This exercise asks the students to take turns at presenting their Master’s thesis topic. Subsequently, they must exchange ideas and share their thoughts concerning the Master's thesis with each other.
The students may gain inspiration for subjects, methods and theories by listening to other students’ thoughts and ideas. At the same time, they have the opportunity at an early stage in the process to exchange ideas with other students who are working on a similar topic, but with whom they might not otherwise have made contact. For some students, this exercise may even constitute a basis for organising writing groups.
You must ask the students to stand or sit in a circle.
Make sure you have a classroom that is big enough for this. In case of a large class, you must allow five minutes for the students to reorganise the tables and chairs.
The students must now take turns to explain what they want to write about in their Master’s thesis. Each student is allocated a maximum of three minutes to speak, and you should act as timekeeper.
Ask the students to note down in the process the names of a couple of fellow students whose topics are similar to their own or sound interesting to them.
The students must now get together with the fellow students whose names they wrote down during the presentation round. In these groups they must then exchange ideas and thoughts with each other regarding method, data collection, literature etc.
If the students have more names on their lists of fellow students they have not already spoken with, they must swap groups after 10 to 15 minutes.
The exercise continues in this manner in the new group, where they also exchange ideas and thoughts with each other.
You then sum up briefly in class and encourage the students to use each other in the upcoming Master’s thesis process.
You may consider preparing a number of specific questions for the students to consider in the idea exchange part of the exercise. This will ensure that the dialogue among the students gets off to a good start.
You may let classroom remain open after the exercise has been completed. This will allow the students to continue sharing their thoughts if they want or need to do so.
