“Hello, thank you for visiting. Can I help you in any way?” If you’ve browsed our TAA website, you’ve likely seen those words in the chat box that appears on the screen. We’re often asked by visitors if we’re “real”. Then those who realize that we are, and that we are there to help, ask questions that you may have as well.

In this series of “Can I help you in any way?” posts, we’ll highlight some of the questions people have asked through the TAA Live Chat feature of our site and the responses we have for those questions. In this post, we’re focused on questions about requirements related to writing a thesis or dissertation.

One visitor to the site was looking for guidelines to writing a doctoral thesis. In addition to sharing that the TAA blog contains an entire category on Dissertations, I shared some specific resources that can help with the process, as follows.

• 10 Ways to tease out your perfect dissertation topic
• How to ease into (and even enjoy) your dissertation writing
• How not to complete your dissertation
• 4 Tips for writing a literature review
• And finally, Make your dissertation your priority

Another visitor to the site asked about extracting an article from a dissertation. Assuming that the goal of this visitor was to create one or more new articles from the larger body of work, I suggested the following course of action.

1. Start with a concept map to identify key ideas in the larger body of work
2. Determine which of those ideas make a suitable topic for further exploration and study
3. Organize additional sources and research efforts to develop those ideas into a new article
4. Cite the original work as necessary to give credit

I further noted that “when working from a dissertation, you have already done most of the research necessary for the new article and are essentially repurposing the smaller ideas in the work”. The key is, therefore, finding the framework for presenting those ideas in a form suitable to the desired publication.

Are you currently working on a dissertation or thesis or have you published additional works based on your dissertation or thesis? If so, feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

Can we help you in other ways? Check out the previous series posts on learning objectives, essay writing, courses and workshops, publishing strategies, software tools for writers, quoting sources, revisions and editing, and OER.

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Eric Schmieder is the Membership Marketing Manager for TAA. He has taught computer technology concepts to curriculum, continuing education, and corporate training students since 2001. A lifelong learner, teacher, and textbook author, Eric seeks to use technology in ways that improve results in his daily processes and in the lives of those he serves. His latest textbook, Web, Database, and Programming: A foundational approach to data-driven application development using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, MySQL, and PHP, First Edition, is available now through Sentia Publishing.