Check that you have documented your work in accordance with the reporting guidelines of Lapland UAS. Write the abstract last.
Writing the abstract
An English-language thesis must include one abstract in English.
The English abstract is reviewed by a language and communication instructor.
An exception to this rule applies to Finnish-speaking students, who must prepare two abstracts for their English-language thesis: one in Finnish and one in English. The Finnish abstract is reviewed by a language and communication instructor, while the student reviews the English abstract themselves.
Students are responsible for ensuring that the concepts in the translation are consistent. Students should follow the instructions in Guidelines for utilising artificial intelligence – Lapland University of Applied Sciences (subheading: Using AI in theses, learning outputs and publications of Lapland UAS).
The thesis report is checked using Turnitin plagiarism detection. This will happen automatically after you submit your paper to Wihi for evaluation.
Turnitin is a plagiarism detection system that identifies similarities and potential plagiarism in documents, such as a thesis. Once the thesis has been sent to Turnitin for analysis, the system compares it to three different source types: internet sites, publishers’ material such as books, dictionaries and scientific articles, as well as material sent by students, which has been archived in the Turnitin database as source material. The result of the comparison is an analysis report, which reveals not only the similarities between the compared documents but also the percentage of similarities.
The result of the Turnitin analysis is expressed as a percentage. The percentage indicates how much of your thesis matches other sources. Please note that no direct conclusions can be drawn from this percentage: If Turnitin identifies a high number of matches, you need to review the report and the source references carefully with the support of your supervisor. You will always see the result of the Turnitin analysis yourself, and the supervisor will contact you if the result requires further review.
Your supervisor will approve the report in Wihi, and provided there are no indications of plagiarism in your report, your thesis can proceed to the grading stage.
Self-assessment
Once your thesis is complete, you will write a self-assessment of your work. The self-assessment is your own reflection on how well you succeeded in completing your thesis.
In it, you describe the progress of the work, your own learning experiences and challenges, and assess how well you achieved the set goals.
The self-assessment highlights the strengths and areas for improvement, as well as your own contribution and responsibility. Its purpose is to demonstrate that you understand the significance of your thesis and are able to critically evaluate your own work.
Peer feedback and discussion
If peer feedback is used in the program, a peer reviewer will evaluate the thesis. In peer review, another student or an expert evaluates the thesis and provides feedback on it.
The purpose is not to criticize, but to highlight the strengths of the work and areas for improvement.
The peer reviewer usually provides feedback both in writing and orally. You will typically receive oral feedback during the thesis presentation, at which time the peer reviewer will ask a few critical questions and provide an overall assessment that helps the author see their work from another perspective.
Peer review supports learning because the student must justify their decisions and, at the same time, learns to evaluate the work of others. It also serves as a quality assurance measure to ensure that the work meets the requirements set for a thesis.
The peer reviewer’s remarks may be followed by comments from the commissioner and a general discussion, and finally, the supervisor provides verbal feedback.
Be sure to also request feedback from the commissioner of your thesis. Commissioner feedback means that the partner organization provides feedback on the content and usefulness of your thesis from their own perspective.
The feedback examines how well the work meets the objectives of the assignment, how useful the results are, and how well the student has performed in the collaboration.
Commissioner’s feedback is taken into account as part of the evaluation, but the final grade is awarded by the supervising instructor based on the assessment criteria.
Different fields of education have their own seminars to present the completed theses. In addition, the thesis can be presented in common seminars if it is completed early, for example.
Presentation seminars in your own field of education
Progress of the master’s thesis seminar
The thesis presentation seminars often follow the following structure:
Preparation of a seminar presentation
The focus of the presentation is on presenting the results and outputs of the thesis/ development task and assessing the thesis process. The presentation should preferably be supported by illustrations. The presentation describes:
A UAS bachelor’s thesis requires a compulsory maturity test. According to the Government Decree on Universities of Applied Sciences (1129/2014, Section 8): “Students shall write a maturity essay in the field of their thesis or thesis project to demonstrate familiarity with the field and proficiency in either the Finnish or Swedish. When a student is not required to have language proficiency referred to in section 7, subsection 1, the university of applied sciences decides on the maturity test.”
