1st January, 2024

Dear Students,
Wishing you all a joyful 2024 filled with new learning and experiences. Hope you had a good break
after your previous semester, and enjoyed the new year parties!

This dissertation semester contributes new learning to your knowledge as part of your education at
FA. As you would know from your peer group, research requires distinctive skills and a mind-set for
that is very different from what you have been doing so far. That is the fun and struggle of the
semester. (Please read the entire email / letter – a good way to start practice for reading)

One key strategy to complete the research successfully is regularity and rigour, particularly for
reading and writing. Some suggestions:
- Keep notes about your reading and focus on what argument the author is making that is
relevant to your research. Everything in the article / book may not be suitable for your own
work.
- Note the information required later to create a bibliography. You can check the fields given
in Microsoft Word, reference tab to see what data is required to be stored. Typically, name
of author, title of publication, name of publisher, year of publication, place of publication,
url if viewed online, name of journal / volume / page nos if it is a journal article. Be
consistent in your bibliography, citations and illustration credits
- Try to read books. Wikipedia is only a pointer not the end.
- Do not consider previous thesis as the primary source of information, except if it is
documentation. You can use the arguments presented, then check on the bibliography. A
good rule in research is always get to the primary source.

Another important strategy is to constantly keep writing. Do not assume that you will be able to
write at the last moment. A conversation with any former student will inform you that they wished
they had written more frequently. Each week, you must try and write something, even if it is the
introduction to the thesis. Aim for a certain number of words on a daily basis. Not notes from your
reading, but your own writing. It can be a summary of the reading in your own words. It will also
become a good way to clarify the direction of the research.

Regarding your aims, and objectives, it goes without saying, the clearer and sharper they are, the
easier the research. Your objectives are not to present overarching / overviews, but to support the
broader researches done before, with particular and specific arguments. They may be supportive or
disagreements.

As you go about your research directed by your respective guides, there are some scheduling
references to help you pace your work which I hope will contribute to a better quality of research.
Below is the schedule of the reviews and their weightage for your reference which has also been
shared with your guides. This is different from thesis and hence it should be noted carefully by the
student and discussed with the guide.

Schedule and weightage for the semester of Spring 2024

1. Proposal: 23rd January (after 2 weeks of the semester; stage 1)
10% weightage to be marked by the guide. This is a complete proposal of the research to be
reviewed by the guide. The marks have to be submitted by 23rd January, so the student and guide
should determine the submission date based on individual convenience.

2. Presentation review: 19th – 23rd February (7th week of the semester; stage 2)
20% weightage to be marked by the guide. This review is not mandatory, but we encourage
everyone to participate in this review for peer learning and creating a collegial environment of
research learning. We will have a panel of experts who will share their feedback on the
presentations.

3. Qualifying document: 2nd April (After 12 weeks of the semester; stage 3)

25% weightage to be marked by the guide only. The marks have to be submitted by 3rd April, 2024 so
the student and guide should determine the submission date based on individual convenience. At
this stage the guide should determine if the student should continue the research. It is a qualifying
stage.
55% grades are received by this stage.

4. Final submission of the dissertation document (per University calendar): 26th April, 2024
5. Final viva 4th – 11th May
45% weightage entirely for the submitted document (Guide: 15% and Guest reviewer 30%)

Requirements of submission stages

1. Proposal stage: This review should have an introduction to your subject, a research question
/ aim, objectives, scope and limitations, methodology and an annotated
bibliography/summary/ review of at least three articles/books/publications that you would
have read directly related to your research area. For this purpose, keep in mind that you
should be able to extract relevant material from the publication and not write up a
generalised review. What you will analyse, how you will do it and what is the proposed
outcome of that analysis needs to be part of this submission.
Clarity and focus in research is important.
2. Presentation review: In this review, you have to present the argument including aims,
objectives, methodology, structure and an analytical framework or pilot analysis if using an
existing framework. You should be able to show one case study analysed, with the
parameters and description of the framework of your research or adequate quantum of
documentation if the research is highly dependent on original first-hand documentation or a
prototype and its process (including failure models) if the research is making-based. It is
expected that case studies are finalised by now to allow time to write about the research
and bring out findings in a suitable manner. Demonstration of analytical ability, clarity and
precision are important.
3. Qualifying document: This is the submission of the entire document to the guide as a draft.
It is expected that the research is complete and it is to be presented in its entirety. The guide
has to review the document and determine if the research can continue further. After this
stage, additional writing, fine tuning the analysis, and other qualitative aspects of the work
are to be undertaken including improvement on the writing.

Do note that the presentation review will be a powerpoint presentation. Please do not copy paste
your word document onto the slides and make the presentation. I will send out rubrics of a
presentation shortly, and hope that you will use it to make quality presentations.
The review will be conducted as a panel discussion and not individually with individual panellists.
The dates will have to be adhered to.

Other requirements
1. The students have to send in a note of about 250-300 words after a meeting with their
guides. One-to one discussions, email, telephone conversations can all be considered for this
purpose - it is simply to have the student communicate regularly with the guide and that
they are both on the same page with the research. The note should contain a brief summary
 of the discussion and the way forward as suggested by the guide. These notes have to be
submitted as follows.
a. One note before the proposal stage
b. Three notes before the presentation review
c. Four notes before the qualifying document
The grades of the student at each stage will be accepted from the guides only if they
submit the notes to Manisha with a copy to the guide and the guide’s confirmation that
the note is an accurate summary of the discussion.
With this, I hope we are able to bring the students and the guides into a closer collaboration
with the University.

2. As a Faculty policy, we do not undertake the plagiarism check of the final document. The
students have to do it themselves and submit the report as part of the final document. For
helping with this, a workshop will be conducted after the second review and all support
regarding this will be provided.

3. We hope to conduct other workshops during the semester and will keep you informed of
the schedule. While, these are not mandatory, we hope that you will attend these
workshops to help improve your research and writing skills.

We will remain in regular contact with your guides about the requirements to support you and as a
reminder for critical dates.

I look forward to exemplary work and hope to have a publication quality document from you all at
the end of the term that will lead to an actual publication. I hope that this semester will forge a new
direction for you in your career. I am looking forward to some high-quality research and enriching
discussions in the review.

I remain available for any doubts, conversations, clarifications throughout the semester. The best
way to reach me would be through an email or sms.

Wishing you all the best,

Prof. Meghal Arya, PhD

Faculty of Architecture
Faculty in charge, UG DRP I Program Chair FA PhD