St Martin's Institute of Higher Education
Computing, business with University of London
How a thesis is typically structured
A thesis committee at private institutions is usually reading for a specific shape, even before they get to your actual argument. The roughly twelve parts below are the shape most reviewers expect, each doing one clear job:
- •Title Page — identifies the work, author and program
- •Abstract — summarizes the question, method and findings in miniature
- •Acknowledgements — credits supervisors, funders and support
- •Table of Contents — maps the document for the reader
- •Introduction — frames the problem and states the research question
- •Literature Review — shows what's already known and where the gap is
- •Methodology — explains how the research was actually carried out
- •Results — reports what was found, without interpreting it yet
- •Discussion — explains what the results mean and why it matters
- •Conclusion — answers the original question and notes limitations
- •References — lists every source cited in the text
- •Appendices — holds supporting material that would clutter the main text
Citation and referencing norms
Referencing conventions tend to cluster by region as much as by subject. Commonly used styles in Malta vary by program and faculty, so it's worth confirming early rather than assuming.
That said, region is only a loose signal — plenty of programs deliberately follow international norms for their field regardless of where the university sits, particularly in STEM subjects where a single dominant convention (like IEEE) tends to travel across borders.
General thesis-writing tips
A handful of habits tend to separate a manageable thesis project from a stressful one, regardless of subject or program:
- •Start early — even a rough outline weeks before you have to, beats a blank page the week you don't
- •Keep a running reference list from the first source you read, not a pile to sort out later
- •Write the methodology chapter while the decisions are still fresh, rather than reconstructing them from memory months later
- •Draft results and discussion as separate passes — report what you found first, interpret it second
- •Revise in structural passes before line-level passes — fix what each chapter argues before you polish how it's worded
How we support students at this institution
If you're at St Martin's Institute of Higher Education, the most useful thing you can send us isn't a description of the university — it's your program's own paperwork: the thesis handbook, formatting rules, and anything your supervisor has already flagged. We use that directly, the same way we would for any student at private institutions. We're independent of St Martin's Institute of Higher Education and don't represent institutional knowledge we don't have, but we can absolutely work carefully from the requirements you do have in hand.
What affects thesis complexity at this level
Thesis scope tends to track the kind of program a student is in more than almost anything else. Given the programs typically associated with this institution — Computing, business with University of London — a thesis here plausibly sits somewhere on a spectrum from data- and methodology-heavy (common in technical, engineering or computing programs) to applied and case-study-driven (common in business, management and other professionally oriented fields). Knowing roughly where your own program sits on that spectrum is more useful early on than any generic length or difficulty guideline.
Formatting and submission norms
Formatting requirements — margins, line spacing, font, pagination, and whether a thesis is submitted electronically, in print, or both — vary considerably between institutions, and often between programs at the same institution. There is no single universal standard, even though many programs converge on broadly similar defaults (1-inch margins, double or 1.5 line spacing, a numbered contents page).
This page describes general academic norms, not a specific formatting requirement — your own university's thesis handbook or formatting guide is the authoritative source, and it should always take precedence over anything general written here.
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Last reviewed: 2026-09-01