Thesis, Bachelor's degree

The topic of the thesis is typically chosen from the student's area of professional expertise. The topic should be of interest to you and serve the development needs of working life. Setting objectives and defining the thesis's scope are important steps in the process, and thesis advisors are there to support you. When choosing your topic, you should remember that thesis reports are public documents.

Finding a topic for you the thesis

Be proactive and alert to identify areas for improvement in your workplace or internship. Gather ideas by looking at existing theses on Theseus or HHthesis. See if you can find topics that interest you in Haaga-Helia's RDI projects. Follow the assignments posted on JobTeaser.

Commissioning agreement

The thesis can be commissioned by a company, public corporation, association, university of applied sciences or other educational institution. In this case, the thesis project will be the subject of a written commissioning agreement.

Fill in the form and collect the necessary signatures. Haaga-Helia advisors do not sign any separate non-disclosure agreements drawn up by the commissioning party. In higher education institutions, confidential theses are not allowed, but they may contain confidential background material that is only known to the advisors/assessors. Background material will not be evaluated.

Haaga-Helia does not archive commissioning agreements.

Research authorization

If Haaga-Helia is the subject of the thesis or the research is conducted for Haaga-Helia students, staff or alumni, the research must be approved in accordance with the attached research authorization guidelines.

The research authorization application will be sent to Specialist Pekka Lahti: pekka.lahti@haaga-helia.fi.

Process of approving a bachelor's thesis

The approval of a bachelor's thesis is managed by the degree program's thesis coordinator in UAS degrees.

Students apply for approval to the degree program's thesis coordinator with an informal application. The application should include the previous thesis or its Theseus link, an evaluation form, and a transcript of records or a link to the student's page on Opintopolku (the national student information portal).

Criteria for approval of a bachelor's thesis

Previous Thesis

• The thesis has been completed within the last ten years.
• It is a bachelor's or master's thesis in a University of Applied Sciences (UAS or MUAS), or a university's bachelor's dissertation, pro gradu thesis, licentiate thesis, or doctoral dissertation. For UAS degrees, a written work at least at the bachelor's level can be accepted for approval.
• The topic is relevant or suitable for the degree for which the approval is being sought. The thesis can be completed in the same or a different field of study.
• In English-language programs, only an English-language thesis can be approved.

If approval is based on a bachelor's thesis, the work is archived in Haaga-Helia's archiving system. Other approved theses are not archived at Haaga-Helia since the work can be found in the original institution.

In the case of approval, the maturity test is not retaken if it has been successfully completed in a previous degree.

The grade for an approved thesis is given on a scale of 1-5 or H (Approved) according to the original scale.

Enrolment to the thesis process takes place in Wihi, where the thesis project progresses from registration to evaluation and publication of the report. Please register for the process according to the degree-specific instructions (further down this page), which will tell you when you will receive the name of your advisor.

Once you start the process under the guidance of a designated advisor, agree a binding timetable and stick to it. You will receive guidance and feedback from your advisor throughout the process. Save the files created during the thesis project and the interim versions of the report in Wihi. All written communication between the student and the advisor is handled through Wihi.

Wihi instructions are in the program itself, on the right-hand side of the menu, behind the question mark button.

When starting the thesis process, you will be assigned an advisor. The thesis process starts with a plan, which is approved by your advisor. Your advisor will then give you advice on the process and feedback on your work. Agree a binding timetable with your advisor and stick to it. Use the thesis reporting guidelines from the start. Instructions for any thesis seminar will be provided by degree.

Templates for thesis plans

• Research-based/Product-based Thesis Plan (docx)
• Diary Thesis Plan (docx)
• Portfolio Thesis Plan (docx)

Reporting guidelines

• Guidelines for long reports and theses (pdf)
• Word template for writing a report (dotx file)
• Guidelines for the diary-based thesis (pdf)
• Word template for guidelines for the diary-based thesis (dotx)
• Guidelines for the product-based thesis (pdf)
• Guidelines for the research-based thesis (pdf)
• Confidentiality of Business and Trade Secrets in the Thesis (pdf)
• Guidelines for the portfolio thesis (pdf)

See also the LibGuides guidelines maintained by the library.

