ETD Lesson Plan

General

Students will:

• Be able to use all the necessary tools in Word and Acrobat to format their thesis or dissertation

Specific

Students will:

• In Word
  • Be able apply/modify paragraph styles in Microsoft Word
  • Be able to automatically generate a Table of Contents
  • Be able to add page numbers and section/page breaks to the documents
  • Be able to edit a document’s header and footer
  • Export a Word Document to PDF
• In Acrobat
  • Be able to embed fonts manually
  • Be able to edit PDF text
• Understand how to submit their Electronic Thesis or Dissertation

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Outline

Introduction

• Welcome, names, introductions (keep it short, there is only one class so no need to spend too much time here)
• Class files
  • They can download our practice ETD at files.learnsoftware.org/etd or they can use their own. If they use their own, tell them to save a copy in case things go wrong.
• Explain purpose of this class
  • We will be using Microsoft Word. If anyone has been asked to format their ETD using a different program, this class will likely not benefit you.
  • Highly encourage students to format their ETDs on PC computers, not Macs
  • Explain that each student’s department has final say in the nuts and bolts of how things are formatted. If they ever have any questions on formatting specifics, they should check with their department. We’re showing everyone how to format, not exactly how it should be formatted. That may vary.
    • That being said, most students will be fine if they follow along with us, especially if their department follows MLA formatting

 Lesson

• Set up
  • Turn on spacing marks
  • Expand styles pane (first 40 seconds of this video)
  • Turn on navigation pane
• Styles
  • Applying Styles
  • Modifying Styles (right click and choose “Update to Match Selection”)
  • The difference between Heading 1s, 2s, and 3s
    • Using a style separator for Heading 3s
• Section Breaks
  • Adding a section break
    • The difference between “next page” and “continuous” section breaks
  • There should be two section breaks: one before the Table of Contents and one before the Introduction
• Headers/Footers
  • Access this by double-clicking inside top or bottom of page
• Page Numbers
  • We’re going to automatically generate page numbers. Once that’s done, they can’t be edited manually. Hence the two section breaks for three different sections.
  • Preliminary pages (before the TOC) should have no page numbers. The TOC and List of Tables should have lowercase roman numerals starting at the right page (it’s “iv” in the practice file). Then the regular arabic numerals should start at 1 with the introduction.
  • When adding page numbers in Section 2 and 3, make sure Link to Previous is off. Otherwise you will run into problems.
  • Even though no page numbers show up in Section 1, the page number should still be formatted as lowercase roman numerals so they show up correctly in the TOC.
• Tables of Contents
  • References>Table of Contents>Automatic Table 1 usually works fine
  • Get rid of the blue “Contents” title by deleting it and its blue space symbol, then “update entire table”
  • Fix indenting for Heading 3s
  • Make sure the entire table is double spaced and 12 Times New Roman font
  • Manually fix the title so it says “TITLE” and not the entire actual title
• List of Tables & Figures
  • Very similar to generating a TOC, just a couple of extra steps
  • First, apply a unique style to each table name (either create a new style or use one that is not being used for anything else)
    • Then: References>Insert Table of Figures>Options>Build table of figures from: select the style you’ve created>OK>OK
    • Note: there is a way to generate a List of Tables or Tables of Figures using “captions,” but this is not recommended as the captions style tends to be harder to work with.
• Exporting to PDF
  • Embedding fonts
    • In Acrobat, search for “Preflight” in the Tools search bar, then click on the wrench in the middle of the dialogue box, then search for “embed fonts,” select “fix” and then save the document again.
  • Preferences
  • Bookmarks
• Acrobat Properties
• Uploading and Submitting ETD
  • Uploading a new PDF

*Note: ETDs have strict requirements that vary from college to college. Let students know that they should check with their department to get a style guide

Possible Questions for Understanding

• Before Lesson Starts
  • See where everyone’s knowledge level is at
    • How many of you have used and/or feel comfortable using styles in Word?
    • How many of you have used section breaks?
    • How many of you have used Adobe Acrobat for producing PDF’s?
• Word
  • Why do we use section breaks?
  • How do we modify Styles?
  • How can we look at the formatting on the page?
  • What tab has the options for automatically generating a table of contents/figures/tables?
  • How do headers/foots interact with sections?
• Acrobat
  • What are the different ways to convert a Word document to PDF?
  • How can we rename a bookmark?
  • How can we nest bookmarks?
  • How do we make different headers/footers for odd/even pages?