Seamless Writing: Expanding Technologies to Support Thesis Writing
At a glance
- Project leader : Dr. Christian Rapp
- Co-project leader : Prof. Dr. Otto Kruse
- Deputy of project leader : Prof. Dr. Cerstin Mahlow
- Project team : Curtis Gautschi, Jakob Ott
- Project budget : EUR 316'348
- Project status : completed
- Funding partner : EU and other international programmes (Interreg Alpenrhein-Bodensee-Hochrhein / Projekt Nr. ABH064)
- Project partner : Universtität Liechtenstein, Universität Konstanz, Universität St. Gallen, Prognosix AG
- Contact person : Christian Rapp
Description
Processing final papers (theses) is a big challenge for universities. Depending on student numbers, educational establishments have to supervise hundreds, if not thousands, of papers each year. Students on short Bachelor's study programs often have insufficient personal resources for the autonomous writing of scientific papers. Many only discover what scientific writing entails while working on their Bachelor’s thesis. Seamless learning provides solutions that are cross-context, scalable, and flexible. This research project is developing "Thesis Writer" - an online platform with a seamless learning perspective. It transforms the traditional, teacher-intensive tutorials for writing final papers into a digital aid that can reach a large number of students through an integrated, web-based platform. Academic supervisors are relieved of delivering routine instructions and can respond to the substantive, methodological, and subject-based questions of the students in a more targeted manner. The use of Thesis Writer at various universities should provide feedback about its acceptance, usability, integrability in study procedures, and any shortcomings. Based on the recorded interactions of Thesis Writer, the project team also hopes to gain new insights for scientific writing research and to close research gaps in interactive instruction systems. A comparable tool in German-speaking countries is not yet available.