Bachelor Thesis Log 23

December 6th, 2010

Welcome to the twenty-third and last (!) report on my bachelor thesis on teachlets. A period of my life is coming to an end… Today is the big day: the day of submission, the day of publication. With this in mind, I am delighted to present to you without further ado:

The Teachlet Concept: Possibilities and Limits of a Teaching Pattern for Software Design Discussions (INFDok)

In the last few reports I've already talked quite a bit about the last steps before publishing, so today there will be info about the submission and publication itself, followed by a conclusion about these reports.

How a Bachelor Thesis Finds Its Way to the Student Office

In the end, the actual submission of the thesis was incredibly unspectacular. I left another event early today to be there at the opening time of the study office (1 pm), where I met Mrs. Wilsdorf, who took my three bound and signed copies plus CD-ROM. (Because it's St. Nicholas today, I stuck a little chocolate Santa Claus on each paper, she thought that was quite funny. Thanks to Janina for this amusing idea.) After about 15 seconds, that was it – no fanfare, no confetti… Well, now I've got that whole business behind me and I can just wait for my supervisors' reports. I hope that I can already get my bachelor's certificate at the graduation ceremony in January – as far as I know, there are two such ceremonies per year, so this one would be the exact opposite of the “big one” in summer.

Publication of a Student Thesis

The pros and cons of publishing a bachelor thesis have already been discussed here several times. Especially the publication of preliminary versions is somewhat contentious, but enough has already been written about this in connection with the topic of feedback. Today, I am concerned with the publication of the finished version, as has just happened in my case. Because in my eyes there is pretty much nothing speaking against it.

I can think of two cases where I could understand someone not wanting to publish their thesis. One is a thesis with an outside company that objects to publishing it beyond what is necessary for confidentiality reasons. (Whether you want to get involved as a student is another question, but if it comes to that, then of course you have to be consistent.) The other is a bare-effort thesis written merely to claim a passing grade and with which the writer never wants to be associated again. I know such situations, in which I give only the minimum effort for a study achievement, because I don't care for or about the learning goal, that can happen. But for a bachelor thesis it should be the absolute exception, right?

On the other hand, there are many reasons to do one's own scientific work in the open from the beginning, of which I would like to list just a few:

• People are interested in it. It's really true. I've been putting all my stuff on my website for a little over half a year now, and I keep getting feedback and inquiries about it – mostly from fellow students, sure, but also from people in other parts of Germany and other countries around the world (!). People come to my website via search engines because they are looking for something I once gave a lecture about and put the slides online here. That makes me a little bit proud. A few weeks ago I got an email from a recruiter who had seen “many interesting approaches” in my seminar paper and asked me if he could interest me in a job as a software developer in Hamburg. Many students believe that nobody is interested in what they do – as if only after graduation some switch is flipped and then you can do “real” science. This is not the case, people, your results are valuable!
• In the age of the internet, the cost of publishing a text is very, very close to zero. If you don't have your own website, you can always rely on external support, e.g. on INFDok if you're in computer science in Hamburg (see below). In the past and until today, science has lost a lot of time and resources by discovering and researching things multiple times, because people were simply lazy about publishing. Why?
• Despite tuition fees, the lion's share of my studies is still paid for by the public sector, i.e. the taxpayer. This is done in the hope that I will later do something for Germany as a business location with my professional education, of course. But anyone who knows me knows that I don't like being in debt. That's why I think it makes sense to give what I'm achieving through my studies back to the public right now. My bachelor thesis is a tangible result of “scientific relevance” that anyone can use for further science based on it. That's how the whole process should work.

Because I believe in a freely accessible word of science, I publish my bachelor thesis under CC-BY-SA. I will dedicate a separate blog entry to the topic “What licenses are there and what should I use them for?” For now I'll note: this license allows every reader to redistribute the document and to create works based on it, as long as I am credited and the results are again available under such a free license (“copyleft”).

INFDok

The Computer Science Library operates a full-text server for scientific papers written at our department. Students can also publish their work there (but only if a professor or a research assistant confirms the scientific relevance of the work). This is quite unproblematic and I directly made use of it. I quote the advantages of this service from the library website:

• Immediate worldwide availability of the publication without delay due to production, printing or distribution
• Long-term archiving with a permanently stable and citable Internet address
• Free publication option for the author
• Full text search over the entire publication
• Formal and content indexing via the Computer Science Library
• Bibliographic reference in the library's online catalog and in national library directories
• For authors, INFDok offers the chance to build up a central electronic full-text archive of their publications.
• Alert service via RSS feed about the latest publications
• Interfaces to Open Access search engines
• Access statistics

The whole thing is completely free and is maintained by the Computer Science Library, which is known for its accommodating service anyway. I personally think the idea of an Open Access catalog is great – and hey, I'm not alone, see the Open Access Award 2010. I can only strongly promote the project and encourage you to make your work available there. I'm sure the library staff will be happy to advise you on this! In this context, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Ms. Obernesser, who agreed to publish the paper today in sync with my own and was always helpful during the process.

A Bit More Meta

With today's submission and publication of the thesis, the weekly progress reports also come to an end. I must say that I had a lot of fun documenting the development! At the beginning there was some naysaying, whether it would be worth it and whether anyone would be interested in reading. I can only say that I would have been happy if someone else had already written down how bachelor theses can be done. The last fb18 thread on the topic showed again that there is a need.

In addition, the reports really helped me stay motivated again and again, especially during the difficult phases. Fortunately, I was able to avoid the unpleasant situation of being idle for a long time and then being pressed for time at the end. In addition, it helped me a lot to reflect on everything several times. I used the reports to think about things beforehand and to reflect on them afterwards and improve them even further. I am quite sure that this has had a positive effect on the overall quality of the thesis. Last but not least, I also got some feedback from you, my readers, which also helped me a lot. Overall, I have never found writing these reports to be a burden, as I have mostly written everything that has come to mind in the form of a simple stream of consciousness. I don't even type particularly fast, but I rarely put in more than half an hour to an hour a week.

It's always nice when a small amount of work yields a lot, so emulation is strongly encouraged. I'm curious to see how your final projects go. I don't want anyone to think that my way is the only right way. Who will follow my example?

Into the Future

The studies go on and the next thesis will come in time. Until then, my blog will be filled again at irregular intervals with content on topics that interest me. Keep an eye on this URL (or this) or subscribe to my feed so you don't miss anything. If you're interested in its topic, feel free to read and redistribute my bachelor thesis. Thanks a lot for your loyalty! See you around!

– Julian