module specification

Advanced Study: Thesis aims to foster the development of an extended field of self-directed research into a significant and rigorous study. It also aims to offer you the opportunity to advance a personal thesis: a theoretically framed, coherently argued proposition leading to coursework output(s). The form of output in which the thesis work is captured and shared will depend upon its content. The thesis may be developed either through writing alone or a combination of written and project-based work.

You will pursue the production of a thesis that contributes to and/or engages with architectural knowledge by means of research comprising your ideas, studies, discoveries and experiments. Research will be conducted adopting methods and processes relevant to your developed/chosen topic and its associated specialisations. The specialist aspect of your thesis may arise in disciplinary terms that relate, for example, to digital, urban design, ecological or conservation areas of curriculum expertise, or to key critical and practical methodological vehicles of investigation, such as (but not limited to) the commons, the moving image, situated practice, participatory development, or virtual reality.

The advanced study of architecture, in this academically conceptualised module, aims to exercise your skills and understanding concerning theoretical, philosophical and practice-based research. The module aims to enable you to position yourself intellectually and creatively within architectural and urban discourse, and thereby argue a position in relation to competing professional, ethical and cultural agendas. The module aims to equip you to build on skills, knowledge and experience developed during your postgraduate course in order to complete a major piece of work on a topic that reflects your interests and values.

The module aims to provide a framework through which you can address the academic discipline of architecture as outlined in the RIBA document ‘The Way Ahead, Education Themes and Values’ 2021.

Pre-requisite: AR7078 Critical Thinking: Research Methods

Architectural knowledge is constituted in a broad field that draws upon several disciplinary traditions, thereby expressed in a diversity of manifestations – from scholarship to practice; from historical knowledge to speculative thinking – and yet anchored to the concrete reality of the architectural and urban terrain typically understood in terms of a built environment. As a form of expertise, whether professional or scholarly, it is therefore a comparatively grounded discourse emerging as it does out of spatially constituted, real world phenomena. Meaningful engagement in the field of architectural knowledge is organised, in this module, as a reciprocity between broad, universal understanding of the subject matter and detailed knowledge of a particular area of interest.

The course of study offered in Advanced Study: Thesis is divided into two overlapping parts. It begins with an introduction to the task at hand, rehearsing the challenge of producing a thesis as either a standalone written document or as project-based output accompanied by commentary essay. This first part, comprising lectures and classroom exercises, will build on what has been learnt in the preceding module to enable you to proceed with designing your investigation, developing a methodological outlook, generating an argument, planning your coursework and delivering your research in a form suited to your field of study. The second part will prioritise the development of your self-directed research in the context of tutorial groups in which methodological or thematic interests are clustered: historical and philosophical themes, an interest in digital culture, architectural conservation, or the context of environmental crisis. Seminars, reading groups, peer review sessions and tutorial input will provide you with a supportive context in which to develop your thesis and progress your coursework in a manner suited to the characteristics of your study.

The syllabus for the thesis will naturally vary between topics, but core areas of study will include engagement with ethical, cultural, environmental, technical, or disciplinary implications of the research process. Similarly, the module will foster transferable capabilities in the project management of research, production of an extended work of connected text or linked outputs and the presentation and dissemination of knowledge.

Scheduled teaching ensures that independent study is effective in addressing the module’s learning outcomes and assessment tasks. Appropriate and diverse learning strategies will be deployed, accommodating individual learning styles. Information is provided through a range of means and sources to ameliorate barriers to successful progress through the module. The course team seeks to embed the University’s Education for Social Justice Framework in fostering learning that is enjoyable, accessible, relevant and that takes account of the social and cultural context and capital of its students.

Activities and the tutorial group structure of the module foster peer-to-peer community building and support for learning. Reflective learning is promoted through interim formative feedback (including classroom discussion within tutor groups) that invites you and other students to reflect on your progress, receive help where you identify the opportunity for improvement in learning strategies and outcomes, and set your own agenda in terms of future development. Throughout the module, you will progressively move along the pathway of developing coursework, engaging in the content of their learning while reflecting on your progress.

