The Library: Computing

• Book an appointment with your Academic Librarians who can help you find resources including journal articles, statistics and more.
• Use the Skills for Learning website for step-by-step guidance on how to plan and manage your workload, and how to structure your dissertation.
• Search Discover for books on how to write your dissertation.
• Look at the Discover FAQs to get the most out of using this resource.

• You may also wish to explore our page on Dissertations and the Skills for Learning pages on Finding Information and Literature Reviews.

As well as our subject-related resources, the Library also stocks books on dissertation writing and research skills. You can search Discover for our full stock, but these books may help you to get started:

A literature review examines and comments on the information available about a topic. It provides background to your work, showing how it relates to existing knowledge of the field, and demonstrating your command of the subject.

In general, literature reviews are arranged by theme or issue, rather than addressing each piece of information individually.

The Finding Information page on Skills for Learning contains guidance on finding information for literature reviews, as well as tips for finding sources for any of your projects.

Within Leeds Beckett

You can search the University repository for past Leeds Beckett research and the Thesis and Research Data Repository (Figshare) contains online postgraduate research theses/dissertations from Leeds Beckett students.

The Library also has some hard copies of old dissertations and theses. You can consult these to see how previous students conducted and presented their work.

Search on Discover for dissertations and theses held in the Library:

Ensuring that your research is ethical is an important aspect of the planning and methodology of a project.

Ethical research expands our knowledge of a field without causing harm, but it can be challenging to understand and apply this principle in practice. Common challenges include the unbiased selection of participants, obtaining their informed consent, and keeping confidential data secure. Other factors to consider might include the health and safety of participants, and potential financial, social, physical, and psychological risks.

There are number of sources of help:

1. The BCS Code of Conduct sets out required professional standards (useful if an Ethics form approval form refers to the code of conduct of a learned society).
2. The Skills for Learning Research Ethics page offers helpful general advice.
3. Leeds Beckett research ethics policies and procedures are available online.
4. Accessing the work of past researchers (instructions above) will show you how previous students have addressed relevant ethical issues. 
5. There are a number of useful books on research ethics in the Library, you can use Discover  to check for relevant titles.

If you need further advice, you should speak to your module tutor or supervisor before continuing your research.