Structure
These are structural guidelines for your final BA-Documentation.
Front Page
Imprint
Title
Author
Matrikel-Nr.
Date (Month, Year)
School, Program
Supervisors, Mentors
Used Typeface
Abstract (50-100 words) - general insight into the topic, project and findings.
Overview - your narrative or organisation of your content
Table of Contents
Main Content
Format of the organisation is flexible but it needs to feature:
Introduction
Related Work
Field Research (Interviews, user studies, observations, etc.)
Concept Development
Experiments
Prototypes
Results
Conclusion
Bibliography
Organised alphabetically by order of source genre: book, book chapter, journal article, conference article, academic thesis, newspaper article, web article, etc
Accepted styles: APA, CMS, or other or refer to the document ba_thesis_viad_2017.pdf for details for each type of reference. The important part is when you choose your style to be consistent and homogeneous throughout.
Usually, you can follow this guideline: Last name, First name. Date. Title. Publisher.
For book chapter, journal and conference papers, study, etc. It's usually Last name, First name. Date. "Title of article". In book title or publication. etc.
Additional elements
You should feature at the beginning acknowledgments, especially if you worked with users and participants, if you benefited from all sorts of support, etc.
At the end, if needed, add an annex with additional documents.
Number your pages.
It's good practice to add a header throughout with the title of your document and the current chapter.
Footnotes should be used sparingly and with a strong added value.
Citation
Text and Numbers
Provide the source for all references you're making throughout the document, images, data statistics, quotes, arguments supported by theories and case studies.
Citation are made throughout the text by putting in brackets the name of author, year and page if it's a quote or a precise argument.
Ex. (Deleuze 1974: 53)
For two authors, the two names are mentioned e.g. (Deleuze & Guattari 1973)
For more than two authors: (Deleuze et al 1974)
The name and year then refer to the bibliography at the end.
Image Caption
All images have to be captioned either directly below the image or in a table of illustrations that list all images used with the page where they're used or the numbers that they have. Images should be captioned with title, year, author of project, author of image (this can be two different authors), where it's been retrieved from and when (website link) or other source. In the case of an art piece, mention the format, the material ("net art", "oil on canvas", etc) and if appropriate where it is hosted (museum, gallery, etc).
Authorship
In case of two students authoring the document, please mark clearly each student's contribution.
A word about plagiarism (excerpt from ba_thesis_viad_2017.pdf):
Gemäss Allgemeiner Studienordnung (ASO) § 16 haben Studierende ihre Leistungen eigen- ständig zu erbringen. Die Verwertung nicht deklarierter fremder Arbeitsergebnisse (z.B. Plagiate) gilt als unredlich. Unredliche Leistungen werden als nicht bestanden bewertet. Ein Ausschluss des fehlbaren Studenten, der fehlbaren Studentin von der ZHdK ist gemäss ASO § 24 Abs. 2 möglich. (Beschluss der Hochschulleitung 11.05.2011)
Um Plagiate zu vermeiden, muss für jede Textstelle, für jeden Gedanken und jede Idee eines fremden Autors die entsprechende Quelle angegeben werden. Auch indirekt zitierte Text- passagen und Gedanken müssen eine Quellenangabe erhalten. Nur eigene Gedanken und Ideen, sowie allgemein bekannte Tatsachen («Ein Tag hat 24 Stunden») benötigen keine Quellenangabe.