Thesis, Master's Degree

Starting a thesis can seem challenging, even if the topic and the development of own professional competence are motivating and inspiring. However, it is not worth to make the start become an obstacle to the progress of studies.

On these pages we have compiled a description of the stages, requirements and goals of doing the thesis. It is worth reading the materials well in advance and carefully, as they provide the answer to many things. However, this is not the only support when doing a thesis.

The community of orientation, ie. studies, other students and Master seminars (prev. orientation evenings), as well as the head of specialisation support the progress from start to finish. Significant support is also provided by the advisor of the thesis.

The Master's thesis is a 30-credit research and development task (approximately 800 hours of student work). Its purpose is defined in law as follows: "The aim of the Master's thesis is to develop and demonstrate the ability to apply research data and use selected methods for the analysis and solution of problems in working life and readiness for independent demanding expert work" (Government Decree 423/2005, § 7a).

The thesis can be started immediately at the beginning of the studies. First, the student comes up with an idea suitable for the specialisation and sends a topic proposal to the specialisation head. In addition, the student enrols in the Applied Design Research course. NB: You don't enrol for thesis via PSP.

In the 90-credit Master's degree programme, the student starts the thesis at the beginning of the second academic year at the latest, so that the student can graduate within the target time.

Specialisation activities (studies and joint Master seminars, prev. specialisation evenings) provide support for the ideation and launching of a thesis.

Master Thesis

The thesis project begins with the choice of the topic. The student makes a topic proposal either before or at the beginning of the Applied Design Research course. Once the student has defined the topic, he/she prepares and processes the topic proposal in the manner instructed by the specialisation head. The specialisation head approves the topic proposal, and after that the student saves it in Wihi. Please ensure that the type of thesis is a Master's Thesis in Wihi. The head of specialisation appoints an advisor for the student’s thesis project. The supervision of the thesis can be individual or group supervision.

In the Applied Design Research course, the student prepares a thesis plan based on the topic proposal. The student saves the thesis plan in Wihi, after which the guidance process starts with the advisor. At the beginning of the guidance process, the student and the advisor go through the guidance contract together.

A thorough plan is a good starting point for the implementation of the thesis. The main features of the plan are as follows:

Introduction: The topic of the work (problem or need) and a compact introduction of the target organisation.
Objectives: The expected results for the organisation.
Research questions: Which questions does the thesis answer?
Theoretical framework: What are the previous research, theories, concepts, literature and other possible material that are essential for the work?
Methodology: Data, methods and tools which are used in the research and development project, and data management plan, which describes how the collected data will be processed and stored.
Organisation: The business unit, function or project in the organisation which is the focus of the student’s research and development (in case the thesis is commissioned by an organisation).
Schedule: Phasing and scheduling the tasks.
Risk assessment: Anticipation and preparedness for problem situations.

In defining the objectives and schedule, the preparation of the plan is also supported by discussions with a representative of the organisation, ie. the commissioning party. In particular, the commissioning party can help define the goals and schedule of the thesis.

If possible, the student makes a commissioning contract with the representative of the target organisation. A contract is recommended especially when the organisation is other than the student's employer. In addition, a possible research permit must be agreed with the organisation.

Research authorization

When Haaga-Helia is the commissioning party, the contract is always made. 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 research authorization guidelines. The research authorization application will be sent to the following expert pekka.lahti@haaga-helia.fi.

When making the thesis plan, the student also familiarizes herself with research ethics (see 5. Research ethics).

Forms:

Thesis topic proposal, Master's Thesis

Thesis plan, Master's Thesis

Commissioning contract, Master's Thesis

Template for Consent Form, Master's Thesis

Template for Research Announcement, Master's Thesis

Instructions:

Instructions for handling trade secrets and confidential information in Master Theses

After the thesis plan is accepted the student will start writing the thesis: he/she will read up on literature, plan and carry out the research and development project and write the thesis according to the reporting instructions. The writing of the thesis starts at the beginning of the work so that observations and causes and backgrounds for various choices will get noted. The student and the advisor use Wihi to track the progressing of different versions of the work. The student will participate in a Master seminar (prev. specialisation’s evening) at least two times and will present the thesis in a way agreed with the advisor.

