Coursework vs Dissertation, Assignments of Computer Science

Download Coursework vs Dissertation and more Assignments Computer Science in PDF only on Docsity!

Introduction

Academic writing is a work produced for several reasons so a simple definition of academic writing is hard to come by (Your Dictionary 2018). However, in an educational field, academic writing is a process of breaking down ideas and producing a formal written work to fulfill the requirements of a college or a university. It is about evidence-based deductive reasoning and discussing the ideas about a topic with an analytical approach. Students, professors, and researchers use academic writing to share their ideas and make arguments to engage in scholarly conversation. Books, essays, research papers, dissertations, thesis, conference papers are some documents where academic writing is widely used (Valdes 2019). Descriptive, analytical, persuasive and critical are four main types of academic writing (The University of Sydney 2019). The report provides detail discussion and analysis on coursework and dissertation with their similarities and differences using descriptive and analytical types of academic writing.

Characteristics of Academic Writing

 Planning: Before writing a paper, there should be a certain amount of planning.  Outline: It is a must for academic writing to have a certain outline that helps to ensure content is on the right track.  Tone: A formal and logical tone is required avoiding slang words, abbreviations, etc.  Language: A clear (unambiguous) language is required with the precision of right words placing to explain the content.  Punctuation: Punctuation marks are required where appropriate to narrate the writing.  Point-of-view: It should not support anyone’s opinion rather it should support facts.  Approach: Deductive reasoning is required to convey the conclusions of writing.  Academic conventions: Citation and reference are an important part of academic writing to acknowledge the source of any ideas, data, findings, and quoted text. (Your Dictionary 2018)

Figure 2 : Academic Writing Process

Figure 3 : Quality attributes for academic writing’s content (Planning Tank 2019)

Writing Process

Coursework writing process is generally easier as compared to dissertation. Before writing any coursework, it is mandatory to attend lecture session, receive the question, discuss and understand the questions. Likewise, students need to plan the writing considering the deadline for each task. Furthermore, students need to brainstorm the questions to find the relevant information for writing. Moreover, at the end, students need to write the coursework with appropriate structure and get feedback from supervisor. Working product, documentation, presentation slides are outputs of most coursework. On the other hand, dissertation writing process is complex and hard as compared to coursework. Unlike coursework, students need not receive question in dissertation rather choose suitable topic for research. Before writing dissertation, it is necessary to conduct preliminary research and discuss with supervisor. In dissertation writing, it is mandatory to draft research proposal with aims and objectives of research. Students need to consider legal and ethical aspects in dissertation writing in contrast to coursework. Furthermore, literature search is obligatory in dissertation writing. Just like in coursework, dissertation also requires certain working prototype, feedback from supervisor, documentation and presentation slides as output.

Coursework

Figure 4 : Coursework Writing Process

Dissertation

Figure 5 : Dissertation writing process

Figure 6 : Differences between coursework and dissertation Figure 7 : Similarities between coursework and dissertation

Benefits

Figure 8 : Benefits of coursework and dissertation  Career Development: Coursework and dissertation are both an excellent opportunity for students to prove their capabilities and develop intellectual skills. In addition, they guide students towards knowing their passion/interest with both theoretical and practical knowledge, which would help them to build their career later.  Skills and Personal Growth: Both of them reward students with problem-solving skills, which constitutes reading, writing, and thinking skills. Furthermore, they help students to develop their interpersonal skills such as communication, time-management and presentation skills.  Acquire analytical and cognitive skills: Dissertation always needs an analytical mind and if one completes any dissertation, he/she improves his/her analytical skills (Anderson 2017).  Degree acquisition: In most of the case, the dissertation is written for acquiring a recognized degree. Moreover, once we have degree and skills, we can utilize them in productive works, which ultimately drive us towards a good career.

discusses to begin the report. Likewise, the differences and similarities between coursework and dissertation are identified and demonstrated clearly with figures where appropriate. The concepts, theories, methodologies and issues of coursework and dissertations are clearly mentioned from the extensive research of various sources such as books, websites, articles, etc. Furthermore, benefits and challenges of writing coursework and dissertation are discussed at the end of the report. In this way, the report provides the comparison between coursework and dissertation.