What is a MAAS Dissertation & Thesis Audit & Review?
A Dissertation & Thesis Audit & Review is a review of finished work you wrote yourself, whole thesis or one or more chapters. An expert in your discipline reads the draft against your rubric, scores it as a trial run chapter by chapter, writes out where each chapter sits against the criteria it will be marked on, then edits the text in Track Changes to strengthen the work, each edit carrying a comment that explains it. Passages that match a source or carry a high AI-detection signal are also revised to bring the similarity and AI scores down before you submit.
This service sets no target grade and carries no results-based refund, because MAAS is reviewing work you authored rather than building it with you. The trial grade is an estimate of how the draft reads today, not a prediction your examiner is bound by.
Why does a finished dissertation still lose marks?
The drafts that reach MAAS EdTech at this stage are usually not badly written. They lose marks in the places a chapter-by-chapter argument is easiest to lose track of.
- The literature review summarises instead of arguing. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (2024) sets out that its descriptor for master's-level qualifications expects a systematic understanding of the field and a critical awareness of its current problems. A literature review that reads as a chapter-by-chapter account of what each source said is not doing that work. Chapters that list sources author by author, rather than grouping them around a question the field still disagrees on, read as descriptive even when the reading behind them was extensive.
- The methodology describes rather than justifies. Explaining what was done is not the same as explaining why that choice fits the research question over the alternatives.
- Chapter feedback arrives after the writing has already moved on. Supervisor comments on an early chapter often land once a later chapter is already drafted. Carless and Boud (2018) call reading feedback and acting on it feedback literacy. In MAAS's experience that skill is hard to practise on comments that arrive after the writing has moved past them.
- Findings and Discussion drift apart from the research questions Chapter One raised. Ghasemi et al. (2019) describe the task of the Discussion section in scientific writing as interpreting what the findings mean, situating them against existing knowledge, and stating what is genuinely new, and a chapter that summarises results a second time without doing that work leaves the reader to draw the conclusions themselves.
- Referencing style drifts across chapters written months apart. A citation format that was consistent in Chapter One can quietly diverge by Chapter Five, and a long document accumulates small inconsistencies that a chapter-by-chapter writing process does not surface on its own.
- The originality report is a number with no explanation. A high percentage can be nothing but cited quotations and a reference list, and a low one can hide an uncited paraphrase carried over from an earlier chapter.
Who is Dissertation & Thesis Audit & Review for?
It suits people with a complete draft or a set of finished chapters, a deadline close but not gone, and no reliable second reader who has read the whole thing.
- Students with a complete dissertation or thesis draft, read against the rubric before submission
- Students with one or more finished chapters, wanting them read before sending to a supervisor or before the whole thesis is assembled
- Writers holding supervisor or examiner comments and unsure what those comments ask for
- Anyone wanting an originality and AI screening explained flag by flag, not reduced to a percentage
- People who want their own argument kept and every change approved by them
This is not for you if the thesis has not been written yet, because an Audit & Review improves the chapters you have already written rather than producing new work from scratch.
Marking still follows the home programme's rubric, including for dissertations on English-taught programmes in Canada, the UK, the US, Australia and Singapore, and on transnational programmes delivered in Vietnam.
What do you get?
Three files and the screening report, plus several hours of your own work to act on them.
Track Changes file and a clean copy
- Every edit visible in Track Changes, so you see how a sentence or a transition between chapters was corrected
- A clean copy for reading, and you decide which changes carry into what you submit
- Spelling, grammar, word choice and punctuation corrected, and unclear passages flagged for you to fix, with the argument left yours
- Referencing inconsistencies flagged across chapters for you to correct, whether APA 7th, Harvard, MLA 9th, Chicago or Vancouver
Review Log
- A table mapping each substantive comment to the marking criterion or chapter it belongs to
- The reason for each change, written out, so the log reads as a study note, not a list of corrections
- The gaps, meaning where a chapter's argument does not yet close what an earlier chapter opened, so you know which ideas to add in your own words
The log exists because a correction you did not make yourself teaches you nothing. Cogie et al. (1999) argue the same for writing-centre practice, placing the value in the student working through the error rather than in a tutor removing it.
