education – understand-culture

Harvard Information for Employees

A strong communication plan will help managers set expectations and successfully orchestrate a diverse group of distributed employees. A thorough plan ensures that employees get what they need to stay connected with their team, customers, stakeholders, and the University.

Discussions about communication tools, protocols, and the ways in which people use these to interact with one another are ideal at the onset of a team approach to flexwork; however, anytime is a good time to establish or revisit a communication plan. A successful plan requires shared understanding and commitment so it’s important for all team members to participate when writing or revising a team communication plan.

Please also see CWD’s “Leading and Managing in a Hybrid Work Environment Toolkit” which includes more in-depth and how-to advice for building skills for a culture of fluid communication in the context of flexwork. Teams should develop a communication plan that addresses:

Shanghai … wait, what?

Referring again to this article in the New York Times about how a few major U.S. companies are handling the post-Covid work environment. With some employees returning full-time to the office. Others are working exlusively or almost excluisively from home. And many dividing their time between office and home.

“Though most evidence that remote workers are at a disadvantage is anecdotal, at least one study, led by researchers at Stanford University, suggests they are less likely to be promoted than their in-office peers. In the experiment researchers randomly assigned workers at a large travel agency in Shanghai to work remotely or in the office for nine months. Though the remote workers were 13 percent more productive, putting in more hours and making more calls per minute, they were promoted about half as often as their in-office peers.”

“They can get forgotten,” said Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford and one of the study’s authors.

But wait, what, Professor Bloom? That’s Shanghai. Those are Chinese. What does anecdotal evidence from China tell us about how Americans benefit or lose out if and when working remotely?

Germany’s students are drawn to the civil service

Security instead of risk: According to a survey by the management consultancy Ernst & Young, the public sector is the most attractive sector for German students. The main reason for this is the hope of finding a secure job.

40 – 80 pages

University of Houston – Jeremy Bailey Susan Scarrow writes:

A master’s thesis is generally 40-80 pages, not including the bibliography. However, the length will vary according to the topic and the method of analysis, so the appropriate length will be determined by you and your committee. Students who write a master’s thesis generally do so over two semesters.

A master’s thesis is a piece of original scholarship written under the direction of a faculty advisor. A master’s thesis is similar to a doctoral dissertation, but it is generally shorter and more narrowly focused.

As a rule of thumb, a master’s thesis should be publishable as a single article, though it might be longer than a typical article; a doctoral dissertation is generally equivalent to at least three articles.

Students who chose to write a master’s thesis rather than a bibliographic essay often do so because they are interested in pursuing further research, for instance in a doctoral program in political science or another discipline, or as a researcher in a public agency.

STEM vs. non-STEM

Many factors should generally be considered when answering the question of how long is a PhD dissertation. However, students should limit their writing between 80,000 and 100,000 words. On average, this document should have around 204 pages. But, the average length of a PhD thesis also depends on the university and the specific subject.

Essentially, a university can set the requirements of a dissertation, including the length. Nevertheless, most institutions opt for around 100,000 words. Research has shown that STEM dissertations have a medium length of 159 pages. Non-STEM dissertations, on the other hand, have a medium length of about 223 pages. Thus, there is a significant difference in length between STEM and non-STEM dissertations.

60 to 120 pages

The exact administrative, content and formal requirements for writing a master’s thesis vary from university to university and result from the respective examination regulations. The topic of the thesis is usually chosen by the candidate for the Master’s degree and worked on in four to six months.

Common formal requirements are: a volume of 60-120 pages, A4 format, bound form, pagination, bibliography, table of contents and an affidavit stating that you have created the work yourself and that the quotations and sources used have been identified (i.e. has not submitted any plagiarism).

After the work has been assessed by two professors or lecturers, usually a written exam and always an oral exam, the author of the work is awarded the academic degree Magister Artium (MA for short). In Germany it is traditionally referred to by the family name, in Austria the degree Magister is awarded (short Mag.) in front of the family name.

Harvard Ph.D. 100-300 pages

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: “Most dissertations are 100 to 300 pages in length. All dissertations should be divided into appropriate sections, and long dissertations may need chapters, main divisions, and subdivisions.”

Learning by doing

Learning by doing refers to a theory of education. This theory was expounded by the American philosopher John Dewey. It’s a hands-on approach to learning, meaning students must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn.

“I believe that the school must represent present life-life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.” John Dewey in My Pedagogic Creed

John Dewey’s 4 Principles of Education

There are only a few ideas that had as much of an impact on education as those of John Dewey. The American philosopher, psychologist and educator believed children to be active contributors and agents of their learning, and not just passive recipients of knowledge of previous generations.

He believed that for knowledge to be acquired successfully, learning should be an experience. His Experiential Learning approach was based on four core principles.

Ph.D dissertation lengths graph

The harder the science, the shorter the length. The humanities, for example History, are the longest. Because they explain with words, and in detail. No surprise there.

Average length of PhD dissertations by major from
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