Bachelor Thesis Log 7

August 31st, 2010

It's Tuesday evening again and I'm reporting back with the current status. For those who may have missed it: last Saturday there was a special out of rhythm organizational report. Unfortunately there is nothing new about the interviews yet, instead I would like to present you my draft of an outline today.

Outline

As is well known, there are some conventions for the structure of a scientific paper. For example, usually (after an introduction) a theory is established, then experiments are described and evaluated, and finally the theory is refuted or substantiated. In more conceptual work – like mine – there tends to be a definition at the beginning, which is then explored in detail and, if possible, put to some kind of test.

With this in mind, here is a suggested outline for my work. The titles and wordings are not final and will only partially correspond to the chapter headings, but I hope you can see what should appear in which order:

• Introduction
  • The teachlet concept
• Definition
  • Definition according to [Schmolitzky2005] and its limitations
  • Updated definition
• What forms can teachlets take?
  • Examples for unusual teachlets
• How have teachlets been run so far?
  • Reports from teachlet moderators
• What are promising new ideas?
• What makes a good teachlet?
• Summary

In light of current developments (but also otherwise), I should start putting continuous text to paper, i.e. to keyboard. They say you write the introduction first, then you write the rest of the paper, and then you rewrite the introduction again. With that in mind, I think I'll start with the introduction and the chapter on the definition (which as you know has already been revised).

As always, I would love to hear feedback on the outline. If you see weak points or if you think something would be better if solved differently, please let me know.

Participation

I would also be interested in hearing from you: to what extent would you like to follow these text segments in their development? I imagine the formulation of such an introduction to be rather boring to watch. Is there any interest in reading preliminary versions of the chapters here? If so, who among you would give me feedback on them? Or is this rather something I should skip? I am interested in your opinion.

By the way, I don't log IPs and don't have visitor statistics. However, I've been approached by so many of you in the meantime (“Hey, you're the guy with the blog and the bachelor thesis!”) that I know you're there. Axel, my supervisor, is observing my experiment with involving public with a pinch of healthy skepticism. So if you want to motivate me to keep on trying with these reports, feel free to write a short comment. Not every one of them has to bring me further in terms of content, I would also be happy about a “Hey, I read along every week and think it's totally cool.” So whoever has not yet left one: the comment field doesn't bite, it all works without accounts or registering or email addresses or other crap like that. Recently there is even a little formatting guide under the comment field, but that's just as an aside. So: please keep the comments coming!

Future

By next Tuesday, I'll have something sorted out about the interviews. Either there will be a few appointments, or the thing falls flat. But since I just preemptively canceled everything else for the next month, I'm actually in good spirits. I just need to reach out to people.

My plan doesn't include any data collection other than the interviews. That means the rest is creative writing. So until next week, I'll be throwing myself into LaTeX and typing my fingers to the bone. See you then!