The writing of a thesis is mainly independent work but there are several forms of support available for the student:

Thesis advisor will read different versions written by the student, comments them and gives feedback and by doing so promotes the completing of the work. The advisor and student will agree on meetings. When changes are made to the plan they have to be agreed with the advisor.

When the student is doing his/her thesis in a group the group itself offers support as well.

Master seminars (prev. spesialisation’s evenings) and specialisation’s community (including Teams platform or Moodle) offer possibility to discuss the topic and doing of the thesis with the specialization head and other students. At Master seminars topical issues are addressed and theses are presented. The student will agree about presenting of thesis at a Master seminar or by using a video recording with the advisor.

This web page includes all the common instructions for a Master thesis.

Master thesis workshops are workshops intended for students to support the students’ use of methods and writing skills. The content and schedule of thesis workshops can be found at this thesis web page.

Library and information services (online library HH Finna) offer guidance for information search and managing your references with Mendeley reference management program. Haaga-Helia’s LibGuides offer a lot of information and support for writing a thesis. It is recommended that the student familiarises him/herself with How to search for information guide and Referencing help at LibGuides. At LibGuide web pages you can also find tips for academic writing and research method literature.

Discussions with the commissioner at the target organisation can also support especially the writing of the practical part of the thesis.

Forms:

Reporting template, Master's Thesis

Guidelines for Master's Thesis

The student agrees on the schedule of completing the thesis with the advisor so that there is enough time left for the assessment.

The following tasks belong to the finalising of the thesis:

Presentation of the thesis
Maturity test
Thesis plagiarism review
Publishing the thesis

Presentation of the thesis: The student agrees on presenting the thesis with the thesis advisor and/or the teacher responsible for specialisation. For example, the student can present the thesis in the Master's seminar of the specialisation or by making video recording of it for the specialisation's platform.

Maturity test: The student writes the maturity test in the field of his/her study in his/her school language (Finnish or Swedish, otherwise English). Starting from September 1, 2023, an abstract written for the thesis will serve as the maturity test. The maturity test is evaluated on a pass/fail scale. (See instructions.)

Plagiarism review: The student sends the public version of the thesis via Wihi to Ouriginal-review. Confidential parts of the thesis are not sent to Ouriginal.

Publishing the thesis: The student publishes the thesis after he/she has submitted the thesis to Wihi for evaluation, and the advisor gives a permission to publish the thesis.

If in a thesis that started before August 1, 2022, the student has agreed on the confidentiality of the material with the commissioning organisation, the student will receive instructions from the advisor to complete the work.

The student publishes his/her thesis in the open collection of the national Theseus online repository of Universities of Applied Sciences. If the commissioning party does not want the thesis to be published in an open collection, the thesis will be stored in the restricted collection of Theseus. In Theseus' open collection, the thesis is available online in full pdf format. The thesis saved in the restricted collection can be read in Haaga-Helia's intranet. Thesis metadata and abstract are openly available in both Theseus collections. However, the thesis is always a public document, so anyone has the right to request that it be read. This also applies to a thesis stored in the restricted collection. You can find more information on the restricted collection on the submission page of Theseus.

As the thesis is public, make sure that the published thesis, its abstract or other metadata does not contain information that is subject to trade secret, privacy or other confidential information.

NOTE! If the thesis commissioning agreement has been drawn up before 1.1.2022 and the commissioning party has refused to save the thesis in the open collection of Theseus, the student must assure the commissioning organisation that the thesis can be saved in the restricted collection of Theseus instead of previous restricted colletion HHthesis. Unlike 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.

Theseus submission page
Theseus instructions on how to upload thesis
Theseus search page for publications

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. More information on Theseus can be obtained from Haaga-Helia libraries.

If your thesis has not been published within a couple of days in Theseus, please check the email you have given when submitting your thesis. You may have received a notice of a failed submission. Please note that the confirmation message for an approved submission always comes to your Haaga-Helia email address, regardless of the address you provided during the 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.

Assessment of the thesis begins after the advisor has approved the Ouriginal analysis and the student has saved the finalised thesis to Wihi.

The thesis is assessed on a scale of 0-5, and the assessment is conducted by two assessors, the advisor together with another person appointed by Haaga-Helia (Section 13 of the Degree Regulations). The grade is determined on the basis of a joint assessment by the advisor and the second examiner. More detailed assessment criteria can be found in the file below.

