To Inspire and Enhance Research Interests with Reading Assignments before Dissertation Topic Selection: An Empirical Study of Master Students

Dissertation plays an important role in postgraduate students' schoolwork, which makes it a mandatory topic in software engineering education. However, the diversity of research concerns and the wide range of dissertation topics bring great challenges for students to determine their dissertation topic, especially when students have diverse culture and education background. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the research process and explore a more generic education pattern for dissertation topic selection. An empirical study involved 88 students was conducted to stimulate students' research interest and explore students' interest distribution, which could guide teachers to better prepare dissertation topics. In this study, we found that (1) before selecting dissertation topics, lots of research paper reading is recommended; (2) to better help students select their interested dissertation topics, professor should expand the scope of topics and increase the number of topics students interested in; (3) paying attention to differences between students and balancing the difficulty of topics are fundamental and necessary. The results indicate the key factors towards a generic education pattern of dissertation topic selection and help to better course planning.