The School’s programme of employability events and embedded work-based learning within the curriculum supports your personal and career development planning as an individual and within the context of the student cohort. Through these initiatives, you are increasingly able - as you progress - to understand the professional environment of the discipline, the various opportunities available and how to shape your learning according to your ambitions and aspirations.

On satisfactory completion of the Advanced Study: Thesis module, a number of Learning Outcomes (LOs) will have been addressed. Each is related to the Architecture RIBA 2 - MArch Course Learning Outcomes (CLO). You will:
1. have acquired broad knowledge over disciplinary literature relevant to a selected field of study and, within it, particular insight into a research topic (CLO 11(a) 1, 2, 3, 4;
2. be able to demonstrate awareness of the context of debate across subject areas concerning the selected field of study and understand the influence of historical, theoretical and/or technical parameters upon the constitution of the research problem (CLO 11(a) 2, 3);
3. generate a systematic and rigorous analysis of a work of architecture, urban design or other output of architectural knowledge, coherently framed in relation to relevant current and historical debate (CLO 11(a) 1; 11(b) 2, 3);
4. be able to evaluate, select and mobilise appropriate research methods, including critical and practical approaches to acquiring and interpreting data, in the pursuit of your research objectives (CLO 11(a) 2, 3, 4; 11(b) 2; 11(d) 2);
5. have the capacity to engage with ethical challenges in the research process, to understand the complex, sometimes contradictory character of real-world problems and benefit from feedback including peer review (CLO 11(b) 4);
6. have developed to an advanced stage an area of special interest, through seminar groups and tutorial engagement, suited to advanced study with regard to the cultural, technical, digital and/or environmental understanding of architecture (CLO 11(a) 4; 11(d) 4);
7. be able to devise an appropriate vehicle for an extended field of personal study in the form of a research design and manage a programme of theoretical or practical investigation (CLO 11(d) 3);
8. have acquired transferable communication skills, both in written form - with regard to producing an extended work of connected text - and in the oral presentation of concepts and propositions (CLO 11(d) 1, 2, 4).

Assessment will be based on:
1. a 10-minute in-class presentation (Component 1, 15%) of the student’s research proposal comprising an outline thesis plan represented in visual material and a 10-minute narrative;
2. and (Component 2, 85%), either:
a. a written thesis document nominally 10,000 words long, generally in compliance with University norms for a Masters dissertation, will revise, combine and extend the previous year’s coursework output (nom. 3,000 words) by adding further text (nom. 7,000 words) bringing the overall length up to 10,000 words;
b. an alternative Masters level project-based submission specifically relevant to subject-related concerns or the professional practice context, which allows for advanced study. Accompanied by a 3,000-word written commentary. The parts of the project-based submission together will comprise a substantial piece of independent work.

The rationale for the development and use of these assessment items is as follows:
• Component 1: the discipline of organising, thinking through, contextualising and delivering a presentation in class, among their peers, will provide for assessing a your practical capacity to argue for your ideas in a time-bound, intellectually orderly manner. The task of motivating your methodological approach will allow you to show judgement and exercise transferable skills, including managing your progress, relevant to your career;
• Component 2: a dissertation or project-based submission with commentary to a total length of 10,000-words offers an opportunity to demonstrate and be assessed upon your knowledge and understanding of the subject, and in-depth, rigorous research on a chosen topic, related to the intellectual content of the module and communicated effectively in an extended work of connected text. Where the topic pursued would be better investigated through practice-based methods (such as digital modelling, video making, prototyping and survey activity), the project may be a multi-media output, a report comprising data sets and test results, conservation or heritage study (including survey material and analytical records), a digital model or VR demonstration. A 3,000-word commentary then presents and comments on that process in order to contextualise it effectively share its findings and make the case for insights thereby achieved.  

The pass mark for the module is to be calculated as an aggregate of the components weighted accordingly, with the proviso that the candidate must pass all components.

Full-Time (FT) students will be invited to submit their completed coursework Component 2 (Dissertation pathway) or Component 3a and 3b (Options pathway) at the end of Semester 1, whereas the expected submission cycle for Part-Time (PT) students will at the end of Semester 2.

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