Amanda Visconti (MITH) has written a post about how to “chart progress and record effort through the non-traditional dissertation.” She notes,
Having a unique format scrubs a lot of the traditional methods for evaluating these factors: maybe thereâs no âchapterâ to turn in, or youâve undertaken a critical building project in a programming language your committee canât read (and even if your committee could read through the entire body of code you author, you wouldnât want them to need toâjust as with a monograph project, you want to be respectful of mentorsâ time by asking for feedback at specific milestones and with some kind of concise artifact to assess).
Visconti suggests leveraging tools like GitHub to evaluate writing and code tracking, Basecamp to chart project progress, and Google Apps to manage communication and accountability between student and advisor.
