Instructor: To Be Arranged
Prerequisites: Advanced standing in the graduate program; ARE 6705; Permission of the Instructor.
Course Description
Submission of an original research paper based upon qualitative or quantitative research methods. Graduate students in the UF Art Education program must present and defend a master’s thesis or complete, document, and defend a Project in Lieu of Thesis. ARE 6971 is the course for graduate art education students interested in writing a thesis.
Course Objectives
A Master’s Thesis demonstrates a graduate student’s ability to explore, develop, and organize professional materials relating to a certain topic or problem in their field of study. The goal of the thesis is not only to pursue advanced research but also to create and develop an exceptional scholarly work. The thesis should show evidence of originality, critical and independent thinking, organizational skills, and thorough documentation. It should have a sound rationale, researchable questions, a thorough review and synthesis of related literature, methodology, findings, conclusions, discussion, and recommendations for further research. The research conducted for the thesis may be quantitative or qualitative, experimental, descriptive, creative or historical in nature. A public presentation and oral defense via the web of the thesis is required.
Course Methods
The specific focus and strategy of the thesis is to be arrived at in consultation with the student’s thesis advisor and approved by the student’s thesis committee. The length and structure of the thesis will depend on the type of material involved, the research questions posed, and the method of research chosen. The thesis should be viewed as more substantive than any previous paper written by the student and should represent “mastery” of the particular topic of study.
Thesis Advisor and Additional Readers: Thesis advisors must be full-time faculty members within the art education program who have obtained graduate Faculty status at the University of Florida. Two additional readers must approve the student’s thesis: a full-time faculty member from within or outside the art education program, and a UF Graduate School approved faculty member or an individual with special expertise in the student’s topic of study.
Course Requirements
To achieve the objectives of the thesis, the student will:
- provide a written/oral proposal to his/her thesis committee that must be approved prior to the start of his/her thesis research
- call two meetings during the semester of research in order to provide progress reports to his/her thesis committee
- submit a copy of the final paper for review to each member of his or her thesis committee according to predetermined deadlines
- defend the final paper via the web in front of his or her thesis committee in a meeting open to the public
Last revised on: March 15, 2012 at 12:57 pm