The purpose of completing a maturity test is to demonstrate the student’s familiarity with the topic of their thesis and mastery of their mother tongue (the language of their schooling). If the student has completed their school education abroad or in a language other than Finnish or has been allowed to take the maturity test in a language other than the degree programme’s language of instruction, the expertise group manager will decide on the maturity test language.
General instructions
Completing a maturity test in EXAM/Moodle
Lapland UAS uses the EXAM system to complete a maturity test, for which user instructions have been prepared. When a maturity test is completed in EXAM, the minimum text length is 600 words or 4,500 characters.
The maturity test can also be written as web text in Moodle. In that case, too, the length of the text must be at least 600 words or 4,500 characters long. For more information on completing the maturity test in Moodle, see degree programme specific instructions.
Evaluation of the maturity test
The content of the maturity test of a UAS bachelor’s thesis is assessed by the thesis supervisor and its language by the communications teacher. The maturity test is evaluated on a scale of pass – fail. The evaluation focuses on the following:
Content (assessed by the supervisor):
Text (assessed by the communications teacher):
The maturity test of a UAS master’s thesis is assessed for all the above-mentioned aspects only by the supervisor.
In accordance with the degree regulations of Lapland UAS, theses are public documents, and their appendices may contain other public or non-public documents related to the thesis. The existence of attached material must be verified in the public part. Only the public part can be taken into account when evaluating the thesis.
Your thesis will be evaluated by the content supervisor(s) and language reviewer. In addition, you may receive an assessment from the commissioner of your work. The thesis evaluation covers competences required for the thesis, i.e. learning skills, innovation competence and written communication.
The evaluation is based on the evaluation criteria:
According to the degree regulation, a student dissatisfied with the grading of their work may request the teacher who performed the evaluation for rectification within 14 days of the publication of the grading results.
The student has the opportunity to submit a written rectification request to the board of examiners within 14 days of receiving a written response from the teacher in question. The request for rectification is submitted to Lapland UAS’s Board of Examiners.
Once the content supervisor has completed the evaluation, you can view or print the evaluation report in Wihi.
The student is responsible for publishing their thesis in Theseus. Theseus is primarily an open publication archive, in which theses are stored as open access publications. This means that theses are made openly available on the internet so that anyone can read them. Before publishing your thesis, contact your thesis partner for permission for an open publication if you did not agree on it when entering into the thesis agreement.
If it has been agreed that the report will be published elsewhere and parallel publication is not possible, the report will not be published in Theseus. Publication elsewhere may take place after the thesis has been completed. In this case, the Theseus link will not be saved in WiHi; instead, a reference to Lapland UAS (www.lapinamk.fi) will be saved as the link.
Lapland UAS provides its students with the opportunity to publish their thesis in the open or restricted collection (more information on collections).
In both collections, the metadata and abstract of your thesis will be openly available for reading and can be found by the library’s Finna service and other search services.
Theses are public documents, and Lapland UAS recommends that you save your thesis in the open collection in Theseus. You can link your open-access thesis directly to your CV or personal portfolio.
Once the supervisor has given you permission to publish your thesis in an electronic format, you can publish it in Theseus, the online publishing service of the UASs.
Please note that it may take 2–3 days for your library to publish your thesis, during busy periods (spring/Christmas) up to a week. Contact: theseus@ulapland.fi
Missing information will result in the thesis being returned to the student, delays in obtaining the Theseus link, and, in the worst case, difficulties in completing the thesis or even graduating.
Other publishing channels
The most significant theses can also be published in publication series B or D of Lapland UAS. The publication process is initiated with the student’s consent by the supervisor. The final decision on inclusion in the publication series and its level is made by the publication workgroup of Lapland UAS.
If the thesis was commissioned, the student must submit the thesis to the commissioner.
The final version of your thesis will be automatically transferred from Wihi to the Dynasty Case Management system of Lapland UAS for archiving during the assessment. The thesis evaluation statement and the self-evaluation form you submitted will also be archived at the same time.
Approval of the finishing phase and the thesis
You will receive a passing grade for the Thesis Finishing Phase (5 credits/10 credits) when:
Upon approval of this stage, your thesis will be archived in Dynasty, and the title and grade of your thesis will also appear in Peppi.