Study texts for students of social work
Students at universities often face the task of writing a seminar paper, a year project paper, and, in higher years, a bachelor’s or diploma thesis, and finally presenting them in spoken, written, or audiovisual form. All of these activities are often accompanied by various problems related to methodological (work methodology, writing methodology), content (content side of the paper), formal (editing, rules, grammar, style), and procedural (defense) issues. Answers are not easily obtained in a comprehensive sense. This is why we decided to compile and publish study texts that provide answers to the above-mentioned questions.
When writing academic qualification papers (which also include bachelor’s and diploma theses), the author must follow the relevant standards that regulate their form and content. In assembling this study material, we were guided by several Slovak technical standards and by directive no. 7/2011 issued by Vysoká škola zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Alžbety.
The primary goal of the presented material is to make it easier for students to carry out activities related to creating their work and to provide practical advice regarding organization and the most important steps leading to successful writing of a high-quality written paper. The study texts therefore do not address “what to write” but “how to do it,” “how to make it work.” They consist of six main chapters. The first chapter focuses on the characteristics of individual types of school and academic qualification papers. The second chapter describes the stages of preparing seminar, year project, and bachelor’s papers and their formal processing. The structure of the work (introductory part, main textual part, appendices, concluding part), as well as citation and work with the used literature, are part of the third and fourth chapters. The fifth chapter describes the requirements for editing the final paper from formal and content perspectives. The presentation of the bachelor’s paper, its preparation and process are the content of the final chapter. The material also includes appendices, where the student finds illustrative examples of individual parts of the work with examples.
Because today it is very important to be able to “sell” one’s information, knowledge, and experience, we also paid attention to paper presentations, where we point out how a paper presentation should look, what the student defending the final paper should not forget, and, on the other hand, we point out the most common mistakes and deficiencies in presenting.
Act No. 131/2002 Z.z. on higher education and the amendment and supplement of certain laws states in § 51 paragraph 3 that “part of study under each study program is also the final thesis, which together with its defense forms one subject; the defense of the final thesis is among the state examinations.”
The author (writer) of the final paper is a student of Vysoká škola zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Alžbety in Bratislava (hereinafter only VŠZaSP). The final paper is the student’s independent work, and its defense is part of the state final examination of the bachelor’s study program.
We believe that with this material we will help students of social work orient themselves in the field of writing final papers and point out that it is not as difficult as it may seem at first glance.
The authors wish you pleasant reading.
CONTENTS
1 CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIVIDUAL TYPES OF SCHOOL AND ACADEMIC-QUALIFICATION PAPERS 1.1 School (pre-qualification) papers 1.2 Academic qualification papers
2 STAGES OF PREPARATION OF SEMINAR, YEAR PROJECT AND BACHELOR’S PAPER AND THEIR FORMAL PROCESSING 2.1 Basic stages of preparation when writing a paper 2.2 Standards for writing papers 2.3 Formal processing 2.4 Scope of individual types of works
3 STRUCTURE OF SEMINAR, YEAR PROJECT AND BACHELOR’S PAPER 3.1 Introductory part (preliminaries) 3.2 Main text part 3.3 Appendices 3.4 Concluding part
4 CITING AND WORKING WITH USED LITERATURE 4.1 Quotations and citing – ISO 690: 2012 – 5 4.2 List of used literature 4.2.1 Procedure for presenting bibliographic references in book and journal form 4.2.2 Procedure for presenting bibliographic references in electronic form
5 REQUIREMENTS FOR EDITING A WORK FROM A FORMAL AND CONTENT PERSPECTIVE 5.1 Formal side of the work 5.2 Content side of the work
6 PRESENTATION OF THE BACHELOR'S PAPER 6.1 Preparation and course of presentation in PowerPoint 6.2 Practical tips for successful defense of the bachelor’s paper and the most common mistakes and deficiencies in presenting
Authors: PhDr. Katarína Bundzelová, PhD. PhDr. František Radi, PhD.
Reviewers: Prof. Ing. Libuša Radková, PhD. Doc. PhDr. Antonín Kozoň, CSc.
Inštitút zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Ladislava Vysokej školy zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Alžbety, Nové Zámky
SpoSoIntE, Trenčín 2013 ISBN 978-80-89533-11-4