Free "Get-To-Know You" Session - Use coupon Code: FreeIntro once you sign up for your first class.  We can use the first class to check out where you are in the dissertation process and what we need to do to get you on the right track.

About Dr. Greg Samways

Greg is a professional geologist who has spent more than 30 years writing and editing geoscience reports and teaching geoscience, including 6 years as an external examiner examining geoscience dissertations for MSc students!  You can find out more about Greg on the GeoLumina website and Greg's Linked In profile. When Greg is not geologizing, he will be found playing music (hurdy-gurdy and bagpipes for folk dancing), taking wildlife photographs, managing his live video camera systems, or developing his driving skills on his sim-racing rig

What will you learn in this live class?

A dissertation is a document that demonstrates your capabilities as a geoscience researcher and communicator.  It requires a wide range of skills, which are also the skills that prospective employers will be looking for, so you need to get it right!

Depending on your needs, you will likely need several classes.  In these classes, we could cover any of the skills outlined below and use them to plan and deliver your killer Geoscience Dissertation.

You can sign up for a free version of this course here:  Geoscience Dissertation and Report Writing Skills

The Geoscience Dissertation and Reporting Skills course will give a lot of the background that you will need to apply in these classes.

The Skills

• Reporting Planning and Outline - what are the main elements of the dissertation, why do we need them, and how do we create them?
  • Background
  • Aims and Objectives
  • Database
  • methods
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Recommendations
  • References
  • Appendices
• Project Scheduling and Management - Now you know what you need to do and why you need a plan.
  • How to create a project schedule using work breakdown structures and gain charts
  • Using free software:  Project Libre
• Research Learning and Knowledge Management - This is something we are expected to do, but not explicitly taught
  • Research hints, tips, and strategies to find what you need
  • How to accelerate your learning
  • How to manage the knowledge once you have acquired it
• Data Acquisition Methods and Data Management
  • Best practices for documenting how the data was collected and managed in your project
• Scientific Reasoning - something scientists are expected to do, but rarely taught
  • Logical argumentation
  • Inductive and Deductive reasoning
  • Hypothesis testing
  • Drawing conclusions
• Illustration Skills - something every geoscientist needs to be able to do
  • Hand drawing
  • Simple digital illustration in Powerpoint
  • Vector line-art skills in Inkscape
• Conclusions and Recommendations - One of the most important parts, which is normally left to last and skimped over
  • How to pull the conclusions together
  • How to make recommendations for further work
• References - Don't leave this to the day before the deadline
  • Reference management systems
  • Reference styles and formats
• Appendices
  • Hints and tricks for planning your appendices

Who should take this live class?

The skills we are covering in these classes can be tailored to anybody writing a geoscience report or dissertation, from your college project, through degrees and postgraduate-level studies to professional report writing. The earlier we start, the better.