Originality and AI screening
- A similarity and AI-detection screening with industry-standard tools, run across the whole document
- Each flag read for what it is, a cited quotation, standard disciplinary phrasing, or a passage needing its source restored
- Passages that match a source or carry a high AI-detection signal re-expressed or re-cited correctly by the expert in Track Changes, to bring the similarity and AI scores down
An AI-detection score is a signal, not proof, and it is least reliable for the writers who use this service most. Liang et al. (2023) ran seven widely used detectors over student writing by non-native English speakers and measured an average false-positive rate of 61.3%, with 97.8% of those texts flagged by at least one tool, while writing by native-speaking US school students was flagged at close to zero. Each flag in your chapters is therefore read against your own drafting history before anything is changed, and the expert revises the passages that genuinely match a source or read mechanically, rather than rewriting whole chapters just to push a number to zero.
Trial grade
- A criterion-level trial grade on the draft as it stands, chapter by chapter, with the reasoning shown
- A short note on what would move each criterion, ranked by how much it is worth
- The grade expressed on the scale your university uses, whether a UK honours band, an Australian High Distinction to Pass scale, or a GPA point
- For research theses that are not graded, such as many doctoral theses, a reading against the examination criteria replaces the trial grade
What does the reviewer actually check?
The reading follows your own rubric, chapter by chapter, because a dissertation is marked as one connected argument rather than as separate pieces.
- Introduction and literature review. Whether the research question is stated clearly enough for the rest of the thesis to answer it, whether the literature review argues toward a gap rather than summarising sources in sequence, and whether the sources are current enough for the field.
- Methodology. Whether the chosen approach is justified against the research question rather than only described, whether validity, reliability and limitations are addressed, and whether ethics approval and sampling decisions are accounted for where they apply.
- Findings and Discussion. Whether the Discussion answers the question Chapter One raised, in the same terms, whether it places the findings against the literature reviewed earlier rather than only restating the results, and whether the conclusions drawn are calibrated to what the evidence actually supports.
- Structure and referencing consistency. Whether each chapter closes what an earlier chapter opened, whether terminology stays consistent from Chapter One to the conclusion, and whether the referencing style, formatting and cross-references hold together across a document written over months.
Does a review before submission actually change anything?
Assessment research converges on a single point: feedback only helps when it names the gap between where a chapter stands and where the criteria say it needs to be, while the writer still has time to close that gap. Sadler (1989) sets out the condition precisely, the writer needs a concept of the standard, a way to compare the chapter against it, and the capacity to act on the comparison. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) turn the same idea into seven principles of good feedback practice, with clarifying what good work looks like listed first among them. Panadero and Jonsson (2013), reviewing rubrics used for formative purposes, found the gains come mainly from transparency and supported self-assessment, meaning from a writer seeing the standard and judging a chapter against it, not from being handed the rubric alone.
This service applies the same idea, naming the gap against the criteria, through an expert reading rather than self-assessment alone. The rubric is read chapter by chapter, the distance is named in the Review Log, and the draft comes back while you can still act on it.
What is the boundary between reviewing and rewriting?
MAAS reviews, comments and edits at the level of expression. It does not write the argument, and it does not add findings.
Universities draw their own lines here, more tightly than most students expect, and the lines differ by university and by level of study, in both directions. The University of Edinburgh (2025) limits a third party to local corrections and to flagging a passage as unclear with an explanation, not to rewriting it, restructuring the chapter's argument or adding content. Swansea's policy states that professional proofreading is not permitted for taught undergraduate and postgraduate work unless approved as a reasonable adjustment, though research degree candidates may use it inside a defined set of rules (Swansea University, n.d.). Loughborough treats changes substantial enough that a thesis is no longer the student's own as contract cheating, whether or not money changed hands (Loughborough University, n.d.). The University of Leeds (n.d.) makes the same point about additions in its academic integrity and assistance policy, since nothing new goes into the draft, and Victoria University of Wellington (2026) puts it plainly: asking someone to proofread or comment on a chapter is acceptable, having it written or deeply edited for you is not.
