THESIS PAPER

The Thesis Paper is a written document that covers the content of the following conversation related to your Thesis Project:

Q1: what is your project?

You: I’m interested in________. [INTRODUCTION]

**Q2: Oh yeah? I don’t know anything about __________ . **

You: The state of the art in ________ is … [BACKGROUND]

**Q3: Cool. So what are you making? **

You: I’m making a thing, that is a novel contribution to the field of _________. [PROJECT]
This is how I made it. [METHODS]

**Q4: Rad. Does it work? **

You: I assessed it in this way, changed it, then assessed it in that way, changed it, and now it works like this. [TESTING/RESULTS]

**Q5: Ok, what does that mean? **

You: These results show that this thing is important to the field of _______ for these reasons. [CONCLUSION]

Next, I’ll do this with it. [FUTURE PERSPECTIVES]

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We will be workshopping in class each stage to get you to your final written document. Below are descriptions of each section that may appear in your final paper.

There is no minimum length for your paper but the maximum length is 70 pages (including images, figures and charts).

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Abstract

  • Write it last!

  • Identify the field in which you are operating, and the problem/issue that you addressed

  • Describe your project

  • Outline your research methods

  • State your main findings/conclusion(s)

  • Indicate your recommendations for future perspectives

  • Include keywords

  • Keep to one page or less

Introduction

Describe the field or topic you are interested in. Describe the state of the art of the field in a way that someone who knows nothing about it has sufficient information to understand the importance of your project. You should reference previously published papers, projects made by others, books or other literature.

Everything in this section must be properly cited.

Background

Here you give your reader the specific information related to the topic of interest that they need to know to understand the importance of your project. You can describe similar projects or products that are the competition. This can include, but is not limited to:

  • Justification of the need for your study

  • Your motivation, drive, and/or purpose

  • Target Audience

  • Specific research objectives

The background section leads to an open question in the field, or an unmet need. End it by a statement that places your project in the context of what you have just described, and how it addresses that question or need.

Everything in this section must be properly cited.

Methods

Describe in detail how you made your project, and each subsequent iteration. This needs to have enough detail that someone could reproduce it exactly, without having seen it. Think Instructables tutorial.

  • parts numbers
  • code
  • materials
  • tools

This section also covers how you assessed it:

  • experimental setup
  • user testing
  • data collection
  • data analysis
  • any intrinsic limitations or biases in these methods

This should be done for each iteration (Pilot 1, 2, 3; Experiment 1, 2, 3; Prototype alpha, beta, gold). This section is purely descriptive, and you do not go into interpretation of the results.

Results and discussion

Describe in detail how you have assessed the performance of your project, and the results of that assessment. Depending on the project, this could be one or more of:

  • a measurement (how high did my hot air ballon rise?)
  • user testing (how long did my users take to figure out my app/game?)
  • audience feedback (did my audience understand the message conveyed by my installation/performance?)
  • hypothesis (in)validation (did my experiment disprove my hypothesis?)
  • performance analysis (did my car drive itself in the way I designed it to? did my algorithm execute faster than the competition?)

Use figures, plots, images to illustrate the results described.

For each assessment discuss how these results can be interpreted with respect to the goal set in your introduction.

Describe how, given the results, you redesigned/altered/reassessed your project.

The conclusions for each iteration can be:

  • Compare data/findings against your Literature Review, Related Work, or Competitive Analysis findings.

  • Summarize main empirical findings

  • Place evidence of (non-confidential) empirical research in appendices (questionnaires, interview transcripts/notes, experiment results, etc.)

For clarity, you can name each iteration (Pilot 1, 2, 3; Experiment 1, 2, 3; Prototype alpha, beta, gold)

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Conclusion

  • Remind reader of your initial research objectives

  • Summarize Literature Review, Comparative Analysis, and Research findings as related to research objectives.

  • Elicit main conclusions from your findings, and how they fit with aforementioned summary

  • Offer recommendations for next steps in this investigation

Proofread & TurnItIn

Use TurnItIn in NYU Classes to check for plagiarism or mistakes in references/citations.

TurnItIn is the originality detection service available through NYU Classes. Before using TurnItIn, it is important to understand the implications under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) regarding student work. Once a student submits an assignment or a piece of work to an instructor, this work then is considered an education record under FERPA. (For more info regarding FERPA at NYU, see www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/policies-and-guidelines/FERPA.html)

In order to adhere to FERPA guidelines, there are two possible approaches to submitting student work to an originality detection service:

Students submit their own work This is the case with the integration between NYU Classes and the Assignments tool (www.nyu.edu/servicelink/041223513203041), where students may submit their work directly to TurnItIn. Instructors are strongly encouraged to make it clear to the students that TurnItIn will be used at some point within their course. A statement within the course syllabus and/or course description is recommended, as well as verbal reminders, as appropriate. At the time of submission to TurnItIn within NYU Classes, students will be presented with a system notification that TurnItIn will evaluate their work.

Instructor submits student work An instructor may submit a piece of a student’s work or an entire paper to TurnItIn as long as all personally identifiable information (PII) is redacted from the work. PII includes, but is not limited to: name, identification number, any descriptions of the student that would make him/her identifiable. The method of instructor submission must also be through NYU Classes (www.nyu.edu/servicelink/041223513203041). After receipt of the TurnItIn analysis, the instructor is encouraged to contact the student to discuss the analysis of the work.