1. Capstone Support Editor Office of Academic Editing Writing Center
Walden University Academic Residencies: Writing Resources for Your Dissertation
Vania Bright, PhD
Capstone Support Editor
Office of Academic Editing
Writing Center
PhD Residencies 3 & 4

2. Unique Writing Center Slide Decks
Slide decks for Writing Center-led residency sessions are not located in Blackboard or SharePoint
Instead, the unique slide decks for all Writing Center-led residency sessions are uploaded to the Writing Center’s Residencies Webpage 5 days before the first day of each residency
Let’s find them together!

3. About Me Walden staff member for 1.5 years PhD in Sociology
Methods nerd
Personal passions: My original 1950s kitchen (pink oven!), social theory (especially Foucault!), and my family.

4. Session Learning Objectives
Understand the role of the Writing Center in writing your dissertation
Identify and connect with Writing Center tools and resources for the dissertation
Templates
Strategies and Writing Center tools for writing Chapters 1 and 2

5. Initial Questions / Activity 1
Show of hands:
Who is working on the prospectus?
Who is working on the proposal?
Who is writing the final study?
Ask students for a show of hands and comment on the number of hands for each group.

6. Initial Questions / Activity 1
Show of hands:
Who feels confident that they know about Writing Center support/resources that can help you throughout all of the different stages?
Ask students for a show of hands and comment on the number of hands for each group.

7. Two Offices in the Writing Center
Office of Writing Instruction:
Coursework; course papers
Webinars
Learning modules
Prospectus/prelim development
More focused on writing instruction, development, learning
Office of Academic Editing:
Proposal and final document
More focused on completion, writing, formatting
More focused on editing, revising, fine tuning
Form and Style Review (F&S)
Now that students hopefully understand a bit more of the dissertation process, we can talk about our resources for the different phases.

8. Form & Style Review Focus of Form & Style Review Document expectations
To help students best present their research they have conducted at Walden for publication in the ProQuest database
Emphasize APA requirements, formatting requirements, concision and clarity, grammar
Document expectations
Articles and books on writing the dissertation
Templates
(We will talk more about this later in the session)

9. Writing Center Office of Writing Instruction and the Prospectus
Preproposal Starter Kit
Preparing to write
Writing expectations
Writing self-efficacy (strategies)
Beginning revision and self-editing skills
Prospectus/ Prelim reviews
Have document reviewed
Instructor provides comments and resources for improvement
APA, grammar
Connect with instructors live via Chat
Again, ask students to avoid trying to write down all this info., and emphasize listening so that they have at least heard that we have these resources available. They can come back to this PPT later.

10. Writing Center Office of Academic Editing and the Proposal
Multilingual Writer’s Kit
Expectations for writing in American Academic English
Focus on English grammar, sentence structure, argument formation, use of evidence
Proposal Kit
Writing the introduction
Literature review
Beginning writing about methods
Final Study Kit
Chapters 4 and 5-results and conclusions

11. Writing Center Office of Academic Editing and the Proposal
Editor Office Hours
Including office hours for multilingual students
Capstone webinars
Transitioning from Coursework to Capstone
Understand the different expectations in the document, writing, student responsibility
Writing Process for Longer Research Papers
More on how to write longer, exhaustive papers
Differences in goals of the paper; expectations
Each chapter of the dissertation

12. Writing Center Office of Academic Editing and the Final Study
Final Study Kit
Chapters 4 and 5-results and conclusions
Form and Style Review Kit
How to prepare the document before submitting the final study for committee approval and eventual F&S review
Steps to help ensure a smooth review with fewer revisions
PostGrad Kit
Information on what, where, and how to publish or show of your dissertation or parts of it.

13. Activity 2: Template Demonstration and Practice
Templates
Pilcrow
Page/Section Breaks
Add one heading (Literature Review)
Template video
Aim for about 30 minutes on this activity. Demonstrate adding one heading and update the TOC.

