Bachelor Thesis Log 8

September 4th, 2010

Things are happening quickly now, stuff is now going at a crazy pace. It has to, if I want to get everything done by the end of the month… but after the last talks with Axel I'm cautiously optimistic. With a bit of discipline and luck, I'll get there.

I've been thinking about increasing the pace/frequency of these reports as well. This week lends itself to that because of all the new information. I'll keep it like this: every Tuesday evening there will be a report in any case. In between, there may be others, if the flow of news justifies it. We'll see how things develop over the next four weeks.

Revised Outline

Based on your comments and Axel's feedback, I've made another major revision to the outline. Here is the current version:

1. Introduction
2. The teachlet concept
   • Differentiation from similar methods
3. Definition
   • The original definition and its limitations
   • Updated definition
4. Prior teachlet practice
   • Reports from presenters
5. (Planning Game)
6. Summary

The teachlet concept is now a separate chapter and no longer below the introduction. The delimitation has been added. The definition chapter remains the same, followed by the chapter on the implementation of teachlets so far and the reports from the interviews. I have not yet come up with a good title for chapter 5. The chapter is supposed to be about what happens if you completely leave out individual “essential” parts of the new definition (e.g., the design discussion or the executable software) and whether the unit can then still be called a “teachlet.” One such contentious example would be the iPhone teachlet from report 6, in which there was no design discussion in the sense that is usually common and required in a teachlet. Nevertheless, all involved agree that the event adhered to the, for lack of a better term, teachlet spirit and should be counted as a teachlet. From this point of view, the chapter resembles a thought experiment that should further help to narrow down the teachlet concept and make it imaginable.

In addition, I have tried to address the following criticisms in this second outline:

• The lack of differentiation from similar methods has been explicitly addressed.
• The current status and practice are dealt with before the future visions and not the other way around. The chapter on definition is an exception to this, as it seems sensible to me to directly follow the new definition with the old one and not to intersperse the rest of the main body of the work.
• The chapter headings are no longer formulated as questions. Hopefully, this is more in line with common conventions.

Of course, the outline is still not set in stone. Probably a lot will happen to it until the end of the work.

Interviews

Three interview appointments have been fixed:

• Tue, Sep 07, 2 PM, Axel Schmolitzky
• Tue, Sep 07, 4 PM, Carola Lilienthal
• Mon, Sep 13, 11 AM, Christian Späh

Apart from that, I have a short written feedback on the topic from Kai Meyer. I am curious to see how the interviews go and what will emerge from them. By the way, I decided against further empirical means (questionnaires etc.), because I hope to be able to clarify everything important through the interview part and in my opinion the effort is not worth it for me.

For the recording I will then directly use my laptop (thanks for the offer anyway, vollkorn!).

Future

If I'm quick, you might be able to read some results from the interviews on Tuesday evening. At the very least, there will be a short report from me on how they went. Furthermore, my goal is to write at least chapter 3 over the weekend and Monday, since the introduction and the chapter on the teachlet concept (still without delimitation) already exist and are waiting for feedback from Axel.

By the way, the date for the colloquium lecture will probably be Oct 4, but no guarantees yet. If you want to hear about the results, you might want to keep the afternoon of October 4 free. There will be a real invitation as soon as the date is fixed and I have the confirmation that it does not violate any Master's enrollment deadlines or something…