sections of this guide. In addition, your literature review must have a minimum of twenty-five sources. The sources must include at least ten from scholarly professional journals. A list of possible Communication and Leadership journals will be provided. Web sources should be carefully limited and must be based primarily on scholarly professional journals.

The thesis will be written under the guidance of a faculty "mentor/chair." Your mentor can be any member of the regular faculty at Gonzaga University. It is crucial that your mentor be familiar with the area you would like to research, the method you would like to use, and the specific requirements of your assignment. It is your obligation to share all of this with your mentor.

Mentoring: A deliberate pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a lesser skilled or experienced one, with the agreed- upon goal of having the lesser skilled person grow and develop specific competencies.

Requirements:

1. Select a possible thesis topic and a faculty mentor*/chair who will provide some guidance in your work. An approach to topic selection might grow out of your particular emphasis within your major

*Remember, your mentor is not responsible for supervising you, but rather to assist you with some expertise about your topic. Your Mentor will help you sort through your ideas and suggest research strategies once you settle on a topic. Your Mentor will also be asked to review a draft of your work before you submit the final draft and sign the thesis as a reader.

2. You must write a five page proposal of your thesis, including what your proposed topic is, why this topic is important to you, how this topic will be explored, the method you intend to use to collect your research, and a minimum of ten source bibliography to support your ideas written in correct APA or MLA form. We suggest you confer with your Mentor before you write the proposal.

3. You must secure your Mentor's signature on your proposal before you submit it to the Program Chair for advancement to thesis. Without the signature of your Mentor you will not be able to proceed with your work.

4. You may do a thesis based on a paper you have written for a previous course. In fact, scholars often extend their ideas by stretching previous works. Just be sure you have a substantial enough topic. Should you wish to build your thesis on a paper you completed in another course, you must submit a copy of that paper to your Mentor at the time of the proposal submission, including how you intend to build on that paper. The complete proposal, Mentor's signature, and former paper will then be submitted to your 680 instructor.

5. Your Thesis or Project should carefully follow APA style. These are available in most bookstores or you may choose to utilize the websites as listed in this Guide.

6. Plagiarism:

You would not want to be accused of stealing a car or a wallet, nor do your friends want theirs stolen. Similarly, you do not want to be accused of stealing someone's words or ideas, nor do writers want theirs stolen.

To use someone's words or ideas in your writing without letting your readers know where they came from is a form of theft called plagiarism.

You can avoid plagiarizing if you are careful to do the following:

Put the words of an author in quotation marks, record them accurately, and follow the quotation with a citation that indicates you source. Also use quotation marks even when you borrow a phrase or a single, special word from another person. Follow the style of citation required by either MLA or APA, but do not combine these styles.

Write a summary or paraphrase in your own words and sentence patterns, and follow it with a citation. Just changing some words does not make a paraphrase; the ideas must be digested, understood, and written in your own words.

In addition, it is wise to lead into your quotation or paraphrase by using the author's name. For example, you can write, "According to Deborah Tannen," followed by a quotation from Tannen or your paraphrase or summary of Tannen's ideas. Be careful not to plagiarize your professor or colleagues, as well. If you borrow words or ideas from anyone - professors, students, best friends - be sure to give them credit by quoting and citing them, or paraphrasing and citing. They will thank you for it.

And a final note concerning plagiarism and the Internet:

To avoid plagiarism, cite the source of anything that you borrow from the Internet, including material from Web pages, e-mail, and newsgroups. These materials are the words and ideas of people who deserve to be given credit.

For more information on plagiarism, go to the following web site where much of this material comes from:

http://www.bemidjistate.edu/students/wrc/plagiarism.html

7. Your thesis and literature review must include a minimum of twenty-five sources, ten of which must come from Communication or Leadership scholarly professional journals. Do not be dependent upon web sites. It may be necessary for you to use inter-library loans, so leave yourself plenty of time. GET STARTED EARLY WITH INTER-LIBRARY LOANS.

8. As this course is the culmination of your years of study, your thesis should demonstrate your best of the following:

• Research efforts

• Analytical efforts

• Synthesis of ideas and perspectives

• Writing ability

• Oral presentation ability

9. You will present a bound copy of your written thesis, signed by your Mentor, and you will deliver your oral presentation in a public forum. A copy of your thesis will remain on file in the Department of Communication and Leadership Studies.

Developing A Thesis

Thesis comes from an ancient Greek word that means stand or position. Your thesis is the stand or position you take on an issue. In a thesis you generally state your thesis at the beginning of the paper and then spend the remaining pages showing why the position is correct or reasonable.

Structure of the Thesis:

A thesis is broken into a series of chapters. Each chapter of a thesis leads directly to the following chapter. A thesis must be written with good transitions from chapter to chapter.

Thesis Format

TITLE PAGE (See sample)

ABSTRACT (An abbreviated version or a condensed version of the entire project including the nature of the research, the methods used, the results of the study, the relationship of the results to previous research findings and directions for further research.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS (with page numbers)

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM AND DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED

THE PROBLEM

Importance of the study

Statement of the problem

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED

ORGANIZATION OF REMAINING CHAPTERS

Chapter 2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE (This may be broken into several sections)

PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS AND/OR THEORETICAL BASIS

THE LITERATURE (Framework for the Study)

RESEARCH QUESTION AND/OR HYPOTHESIS

(that have emerged from the Lit. Review)

Chapter 3. SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY

THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY

METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

Subjects, Procedures, Data Treatment, Justification

Chapter 4. THE STUDY (This is where you canalize your data)

DATA ANALYSIS

RESULTS OF THE STUDY (What was discovered?)