14. Strategies for Chapter 1
Most decisions need to be made:
Problem
Purpose RQ
Framework
Significance
Work with your committee on these key elements
Webinar: Introduce, Conclude, Write the Abstract
Proposal Kit

15. Strategies for Chapter 2
Literature review
Often the most difficult and longest chapter to write
Always begin with an outline
Synthesis rather than summary (see next slide)
Challenge when moving from annotated bibliographies to synthesis

16. Literature Review: Goals
Teach readers about your topic and focus
State of the field
History
Current ideas
Major studies
Practical headings
Keywords from study title and problem statement
Present full picture of topic
Studies supporting your focus
Studies opposing your focus
Saturation point
Numbers of sources will vary

17. Summary versus Synthesis
Brief description of one source’s main ideas
Tell brief story of each source
Annotated bibliography
Synthesis
Extended explanation of ideas, trends, themes, theories, and/or methods among multiple sources
Combine multiple sources to tell detailed story of your topic
Literature review

18. The same goes for organization; organize by theme
Research Notes:
Author A (2011): single mothers, working parents, wage gaps
Author B (2013): childcare cost increases, demographics at daycare
Author C (2010): parent-child relationships, role of caregivers
Thematic Outline:
Financial cost to single parenting: Author A (2011), Author B (2013)
Socioeconomic status and parenting styles: Author B (2013), Author C (2010)
Working and raising children: Author A (2011), Author C (2010)

19. Literature Review: Process
Locate literature (prospectus)
Read and take notes
Organize notes into sections
Synthesize and understand sources well enough to teach them
Write/revise the literature review essay
Emphasize constant process of writing, revising, reading

20. Top Issues with the Lit Review
Organization / flow
Breadth/depth
Describing the broader category
Peer-reviewed sources
No Creswell or other textbooks
Seriously limit secondary sources
Limit management magazines, websites, blogs, etc.
Relevancy (geographic location)
Currency of sources: within 5 years of anticipated graduation

21. Summarizing and Organizing the Literature
Begin with the broadest concepts that are related to your area
Don’t summarize all of the literature in these broad areas, but focus on what will be relevant to your discussion.
Narrow to your discussion by looking at the specific topic areas in your study.
End with a discussion of how these have not been discussed in tandem; that no researchers have studied your specific variables in this manner or context (identifying the gap in the literature).

22. Summarizing and Organizing the Literature
Broad Concepts
(e.g. organizational change, innovation diffusion, policy implementation)
Specific Topic Areas
(e.g. workplace flexibility policies, administrative innovation, and self-managed teams)
Specific Variables in Tandem
(e.g. success/failure of flexible work initiative as impacted by managerial control and collective group processes)

23. Sample Literature Review Outline
Conclusion (Leading to rationale for your study)
Methods-Specific Literature
Main Topic 4
Subtopic
Main Topic 3
Main Topic 2
Main Topic 1
Search Strategy
Introduction
Sample Literature Review Outline

24. Example / Activity 3
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore whether and how an on-site ombudsperson can be effective in mitigating office bullying.
What are the main ideas you can already see here?

25. Example / Activity 3
The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore whether and how an on-site ombudsperson can be effective in mitigating office bullying.
Conflict
Bullying
Conflict management/mitigation
Ombudspeople
Consider the scope/order
Can we be even more specific? What other elements may belong under these?
Discuss how beginning with broad topics and slowly narrowing to concepts more specific to this study.

26. Example / Activity 3 Bullying Organizational conflict
General bullying
Office bullying
Organizational conflict
Conflict management
The role and history of an ombudsperson
Role of an ombudsperson in government
Role of an ombudsperson in a corporation
Ombudspeople and mitigating conflict
Benefits of employing ombudspeople
Overall effectiveness of ombudspeople
Expanding on the previous development. We don’t expect students to come up with the specifics, here, but this is an exercise to show them that we need to narrow some subtopics within each area.
We are not just taking about bullying; but we need to understand what bullying is first. Then, we move to specifically discussing corporate bulling or bullying at work
This is also part of conflict at work; and more specifically conflict management
We need to describe what an ombudsperson is and how that role came to be
Next, we need to focus on their specific role in mitigating conflict.