Tools for thesis

Dictation machine

A dictation machine for recording interviews etc. can be borrowed from the library.  You can check the loan status in HH Finna.

SPSS software

Haaga-Helia students can install IBM SPSS Statistics on their own computer free of charge.  

Webropol

Webropol allows you to implement web-based surveys. Please note that for HAKA login, the username and password are the same as the Haaga-Helia domain name and password.
 
If you have any questions, please contact Aki Taanila (aki.taanila@haaga-helia.fi) or other Webropol administrators:

• International Business Degree: Jutta Heikkilä
• Sports Instructor Degree, Vierumäki: to be announced later
• Hospitality Degree, Helsinki: Saija Laitinen
• Hospitality and Business Administration Degree, Porvoo: Marina Karlqvist
• Business Administration Degree, Helsinki: Pirjo Saaranen and Aki Taanila

All Haaga-Helia theses are checked using the Ouriginal application. The software can be used to determine whether plagiarism is possible in theses or other learning assignments. The Ouriginal check is done in Wihi. Submit your work to the Ouriginal plagiarism check when your advisor has given you permission to do so.

Ouriginal compares the content of the document against three different types of sources: the open internet, material from publishers (e.g. certain e-books and e-journals) and student-produced material previously stored in the Ouriginal database. The comparison will result in an analysis report that will highlight the similarities found. On the basis of this report, the advisor will conclude whether plagiarism is present in the work.

The advisor will accept the Ouriginal report at Wihi if there is no evidence of plagiarism in the report and the work can proceed to assessment. If there is a suspicion of plagiarism, a preliminary investigation is initiated, including consultation with the student.

The document will be stored in Ouriginal's database, so that any potential plagiarism of your work will be revealed in the future. If you do not want your work to be the source material for plagiarism comparisons by other Ouriginal users, click on the link at the end of the confirmation message: "Follow this link if you wish to prohibit the use of your document as described above."

Ethical principles

See the Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences Arene's guidelines for students and advisors.

Deceit and how to deal with it

Haaga-Helia's examination regulations define deceit and how to deal with it. The Act on Universities of Applied Sciences defines the sanctions for violations.

Suspicion of deceit is reported in the Finnish or English electronic form. Suspicions of plagiarism in connection with theses are dealt with by Haaga-Helia's Thesis Ethics Committee.

Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) defines plagiarism in the RCR guidelines (Responsible Conduct of Research) defines misconduct as follows:

• Fraudulent activities include unauthorized quotation, i.e. plagiarism, fabrication, falsification and misappropriation.
• Unauthorized quotation or plagiarism is the representation of another's text or part of it as one's own
• Fabrication is presenting invented findings and results
• Falsification of findings is the deliberate manipulation of original findings to distort results or omit essential results or data
• Misappropriation is the impersonation of the original findings, idea or plan.

After the advisor has approved the Ouriginal analysis, save the evaluation version of the thesis in Wihi. Once approved, the thesis is assessed on a scale of 1-5 usually by two assessors (according to the Degree Regulations) using an assessment criteria framework. This procedure is designed to ensure the objectivity of the assessment. Revised unweighted thesis assessment criteria are applied to all the theses. All theses are assessed following this criteria. Once the thesis has been approved, the grade cannot be increased (Degree Regulations). The assessment report is a public document which can be consulted by anyone in the HH library.

Feedback from the commissioning party

Ask for feedback on your thesis using the feedback form (docx). The commissioning party sends the feedback form as an email attachment to the advisor. The thesis assessors will use the feedback to assess the thesis.

Rectifying procedure

If you feel that the evaluation criteria have been incorrectly applied in the assessment of your thesis, you have the possibility to request a third assessor. In this procedure, a third assessor will re-evaluate your thesis. You will then still have the opportunity to request a correction from the examination board, which will not re-evaluate your thesis, but will examine whether the assessment process and criteria have been followed.

The student writes a maturity test in their field for their thesis. Starting from September 1, 2023, an abstract written for the thesis will serve as the maturity test.

The maturity test has two main purposes: through it, the student demonstrates their command of the field of their thesis, and an approved maturity test is an indication of proficiency in the Finnish or Swedish language as required by the Act on the Knowledge of Languages Required of Personnel Public Bodies.

