Purdue Graduate School improves its thesis writing process with Overleaf
Time spent on formatting and reviewing was dramatically reduced after Overleaf was adopted by the leading American public research university.
We provide students with customized Overleaf thesis and dissertation templates—it provides a quick and easy way for students to write in the correct format which saves our department huge amounts of time. Overleaf submissions come in beautifully formatted and ready to go!
—Mark D. Jaeger, Manager, Thesis / Dissertation, Purdue University
At a glance
Purdue University, in Indiana, US, needed a tool that would streamline the thesis writing and submission process. Graduate students intimidated by using LaTeX were choosing to write in Word. As a result, faculty was spending ‘a huge amount of time’ cleaning up submissions that had been formatted incorrectly. The graduate school wanted to overcome LaTeX accessibility issues and simplify the writing process for everyone.
The solutionAs an intuitive, easy-to-use authoring platform, Overleaf was able to solve the issues Purdue faced. Students now simply open a template on the website and start to write in either LaTeX Code Editor or Visual Editor — which offers a word-processor style environment for students unfamiliar with LaTeX. The platform automatically composes the document as they write, and it can then be downloaded as either a zip file or PDF. Where students use Overleaf to write their theses, workload and review times are significantly reduced — from five or more staff and student meetings per thesis to as few as two.
ProductOverleaf Commons
Addressing formatting challenges
Purdue University, in Indiana, US, is a world-renowned public research university that advances discoveries in science, technology, engineering, and math. Around 12,000 students are enrolled at its graduate school, with an average of 1,400 theses submitted each year.
All theses must follow specific formatting requirements to be accepted for submission, so the school provides LaTeX templates that automatically format documents and minimize the need for manual formatting.
However, students intimidated by the programming language and the challenges of installing the software were choosing not to use the templates. Instead, they wrote in Word, which requires users to compose and format documents manually. This was rarely done correctly, meaning the faculty was spending a huge amount of time working with students on reformatting and cleaning up their documents.
How Overleaf helped
The school decided to try Overleaf to discover how it could streamline the process. Overleaf provided Purdue with a custom institutional web portal that gave students and faculty a URL through which they could easily enroll for the service and access multiple templates, including those for theses.
Students were able to write in either LaTeX Code Editor or Visual Editor, which offers a word-processor style environment often preferred by users unfamiliar with LaTeX. The platform automatically formats the document, and it can then be downloaded as either a zip file or PDF.
“I looked at several different LaTeX authoring tools and Overleaf was by far the best,” explains Andy Hughes, manager of web and multimedia services, within the electrical engineering department. “It was easy to use, very intuitive, with nothing to install—just open and write. And the ability to have our template loaded onto their site and ready for students to use made it a perfect fit.”
It was easy to use, very intuitive, with nothing to install—just open and write. And the ability to have our template loaded and ready for students to use made it a perfect fit.
—Andy Hughes, Manager of Web and Multimedia Services, Electrical Engineering Department, Purdue University
Impressive results
The school considered the trial to have been a great success. In cases where students used Overleaf to write their theses, workload and review times were significantly reduced—from five or more staff and student meetings per thesis to as few as two. Submissions come in correctly formatted and ready to go, which allows staff to work with students on content rather than formatting.
The feedback from students and faculty has been overwhelmingly positive. Many have praised Overleaf’s ease of use and accessibility and voiced appreciation for a tool that is not only useful for writing theses but for a myriad of other authoring and class projects as well.
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