What is a bachelor's thesis?

• A topic from your internship that you work on, for example the company had a horrible database or XML structure, and you sort it out on your own to show them how it could look.
• A topic from your project that you continue, for example I have someone taking the e-learning unit we produced and making it accessable for blind users.
• A new topic that you agree on with an IMI professor.

The following topics, more or less diffuse, are on my current wishlist (and are possible for IC or as the basis for a Master's Thesis area):

• Animating BlueJ
  BlueJ is a fantastic environment for teaching object oriented programming. I would like to continue to use it for algorithms and data structures, but how can I visualize the more complicated data structures? How can the animation of algorithms be included into BlueJ? I would like for someone to look into this.
• Searching Project Gutenberg
  I just looked for something in the Project Gutenberg, and found the navigation and search capabilities sorely lacking. There needs to be much better ways of finding specific material, and there needs to be a tagging system made for it. The results of this thesis should be donated to Project Gutenberg.
• Usability Analysis - HTW Website Mobil
  The HTW web site was re-engineered after a double thesis done on the usability of the old system. But the redesign was done before mobile devices became really popular. So how is it? Does it work for mobile users? I just tried it and had them fix a glaring flaw (the search box needs to be marked as the place for the next input). Contact: Dr. Adina Herde, HTW Berlin, Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit | Webredaktion
• Workflow Engineering
  We have many, many complicated workflows at the HTW Berlin that are screaming for an IT basis. There are some Workflow Engineering systems out there. For your thesis you choose a workflow, document the current state, optimize the workflow and implement it with a workflow engineering system, preferably an open source one.
• Steganographic Scanning
  Westfeld und Pfitzmann (TU Dresden) have an interesting method of stegoanalysis. I'd like someone to rund build a system and run some trials: suck pictures from Google, scan for stegographic content, and see if you can come up with anything.
• iCal for LSF
  LSF produces nice calendars, but they can only be read within LSF. Many calendars can read public iCal files, so why can't we have an iCal for LSF? Can you set up a web service that scrapes calendar information off the LSF HTML pages and produces and sends an iCAL file? You need to make this work for a person, for a course (for a selection of courses?) or for a complete semester.
  
• Nibbler
  Check out the Nibbler site - We need all sorts of stuff here. For example, a way to import and convert OGG files. Anything else missing? Fine, we need it!
• Sudoko for the Blind
  (in cooperation with the University of Potsdam) Die Blista-Brailletec vetreibt ein Sudokuspiel für Blinde. Dieses beliebte Knobelspiel gilt es auf einer Stiftplatte, einem zweidimensionalen Brailleschirm, umzusetzen, um neben ernsthaften Anwendungen eine zeitweilige Unterhaltung anzubieten. Je nach Art und Umfang der studentischen Arbeit können folgende Themenbereiche bearbeitet werden:
  • Konzeption als multimodales Spiel
  • Benutzervorstudie (Test des Konzepts/Prototyps)
  • Implementierung (mit C# nach internen Programmierrichtlinien)
  • Evaluierung durch Abschlusstest
  Die Implementierung erfordert Kenntnisse in ob jekt-orientierter Programmierung, die Konzeption und Benutzertests verlangen Grundkenntnisse der benutzerzentrierten Entwicklung. Ich erwarte außerdem Neugierde und Aufgeschlossenheit für den Themenkomplex Software für Blinde sowie eine gewisse Portion Kreativität.
  Der Student wird von Dipl.-Inform. (FH) Maria Krüger bei der Einarbeitung in die Themenbereiche unterstützt, erhält Literaturempfehlungen und Kontakte zu blinden Probanden. Außerdem werden wöchentliche oder zwei-wöchentliche Treffen abgehalten, um Fortschritt und Vorgehen zu besprechen.(Das Projekt kann auch als Gruppenarbeit durchgeführt werden.)
• Wikipedia-Version-Tool
  I need a tool that will display for me what the Wikipedia entry (and all links I follow) was on a particular date at a particular time, a sort of Way-Back machine for the Wikipedia. This will help me so that when people say "The Wikipedia said thus and such on day X" I can check it out. You will use the history data which is available to determine what the page actually displayed on that day. When I follow links with your tool I will see what the page linked to.
  
