Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: Rethinking the undergraduate dissertation
Professor Mick Healey,
University of Gloucestershire
Final year projects and dissertations handout
It was a pleasure to welcome Mick Healey, HE Consultant, Researcher and Emeritus Professor at the University of Gloucestershire, UK, to offer the conference his thoughts and findings from a detailed two year study funded by the HEA, ‘‘Rethinking Final Year Projects and Dissertations: Creative Honours and Capstone Projects”. The publication of the report of this study is very well timed with the theme of this year’s conference and an excellent opportunity for Mick to give life to the pages of the report. However this was to be no didactic speech from the front and Mick announced that the afternoon session was to be workshop style that would provide plenty of opportunities for participants to explore and discuss some of the key ideas presented in the report and beyond. The session was prefaced with a quote from Paul Ramsden that espoused the idea that undergraduate students could and should be involved in research and the co-creation of knowledge throughout their programmes of study; this placed the role of the dissertation more clearly as the logical culmination of such study.
In his opening remarks it was clear that Mick felt that reports of the death of the dissertation have been widely exaggerated but that this was tempered by a need to find new formats and ideas for Final Year Project and Dissertation (FTPD) studies that needed to respond to a greater diversity of both students and subjects that now existed in higher education. It was clear that we were not alone in questioning the currency and value of FYPDs within our own University and it was useful for Mick to briefly outline the debates and responses to similar questions that had taken place internationally from America to Australia. It was interesting to note that the a UK debate about the development of teaching only universities had resulted in the Research Informed Teaching (RIT) initiatives of early to mid 2010s that have led to the maintenance of the FYPD as the gold standard and USP of a British higher education.
The study that Mick has been involved in had sought to explore the FYPD in relation to five principle headings; Conception, Function, Form, Location and Dissemination, it was through consideration of these principles that we might be able to extend and adapt the scope of FYPD within programmes of study. Mick was able to offer examples of this from case studies within the report drawn from Biomedical Science and MIT and the exciting initiative of the British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR) that was now in its third year within the UK. Within the activities of the workshop we were asked to consider the 10 key characteristics of FYPDs that had been identified within the study to see if we agreed and had any to add. The broad consensus appeared to be one of agreement with some questions being raised about the language of methodology and trans-disciplinary practices. We were asked to look at the range of case studies and discuss ways that we might use or adapt these ideas. In the final exercise we were encouraged to consider ways that students might be better supported without the use of more staff time or even reducing it; this opened an interesting discourse on the use of both linear and vertical peer support systems.
Mick concluded that it was clear that the ‘one size fits all’ idea of the FYPD was inappropriate and that we might consider students as agents of change within the development of both FYPD formats and through the use of FYPDs as ways of informing the design and content of curriculums. This was a very useful and timely session that left participants with plenty of energy for a wide range of ideas that they might develop in the future.
Report by Mike Seignor
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