Read those rules as the reason for the way this service is built, not as a claim that every university would permit it. A review that comments on argument and tightens expression goes further than proofreading, which is exactly why the rules below are fixed and not negotiable per case:
- Every change arrives in Track Changes with a comment, and you approve or reject each one
- Gaps in the argument are named in the Review Log for you to fill in your own words
- No new claims, data, figures or sources are inserted into your draft
- Nothing is translated, and nothing is cut purely to make a word count
- Read your programme or research degree regulations or supervisor agreement first, because what is permitted differs by university and by level of study
Where your university requires it, disclose the support you used. The academic integrity policy sets out how MAAS EdTech works within institutional rules.
How is this different from the other review services?
|
What it answers |
What you get back |
| Academic Integrity Check |
Is anything in this draft an originality or AI problem? |
Similarity and AI reports, each flag explained, an action list, and optional paraphrasing or proofreading |
| Dissertation & Thesis Audit & Review |
How would an examiner score this draft, and what is missing across the chapters? |
A trial grade by criterion, a Review Log, Track Changes edits, plus the screening, as one engagement rather than separate add-ons |
| Thesis Editing & Revision |
This is written, does the language hold up? |
Track Changes language, referencing and formatting edits you approve, no trial grade |
| Assignment Audit & Review |
Same review, for a shorter assignment rather than a dissertation or thesis |
Same three deliverables, sized for a single piece of coursework |
If your draft is not written yet, none of these is what you need. Coaching from a topic and proposal onwards, through data collection and writing, sits in dissertation and thesis support.
Who will actually work with you?
Your reviewer is in your discipline, because a chapter's argument, its methodology and its literature review each depend on standards specific to that field, and a rubric only makes sense to someone who has applied it. MAAS EdTech keeps expert profiles anonymous by policy, so you see the level, the field and the country, and you read the reasoning in the Review Log.
If the expert assigned to your dissertation is not the right fit, you can request a change of expert. See the anonymised expert roster on our experts page, and how engagements have run on our success stories.
Have a dissertation or thesis draft you want read before you submit it? support@maasedtech.com or +84 979 422 393 (WhatsApp).
Not ready to book a call? Send the draft and the rubric on WhatsApp or Messenger for a quote on the review. Your draft stays confidential and is never shared with third parties.
References
Carless, D., & Boud, D. (2018). The development of student feedback literacy: Enabling uptake of feedback. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1315–1325. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1463354
Cogie, J., Strain, K., & Lorinskas, S. (1999). Avoiding the proofreading trap: The value of the error correction process. The Writing Center Journal, 19(2), 7–31.
Ghasemi, A., Bahadoran, Z., Mirmiran, P., Hosseinpanah, F., Shiva, N., & Zadeh-Vakili, A. (2019). The principles of biomedical scientific writing: Discussion. International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism, 17(3), e95415. https://doi.org/10.5812/ijem.95415
Liang, W., Yuksekgonul, M., Mao, Y., Wu, E., & Zou, J. (2023). GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers. Patterns, 4(7), 100779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2023.100779
Loughborough University. (n.d.). Proofreading. Student Handbook. https://www.lboro.ac.uk/students/handbook/assessments/coursework-feedback/proofreading/
Nicol, D. J., & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600572090
Panadero, E., & Jonsson, A. (2013). The use of scoring rubrics for formative assessment purposes revisited: A review. Educational Research Review, 9, 129–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2013.01.002
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. (2024). The frameworks for higher education qualifications of UK degree-awarding bodies (2nd ed.). https://www.qaa.ac.uk/docs/qaa/quality-code/the-frameworks-for-higher-education-qualifications-of-uk-degree-awarding-bodies-2024.pdf
Sadler, D. R. (1989). Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems. Instructional Science, 18(2), 119–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00117714
Swansea University. (n.d.). Proof reading policy. Academic Quality Services. https://hwb.swansea.ac.uk/academic-life/academic-regulations/aqs-policies/proof-reading-policy/
University of Edinburgh. (2025). Proofreading of student assessments [Guidance]. Registry Services. https://registryservices.ed.ac.uk/
University of Leeds. (n.d.). Academic integrity and assistance policy. Secretariat.
Victoria University of Wellington. (2026). Understanding academic misconduct. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/students/study/exams/academic-integrity/understanding-academic-misconduct