The assessment of Master's Theses will change from August 1, 2022, so that the weighting factor for the results of theses will be removed. Theses started before August 1, 2022 will be assessed with an emphasis on results until July 31, 2023. After that, all theses are assessed without a weighting factor.

The evaluation statement is a public document that can be viewed by anyone in Haaga-Helia's library.

To assessment, the student requests also feedback from the possible commissioning party.

Rectifying procedure

The approved grade of the thesis cannot be raised by improving the thesis after the assessment. However, a correction request can be made for the assessment of the thesis (see Norms to be observed and appeal proceedings).

If you feel that the assessment 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-assess 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.

Forms:

Assessment form, Master's Thesis

Evaluation criteria, Master's Thesis

Commissioner's feedback form Master's Thesis

In accordance with Haaga-Helia's values, we take responsibility into account in all our operations. We are committed to good scientific practice and to conducting research and development in accordance with the principles of research ethics (see Responsible Conduct of Research by the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity TENK). In addition, we follow the ethical guidelines of The Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences Arene.

The following are the functions and processes related to Haaga-Helia's research ethics principles, especially from the students' point of view.

The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity divides research misconduct into four subcategories, namely, plagiarism, fabrication, falsification and misappropriation:

Unacknowledged borrowing, that is, plagiarism, refers to presenting material produced by someone else as one’s own.
Fabrication refers to presenting invented observations or results.
Falsification refers to the modification of original observations in such a way that the results are distorted, or that essential information is omitted.
Misappropriation means that results, an idea or a plan by someone else is presented as one’s own.

Ouriginal, plagiarism tracking program

All theses are reviewed with the Ouriginal application. The use of Ouriginal increases the awareness of plagiarism and its prevention. Its introduction indicates that plagiarism is not acceptable and that our university has both the desire and the means to address the issue.

The Ouriginal review of the thesis is done through Wihi. The thesis advisor approves the Ouriginal report in Wihi if there is no indication of plagiarism in the report, and the thesis can proceed to evaluation. If there is reason to suspect plagiarism, a preliminary investigation will be started, in which the student will also be heard.

The program can be used to find out if there is possible plagiarism in thesis or other learning assignments. The program compares the content of the document to three different source types:

Material published on the internet
Publisher material (eg. e-books and e-magazines)
Student-generated materials previously stored in the Ouriginal database.

The result of the comparison is an analysis report, which shows the similarities found. Based on this report, the advisor can determine if there is a suspicion of plagiarism.

The student's report is stored in a database, which will reveal possible plagiarism of the student's work in the future. If the student does not want the work to be the source material for plagiarism comparisons with other Ouriginal users, he / she should click on the link at the end of the confirmation message: "Follow this link if you want to prohibit the use of your document as described above."

Thesis Ethics Committee

Suspicions of plagiarism in theses are reviewed by Haaga-Helia’s Thesis Ethics Committee.

Haaga-Helia’s Degree Regulations 27 §, Personal Conduct at Haaga-Helia: “Cheating in examinations and plagiarism of assignments, thesis reports or other existing materials are strictly forbidden. If a student is found guilty of cheating, he or she is will be removed from the exam session or learning assignment and the course exam or other performance is failed. Plagiarism will result in failure of the course in question. Proved cheating will be entered into the study register. The punitive measures for the above-mentioned violations are governed by Section 38 of the Polytechnics Act (932/2014).”

Students get support for their thesis work either in the specialisation’s Master seminars or the general thesis workshops. In the seminars, topics for theses are brainstormed, and in addition, the graduating students present their thesis.

Master seminars take place on the following Mondays in the spring:

February 5th in English
March 25th in Finnish
April 22nd in English from 17.00 to 19.30.

The teachers responsible for specialisations inform the students separately about the seminar agenda and place.

Thesis workshops

The thesis workshops support the planning and implementation of the Master's thesis and are intended for all Master's students. Participating in the workshops is voluntary and does not accumulate study points, but according to the feedback, they are useful at every stage of the thesis.

Monday's theme workshops and Tuesday's method workshops are organised online. For Monday's theme workshop, one must enrol no later than the previous Sunday evening, in order to receive a link to the Haaga-Helia email address before the workshop starts. Kindly notify master(at)haaga-helia.fi if you cancel your enrolment.