27. Example / Activity 4: Practice outline
U.S. firms have increasingly adopted and implemented flexible work policies that allow employees some amount of freedom in their work hours, structure or schedule, or daily routines. According to Bond, Galinsky, Kim, and Brownfield (2005)’s national survey of private sector worksites with 100+ employees, 68% of companies offered flextime, 35% allowed telework for at least some employees, 39% had compressed work week options, 53% had reduced hours options, and 46% had job-sharing programs.  Companies such as Best Buy and Yahoo have begun a recent trend in revoking workplace flexibility options, a move that many new college grads may not appreciate.  The general business problem is that, although companies Like Best Buy and Yahoo may believe that workplace flexibility is bad for the bottom line, it is an open question as to whether productivity actually increases when workers are granted more autonomy over their work schedules.  The specific business problem is that Best Buy has officially removed all flexible work options, and managers do not know how to anticipate the ramifications of this on their teams’ productivity and performance.
Take another example. Here is a problem statement. Ask students to identify the main concepts that should be discussed in the literature review.

28. Example / Activity 4: Practice outline
What are some of the key concepts and ideas involved in this problem? Take a minute and write down/call out the main ideas.

29. Example / Activity 4: Practice outline
U.S. firms have increasingly adopted and implemented flexible work policies that allow employees some amount of freedom in their work hours, structure or schedule, or daily routines. According to Bond, Galinsky, Kim, and Brownfield (2005)’s national survey of private sector worksites with 100+ employees, 68% of companies offered flextime, 35% allowed telework for at least some employees, 39% had compressed work week options, 53% had reduced hours options, and 46% had job-sharing programs.  Companies such as Best Buy and Yahoo have begun a recent trend in revoking workplace flexibility options, a move that many new college grads may not appreciate.  The general business problem is that, although companies Like Best Buy and Yahoo may believe that workplace flexibility reduces productivity and performance, it is an open question as to whether productivity actually increases when workers are granted more autonomy over their work schedules.  The specific business problem is that Best Buy has officially removed all flexible work options, and managers do not know how to anticipate the ramifications of this on their teams’ productivity and performance.

30. Activity 4: Practice outline and activity
Constructs
Flexible work policies
Work schedules
Productivity and performance
Autonomy
Next move is to order topics and think about getting more specific within each area.

31. Activity 5 and discussion
Locate your problem statement
Identify the key concepts and constructs (or variables)
Create a list/literature review outline
Consider the scope:
Begin with conceptual/theoretical framework
Begin with broad topics
End with specific topics
Consider what subtopics may be needed, based on what you know

32. Activity 5 and discussion
Were you able to create a working lit review outline?
Where are you stuck?
More or less specificity
Were you able to identify subheadings?
Were you able to identify a clear flow of broad topics to specific?
Not set in stone.
Read, read, read.

33. Organizing ideas: Literature review matrix
Microsoft Word, Excel

34. Resources for Doctoral Capstone Students
Doctoral Capstone Resources Website
This site links to all resources Walden currently offers to doctoral capstone students.
Program-specific pages accessible from tabs at the top
Get started (overview and introduction)
Develop your skills (reading, writing, organization, and critical thinking)
Write your proposal (deciding on a topic to IRB approval)
Carry out your capstone (data collection to graduation)
Promote your expertise (publish your work and expand your career)
Presenter: Feel free (if you have time) to go over the PDF document, including the chart on the second page re: when to use which resource

35. Center for Research Quality
Additional Resources
Research Resources (Research Planning & Writing)
IRB Office Hours
Methodology Advice Office Hours
PhD checklists
Center for Research Quality
Ask a Librarian
Disciplinary databases, Thoreau, & Google Scholar
Journal articles, books, gov’t docs, theorists
Verify peer-reviewed status & Library webinars
Library
Literature review basics (includes matrices)
Paraphrasing
Webinars for Doctoral Capstone Students, Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography Basics
Writing Center

36. Writing Center Abstract help
The Abstract
A window for others into your research
Second most important part, after the title
Will be the last thing you write, but the first (and sometimes only) thing others will read
A concise summary of your dissertation
Extends the information in your title
One page and only one page
Must contain required content elements
Must have coherence and continuity
Abstract Assistance
Writing Center Abstract help

37. Questions? What additional questions do you have about:
Writing Center role in the dissertation?
Templates?
Writing Center resources?
Strategies and tools for writing Chapters 1 and 2?

38. Writing Help at the Residency and Beyond
During the residency:
Advising
Other Writing Center sessions
After the residency:
Office of Writing Instruction (prelim/prospectus):
Office of Academic Editing (proposal and final study)

39. Complete the Residency Survey in the App
Find the session in the App
Under Surveys click PhD Session Feedback