by Julia Kassin -

Kritische Bewertung einer Masterarbeit

Für die Lehrveranstaltung »ProSeminar Master’s Thesis« habe ich mich mit der Masterarbeit »WerkZeug. Entwicklung und Innovation handwerklichen Schaffens und die veränderte gestalterische Rolle des Printmediums.« auseinandergesetzt und diese analysiert. Zunächst alle wichtigen Angaben zur Arbeit:

Titel: Werk/Zeug. Entwicklung und Innovation handwerklichen Schaffens und die veränderte gestalterische Rolle des Printmediums.
Autor: Michael Polli
Universität: Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung Linz
Studiengang: Visuelle Kommunikation
Erscheinungsjahr: 2014

GESTALTUNGSHÖHE

Die Gestaltungshöhe der Arbeit ist als hoch einzuordnen. Im Rahmen der Arbeit wurde das Werk “Gutenbergs Schwarze Chronik” neu gestaltet und mittels digitaler und analoger Hilfsmittel reproduziert. Auch der Theorieteil ist ansprechend gestaltet und es ist erkennbar, dass die Arbeit an einem Studiengang für Gestaltung entstanden ist.

Abb. 1: Werkstück »Gutenbergs Schwarze Chronik« aufgeschlagen.

Innovationsgrad

»Papier ist tot« – so leitet die erste Zeile die Arbeit ein. Auf etwa 30 Seiten Theorie wird dann auf ein schon zahlreich behandeltes Thema eingegangen: Lösen digitale Medien die Printkultur ab? Dabei wird aber von Anfang an eher darauf hingearbeitet, eine möglichen Co-Existenz in der Zukunft zu skizzieren. Besonderer Fokus liegt dabei auf der Reproduktion und dem Medium Buch. Das Thema ist nicht neu, die Herangehensweise, weg von einer rein theoretischen Arbeit, bietet aber dennoch spannende Aspekte.

Selbstständigkeit

Die Arbeit liest sich so, als hätte der Verfasser sehr selbstständig daran gearbeitet und gewusst, wen er um Hilfe fragen musste, wenn er welche benötigte. Die Methoden zur Gestaltung und Produktion des Werkstücks wurden ihm Rahmen der Masterarbeit erlernt und erarbeitet. Einige wichtige Kontakte haben gewiss eine Rolle gespielt, damit die Umsetzung in dieser Form überhaupt möglich war. Der Kontakt zur Familie Stöber und der dadurch ermöglichte Zugang zu den originalen Druckklischees von Otto Stöber waren gewiss wegweisend.

Gliederung und Struktur

Die Gliederung ist etwas unübersichtlich und einzelne Punkte im Inhaltsverzeichnis finden sich im Text später augenscheinlich nicht wieder. Im Inhaltsverzeichnis gibt es keine Seitenangaben, was eine Navigation durch die Arbeit erheblich erschwert. Ein Kapitel steht gänzlich ohne Unterüberschriften da. Ich hatte nur Zugang zur digitalen Version der Arbeit, es wäre also möglich, dass die Gliederung in gedruckter Form strukturierter ist.

Kommunikationsgrad

Das sprachliche Niveau der Arbeit ist sehr gut. Die Sätze sind, wie bei wissenschaftlichen Publikationen im deutschsprachigen Raum häufig, relativ lang und verschachtelt. An manchen Stellen könnte sie daher, meines Erachtens nach, einfacher gehalten sein. Der Verfasser scheint aber über einen großen Wortschaft zu verfügen, dadurch ist die Arbeit interessant zu lesen.

Umfang der Arbeit

Der theoretische Teil der Arbeit ist nicht besonders umfangreich , bietet eine Einleitung in den geschichtlichen Hintergrund des Buchdrucks und führt eher an das Werkstück heran. Umso aufwendiger scheint allerdings die Umsetzung des Werkstücks gewesen zu sein, demnach halte ich den Umfang der Arbeit insgesamt für angemessen.

Literatur

Das Literaturverzeichnis gibt guten Aufschluss über den Theoriebezug der Arbeit. Die Quellen sind eher älter, vor allem jene zum Druck-Handwerk sind zu einem großen Teil aus dem 20. Jahrhundert oder den frühen 2000er-Jahren. Eine einzige Quelle stammt aus dem Jahr 2012 und ist damit zwei Jahre vor der Masterarbeit erschienen. Daher stellt sich die Frage, inwiefern der Aktualitätsbezug der Arbeit belegbar ist.