Enrol for spring 2024 thesis workshops in Webropol.

Master seminars and theme workshops on Mondays from 17.00 to 19.00

22.1. Mindfulness opinnäytetyössä
5.2. Master seminar (in English)
12.2. Opinnäytetyön rakenne ja rajaaminen
'Framing and structuring the thesis' workshop will not be held in the spring. You can find the recording here.
26.2. Työkaluja ja innostusta kirjoittamiseen
26.2. Thesis writing workshop: practices and tools for writing
Huom! Sama päivä – opiskelija valitsee kielen ilmoittautuessaan. NB! Same day, student chooses language version when enrolling to the workshop
4.3. Tiedonhaku ja vinkit hyvien lähteiden äärelle
11.3. Information search and tips for finding relevant sources
25.3. Master-seminaari (suomeksi)
8.4. Kriittinen kirjoittaminen ja teoreettisen viitekehyksen rakentaminen
8.4. Critical writing and building of theoretical framework
Huom! Sama päivä – opiskelija valitsee kielen ilmoittautuessaan. NB! Same day, student chooses language version when enrolling to the workshop
15.4. Tiedon havainnollistaminen
Data visualisation workshop will not be held in the spring but a recording will be available soon.
22.4. Master seminar (in English)
6.5. Opinnäytetyön viimeistely / Final steps of the thesis process (in Finnish & in English)

Method workshops on Tuesdays from 18.00 to 20.30

For Tuesday’s method workshops, one must book a personal meeting time by email no later than the night before. The email addresses are in the following form: firstname.lastname@haaga-helia.fi

Quantitative methods (e.g. surveys) > Principal Lecturer Pirjo Saaranen
Qualitative methods (e.g. interviews, content analysis) > Principal Lecturer Juha Lindstedt

Extra method evenings on 6.2. and 27.2. from 18.00 to 20.30

Extra method evenings will be held in English in the spring.

6.2. Interviews and content analysis. Assessing reliability and validity, Principal Lecturer Juha Lindstedt Click here to join the meeting Everybody who is interested in the topic can join!
27.2. Questionnaire design and use of Webropol for collecting data. Analysing and presenting quantitative data, Principal Lecturer Pirjo Saaranen

Thesis topic proposal, Master's Thesis

Thesis plan, Master's Thesis

Reporting template, Master's Thesis

Guidelines for Master's Thesis

Commissioning contract, Master's Thesis

Commissioner's feedback form Master's Thesis

Assessment form Master's Thesis

Template for Consent Form, Master's Thesis

Template for Research Announcement, Master's Thesis

Types of thesis

The research and development objectives, results and outputs can be very different. Respectively, working on the thesis can proceed in many different ways, and therefore, one general model cannot be given. However, theses have always in common that the student gets acquainted with previous research, collects and analyses one's own data or plans and implements one's own development project, and finally, describes and evaluates the results.

The master's thesis always begins with the definition of the objectives of research and development. The whole process is described in a thesis report and there can also be other outputs depending on the nature of the thesis. The progress of the work between these start and end points can then take different directions. The following orientations serve as examples.

The development-oriented thesis progresses from getting acquainted with previous research on the topic to the analysis of the current situation of the target organization and to the planned development and evaluation of the validity of the results. In addition to the thesis report, other outputs can be, for example, a new operating model, an operating manual for the organisation or operating instructions for an ICT system. In a development-oriented thesis, a separate output can also be developed and implemented, which can be, for example, a concept plan, product, a new service or piece of work.

Another common form of thesis is a research-oriented thesis, which also meets the development needs of the organisation. In this case, the thesis progresses from getting acquainted with previous research to collecting and analysing one's own research data, which serves as the basis for development proposals. Development proposals based on research must also be validated, for example, with feedback from the experts of the target organisation.

A research-oriented thesis can also focus on a current topic or challenge in working life or business. The student may not have an organisation or company as a commissioning party. Haaga-Helia, for example, can act as a client on the basis of its RDI needs. Even then, the thesis progresses from getting acquainted with previous research to collecting and analysing one's own research data. The result can be, for example, development suggestions, a new operating model for business, a blueprint or other recommendations.