Thesis and Dissertation Readings
A trained graduate assistant will check your thesis or dissertation for documentation style, grammar and mechanics, and format.
A graduate Writing Lab assistant will check your thesis or dissertation for documentation style and grammar and mechanics. These readings are two hours in length. Lab assistants usually read one chapter at a time. Depending on the length of your chapters, you may need to schedule more than one session per chapter. Many departments require that theses and dissertations be read in the Writing Lab before they are approved, so be sure to check with your department regarding this requirement.
Readers typically do not check theses or dissertations for content, particularly the specialized content of literary, legal, historical, educational research, and scientific documents. Please speak with your professor and your thesis or dissertation coordinator if you have content-related questions.
Additionally, since Writing Lab assistants have not yet written their own theses or dissertations, they might not be entirely proficient in your discipline's documentation style and format. The staff at the UWF Doctoral Support Center might be more helpful to you in that regard. Please consider contacting the UWF Doctoral Support Center if you have specific or specialized questions about format.
What are my options for a thesis or dissertation reading?
This type of reading is similar to the face-to-face paper readings we offer to undergraduates except that you'll get approximately double the time of an undergraduate appointment. A graduate Writing Lab assistant will read your thesis or dissertation.
This type of reading is similar to a face-to-face thesis or dissertation reading except that the reading will be conducted via Web conference. This type of reading uses Zoom to assist students over the Internet in real time. During this type of reading, you and the graduate Lab assistant will work together from your separate, respective computers.
This type of reading is ideal for graduate students who cannot travel to UWF.
Once you have scheduled an appointment in Navigate,
- A Writing Lab associate will send you a link to a Zoom meeting. Reply to the email with an attachment containing the document you want to have read. Your work should be in a Microsoft Word or PowerPoint document. Google docs tend to lose their formatting during submission. The University of West Florida provides free access to the Microsoft Office Suite for all students and employees. If you have not yet installed the Office Suite, search for it in MyUWF, and copy your work to a Word or PowerPoint doc before emailing it to your paper reader.
- Join the Zoom meeting at the appointed time. You will initially be admitted to a waiting room. Your paper reader will move you to a private breakout room within five minutes of your arrival.
- Take note of the following policies:
- You must use a laptop or desktop -- no tablets or mobile devices;
- You must use your UWF student Gmail account;
- It is your responsibility to secure a reliable Internet connection -- The Writing Lab is not responsible for students’ Wi-Fi;
- You must send your document to the reader before the scheduled time for your reading -- Please do not send your document at the top of the hour as doing so delays your session;
- The paper reader will connect with you in the Writing Lab's Zoom account -- Paper readers will not answer connections from students;
- The paper reader will look for you in the waiting room five times during the first five minutes of your scheduled session -- If the reader does not see you in the waiting room, you will be counted as a no-show.