DISCUSSION (What does it mean?)

Chapter 5. SUMMARIES AND CONCLUSIONS

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

FURTHER STUDY OR RECOMMENDATIONS

CONCLUSIONS (This requires a connection back to both the theoretical and philosophical foundations and the literature review.)

WORKS CITED/REFERENCES

This should appear at the end of the Thesis or Project. It should be alphabetical by author's names and, for a given author, chronological. We are using the APA Style Manual, so be consistent. Be sure every reference in your paper is also cited in the Bibliography.

APPENDIX

Rough and Final Drafts

Don't let your first draft be your last. Nobody is that good a writer. Authors of college papers (and many others) may delay the writing stage -- which we said you should start right away -- because they fear they are not that good a writer. This can often lead to writer's block. Give yourself permission to write poorly. Just "crank things out." It is in revision that the work will get cleaned-up, and inconsistencies or gaps can be clarified!

Mentor Agreement (To be submitted with Thesis Proposal)

Mentoring: A deliberate pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a lesser skilled or experienced one, with the agreed-upon goal of having the lesser skilled person grow and develop specific competencies.

You have been asked to serve as a Mentor for ______________________, who is completing the requirements for her/his Masters Degree in Communication and Leadership Studies. As a mentor you are asked to share ideas with this student and read the next to final draft of their thesis. You are not expected to directly supervise this student's work but rather meet with them as a "young colleague." If you are willing to serve as a Mentor for him/her, please sign this agreement.

I am willing to serve as a Mentor for ________________________ as she/he completes her/his thesis. I realize I do not need to supervise their work in any direct fashion and will only serve as a more experienced colleague with a younger colleague. I will provide help in the way of suggestions, ideas and resources and am willing to review drafts of their written work. I also agree to read the next to last draft of the student's thesis and will sign my name on the title page of their final draft. My signature on the thesis only indicates that I have read it and is no indication of the quality of the work. I will not be asked to assign a grade or make any evaluative comments to the course convener.

Signature________________________

Title_________________________

Email and telephone number________________________________

Date_______________________

Thesis Proposal

(Your Thesis proposal should be drafted in consultation with your Mentor and submitted with the Mentor Agreement attached)

THE PROPOSAL:

In any case, a proposal has to be written and accepted. Your proposal must answer the following questions.

1. YOUR NAME

2. THESIS

This section must contain the following:

a. A clearly stated research question or testable hypothesis that grows out of communication and leadership theory.

b. A clearly delineated research method that allows the researcher(s) to address the research question effectively by gathering primary source data.

c. A bibliography of no less than ten substantive sources (journal articles, books,) that would help the researcher(s) to situate the research question in the context of previous work in the field. APA or MLA style is required. Do not mix styles.

d. A description of how data will be analyzed appropriate to the research method, the research question and the data gathered.

Note: All Theses and Projects will include a public presentation that elaborates on the work and provides an oral defense of the thesis.

* Your Thesis Proposal should be no longer than five pages.

Writing Your Thesis

Planning Schedule

It is useful to realize ahead of time the stages that are involved in Thesis or Project preparation:

1. Establishing the preliminary focus of the study.

2. Finding a mentor and discussing preliminary ideas.

3. Agreeing on topic and signing and submitting Mentor Agreement.

4. Selecting research methods.

5. Developing research and collecting data.

6. Ordering the data.

7. Analyzing the data.

8. Writing it up.

9. Preparing and making oral presentation.

Literature Review

A literature review asks you to find specific information in the communication and leadership literature, to review the research and to write a review about it. A literature review has two main purposes: to summarize research and to evaluate it. Unlike a term paper, literature reviews require as much as possible the review of primary sources -- a document or manuscript of an original published report or research. Secondary sources often write about primary sources but may leave out important details in the process of condensing.

A literature review is a crucial part of the research process. First, it enables us to understand the current status of knowledge on the topic and second, before you can conduct original research, you must know what scholarship already exists on the topic and evaluate the findings so that you can formulate new research questions to guide your study.

There are two basic types of literature reviews: exemplary and exhaustive. An exemplary, or representative literature review presents only key references to the reader to acquaint him or her with the representative works that relate to the research study. Key references are those directly influencing the study or project being proposed or conducted.

An exhaustive literature review is comprehensive. The writer attempts to find all the information pertinent to a topic.

For your thesis you will be writing an exemplary review with a minimum of twenty-five sources. The sources must include at least ten from professional scholarly journals. You may use a balance of primary and secondary sources.

• FORMAT

Introduction - Orient the reader to the subject.

Summary of Literature - Summarize the literature you have discovered. Make sure this flows well and is not choppy. Perhaps the best way is to select one of the following organizational patterns:

A. Topical order.

B. Chronological order.

C. Problem-cause-solution order.

D. General to specific or specific to general order.

E. Comparison-and-contrast order.

Critical Evaluation -- Here you critique the validity or propose unanswered research questions from your review. From this critique your review becomes a piece of scholarship.

Thesis - Your literature review should lead directly to your thesis statement. It is not a personal opinion or belief but a proposition you must demonstrate with evidence from the research literature.

SAMPLE TITLE PAGE

COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE ARE INSEPARABLE

___________________________

A Thesis

Presented to the Faculty in Communication and Leadership Studies

School of Professional Studies

Gonzaga University

___________________________

Under the Mentorship of (Name of Mentor)

(Name of) Department

__________________________

(Mentor Signature)