Educational subjects and the quality of final theses

The issue of quality of final theses defended at universities seen in the light of recent plagiarism cases still seems to be urgent. The study examines the faculty documents (standards) that are closely linked (by topic or content) to the final theses. The research sample comprises the faculty documents, and documents of the departments that educate prospective teachers. The point of departure for the study is the description of the present context transformation, especially the transformation into a two level study at universities, increased number of students in the tertiary study programmes in the past ten years, and emphasis placed on the quality and learning outcomes as seen from the point of view of student oriented approach as described in the national Q-RAM project. In the study, 24 documents were analysed through structural content analysis using formal, content, typological and scale analysis. This allowed us to understand the structure of the documents and thus to describe their main features. The results illustrate the prevailing procedure orientation of the documents, which corresponds with the lack of clear content focus and lack of definition of the subject-specific standards that would, in a simple and clear manner, introduce the students to what their institution expects of them. The study concludes that the addressed issue will allow the subject guarantees to define the relationship between the competences of the graduates, learning outcomes of the particular subjects and the need to articulate meaningful standard of the final work in the defined subject or field.