The thesis advisor can require that the maturity test be written under supervision if, for a justified reason, they consider that the competence required for the aforementioned main purposes would not otherwise be sufficiently demonstrated.

What is meant by language of school education?

You will complete the maturity test in your language of school education. This refers to the Finnish or Swedish language for which you received an approved mother tongue grade on your Finnish comprehensive school or upper secondary school certificate. If you have passed the matriculation examination in a language other than the aforementioned school education language (Finnish or Swedish), you are considered to have received your school education in Finnish or Swedish as well, if your matriculation examination includes a passing grade in the Finnish or Swedish language mother tongue exam or if you have achieved at least the grade magna cum laude approbatur in the Finnish as a Second Language or Swedish as a Second Language examination.

The language of the maturity test is determined according to the student's language of school education:

What if you write your thesis in a language other than your own school education language? 

The abstract of the thesis to be published is always written in the same language as the thesis itself. If your school education language is Finnish or Swedish and you write the thesis in a language other than your own school education language, you must also submit a separate abstract written in your own school education language to your thesis advisor.

Writing and Evaluation of the Abstract-Form Maturity Test

1. Familiarize yourself with the instructions for writing the abstract. They can be found in the document "Reporting Instructions for Long Reports and Theses" (pdf).
2. The abstract can be finalized only towards the end of the writing process, as it also includes results and conclusions. The thesis advisor may require changes to the abstract before its approval. Therefore, it is recommended to have the abstract reviewed by the thesis advisor before the assessment version of the work is uploaded in Wihi.
3. The text of the abstract must not be generated using artificial intelligence (language models).
4. If the thesis is done as a joint work, each student writes their own abstract, and the thesis advisor selects which one will be published as part of the thesis report.
5. The thesis advisor marks the maturity test as approved in the thesis evaluation form. If necessary, another evaluator may participate in the assessment.

Students publish their thesis in accessible pdf/a format to online library Theseus, which is the open collection of the national universities of applied sciences. If the commissioning party does not want the thesis to be published in the open collection, the thesis is stored in the restricted collection of Theseus. The thesis is always a public document, so anyone has the right to request to read it.

In the open collection of Theseus, the thesis can be read online in its entirety. A thesis stored in the restricted collection can be read on the Haaga-Helia intranet, in the same way as a thesis stored in HHthesis. The thesis metadata and abstract are openly available in both Theseus collections. As the thesis is public, please ensure that the thesis, its abstract or other metadata do not contain any information that is subject to trade secret, privacy or other confidentiality protection.

NOTE! If the thesis commissioning agreement has been drawn up before 1.1.2022 and the commissioning organisation has prohibited saving the thesis in the open collection of Theseus, the student must make sure the commissioning organisation allows the thesis to be saved in the restricted collection of Theseus instead of HHthesis. Unlike in HHthesis, the metadata and summary of theses stored in Theseus restricted collection are openly available online. In case of doubt, you should contact the library kirjasto.ont@haaga-helia.fi.

When your thesis and maturity test have been evaluated, publish your thesis in Theseus. After publishing, save your thesis link in Wihi. Here's an example of link format: urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2023060117028. Please note that the publication link is activated only when the library staff has approved the thesis and published it in Theseus. This can take 1-2 work days. When your thesis advisor has accepted the link, the evaluation is saved to the student register.

• Theseus submission guide
• Theseus submission page
• Search Theseus publications

For more information on Theseus collections, please contact Haaga-Helia library or send email (kirjasto.ont@haaga-helia.fi).

Note! If your thesis has not been published in Theseus after a couple of days, please check the email you have provided when submitting your thesis. You may have received a notice of a failed submission.

If you have problems with publishing your thesis, you can contact Haaga-Helia library (kirjasto.ont@haaga-helia.fi). If you need personal guidance with the publishing, library's specialists would be happy to help you also in a Teams meeting. Please tell in your message, if you wish to get guidance via Teams.

Open UAS students can't submit their thesis to Theseus. They can contact library staff, who will take care of the submission: kirjasto.ont@haaga-helia.fi

Your feedback on the thesis process

Feedback on the thesis process is included in the AVOP feedback at the end of the studies.