• Moodle Book
  Moodle Book is quite a good authoring system, but there are problems. Some have been determined in a thesis done last semester, others are my personal pet peeves. So I want you to upgrade the Moodle Book module to make it more useful for real-life E-Learning! For example, all subchapters remain collapsed until the chapter opens, not all subchapters open at the same time. This will involve using PHP and CSS.
• Games on the XO
  I have an XO called Froggy. Can you make number games that don't require reading for the XO? Maybe you can port some Lingo games we have! Anything else a child in a developing country might need? Flash is not an option.
• Anything on the Fedora-XO wish list: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/WishList#OLPC_Wishlist
  
• Communication for the Blind
  I am willing to advise people who want to work with Prof. Jürgensen (Lehrstuhl für Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation an der Universität Potsdam (http://www.ift.cs.uni-potsdam.de/iuk/index.html). He is interested in the following topics, which can be adapted as needed:
  • Bedienelemente (Buttons, Menüs) für Blinde
  • Analyse der Umsetzungsmöglichkeiten von Teilen von WORD für Blinde
  • Graphische Komponenten in WORD und Explorer
  • Übersetzung von WORD-Dateien in eine höhere Sprache Analyse von Explorerkomponenten im Hinblick auf ihre Umgestaltung für Blinde
  • Experimente mit virtueller haptischer Realität
  • Verteilung von akustischer und haptischer Kommunikation bei WORD
  • Verteilung von akustischer und haptischer Kommunikation bei Explorer
• Career Services E-Learning
  The HTW has a Career Services Center that is currently producing a number of podcasts and videocasts and has a lot of material about how to get a job. For example, in one videocast a personell manager talks about what he is looking for in an employee. Then people who interviewed with him talk about their experience during the interview. How can all of this material be structured into an E-Learning course? What material should be done individually? How can this be integrated with the Alumni-Portal of the HTW?
  
• SCORM Test
  This is the standard for import and export of E-Learning materials. Except that it doesn't work. Everyone can import the SCORM that *they* export, but not necessarily the work of others. In this thesis I want the author to take a number of different kinds of E-Learning materials, export them from CLIX, Blackboard, Moodle, etc. and import them in other systems. I want a module for Moodle to be set up that can cope with all of the different SCORM problems.
• Anonymous computing
  I am very interested in the "Free Haven Project". The project leader, Roger Dingledine, explains: "The Free Haven Project aims to deploy a system for distributed, anonymous, persistent data storage which is robust against attempts by powerful adversaries to find and destroy any stored data. This model of decentralized system has been classified as peer-to-peer by recent popular media." He has a number of projects that are suitable for diploma theses, and I am interested in participating in this project. Well, the project ended up turning into "TOR", so you missed out on that. But he still has topics! And I would like to see if we can run a Tor server here. What are the problems? Is this legal? What are the technical obstacles?
  

Real old stuff

• Wikipedia User Survey
  The Wikimedia Research Network wants to conduct a user survey. I would like a thesis to conduct a pilot survey, constructing the survey software which will have to be easily localizable in many languages. The Wikimedia Research Network Privacy Policy must be respected during this work.
• Diff for InDesign
  In Wikis or in programming it is trivial to find the difference between two texts and report on the difference. It is also easy to record the history of edits and set up "reverts". InDesign also has a history, but I am not aware of a possibility to analyze the difference between two projects, save snapshots of the history, and revert changes back to a checkpoint. I would like for someone to investigate making a diff for InDesign (or Photoshop).
• Wikipedia
  There are any number of enhancements possible for Wikipedia, perhaps working through a taging mechanism for articles. You must be willing to have your results subject to Gnu Public Licence.
• Wiki RSS-Reader
  One can set a watchlist for single pages in the Wikipedia, and other Wikis offer a "last changes" RSS feed. But I have to visit all of these Wikis in order to see if anything I am interested in has changed. I would like to have a tool, similar to Awasu, that sucks in the RSS feeds, lets me know what is new, and if I click on a link, puts me in direct contact with that particular Wiki. I want this tool to work with many different kind of Wikis, and to cope with all sorts of RSS descriptions.
• Wikis for Teaching
  Wikis seem to me to be an ideal basis for constructing a learning management system. Can a synchronous service such as Chat systems in the Flash Communication Server be integrated into a Wiki-Collaboration and Annotation system? What does a Wiki for teaching really need?
• What else interests me? E-Learning, Web 2.0, social computing, gender questions, e-voting

I only take about 6 students as thesis students, as I want to have the time to advise you properly. Please ask as soon as possible, if you are interested in any of the topics. I will also sign for 3-4 external projects, but cannot offer to advise you. I will now stop taking reservations, it is first come, first served. I find it irritating when people "reserve" a position, and then give it up at the last minute. I pay for this by having to teach an extra class every few semesters to fill up the negative teaching hours I get assigned if I do not take enough students.

Students who do their thesis with me should expect to come to my office every week with results from the previous week. We will spend time in a group on questions, and my terrible red pen will mark up what you bring with you for me to read. It is hard work, but tends to bring results, i.e. a finished thesis inside of the deadline.

I have some links about topics having to do with writing a thesis.

Last change: 2010-08-10 11:03