Literaturverzeichnis

Polli, Michael: Werk/Zeug. Entwicklung und Innovation handwerklichen Schaffens und die veränderte gestalterische Rolle des Printmediums. Ungedru. MA.-Arb. Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung Linz. Linz 2014.

Abbildungsverzeichnis

Abb. 1: Werkstück »Gutenbergs Schwarze Chronik« aufgeschlagen. Aus: Polli, Michael: Werk/Zeug. Entwicklung und Innovation handwerklichen Schaffens und die veränderte gestalterische Rolle des Printmediums. Ungedru. MA.-Arb. Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung Linz. Linz 2014.

by Marlene Dirnberger -

#8 – Critical Evaluation of a Master’s Thesis

Evaluate critically a master’s thesis/diploma thesis from your own research area submitted to a foreign or Austrian university/university of applied sciences (no thesis written at FH JOANNEUM).

Chosen Thesis:

Design in the Anthropocene, Broadening Human-Centred Design by Shreya Sood Aalto University

Level of design:

The design of this Master Thesis comply with the general rules of a Master Thesis, where no “design layout” is required or even accepted. In these cases there are sometimes two versions, the official and the designed one, however I could not find another (designed) work within my research. The thesis was written in a serif font for the continuous text as well as for headlines. In my perspective a variation would have been nice, however, it seems like it was restricted to a certain design layout.

Degree of innovation:

Regarding the degree of innovation it can be said, that the topic illustrated in the thesis is very contemporary and future oriented, and thus has a high degree of innovation, as it focus on the improvement of an actual improvement process (how and if people become more sustainable through design, in particular when following the Human Centered Design approach that is well known and accepted). Additionally the starting point was a self study, or reflection on the person’s own process of three projects that were developed during the study year 2020 and its outcomes, followed up by interviews of peers who experienced the same projects. Before this thesis I never came across an applicable example where Auto-ethnography was used as a qualitative research method, which makes it even more innovative speaking for my own experiences, which is of course not comparable to everyone’s.

Independence:

A big plus for the independency criteria is already the chosen method of self study and faking it I actually picture very difficult. The amount of references added in the bibliography and some spot checks I did, additionally resulted in a high quality of rephrasing and citation.

Outline and structure:

The front page as well as the title page are included and on the correct spot within the thesis. Besides these elements, also the structure is clear and in order. The abstract is before the table of content and is not listed within it. It is only written in English, so the native language (Finnish) is perhaps missing. The table of content gives a clear overview, is numbered, but not linked to the dedicated chapters. After the introduction the topic is introduced, next chapter incorporates the theoretical background, followed by detailed insights in the methodology and findings that can be deduced from this mapped to the Research Questions. Within the next chapter the discussion happens and the content part closes regularly with the discussion. In the end of the structure the list of references and appendix is placed.

The naming of the chapters is very straight forward, sometimes for my personal taste a little to general. Positively to mention is that the graphics within the work show the same illustration style and thus are consistent and standardized.

Degree of communication:

The work was written at the Finnish university Aalto, Helsinki within the program Creative Sustainability. The written language is English, of the level B2 and at some points on the edge to C1, however the writing style is still comprehensible and not too complex in the length of the sentences for example. The content was drew up objectively, but within the introduction where the personal approach for the self study was stated out, the reader could still sympathize with the author on a personal level.

Scope of the work:

In total the thesis encompasses 85 pages, 71 for the actual content (from introduction to end of conclusion). It has a similar scope to the requirements of the Master Thesis we will write. Additionally the pages between the chapters are pro rata balanced.

Orthography and accuracy:

I could not find typos or sloppy mistakes when reading through it, so from my point of view it is of high quality also in this area. However as I am not an English native speaker I would not completely rely on this estimation.

Literature:

Five pages are dedicated only to the list of references. I would estimate the quantity of resources reasonable to the scope of the thesis. The list consists to approximately one half of scientific papers / articles , one third of internet resources, whereas the rest are books. It has a great variety and the resource spot check was promising in terms of quality too.

by Marton Szabo-Kass -

Evaluation of a master thesis: Creating Appropriate Trust for Autonomous Vehicles

| Personal evaluation of a Master Thesis submitted to a foreign University, that is dealing with topics in our own research field 

I chose the master thesis by Fredrick Ekman and Mikael Johansson with the title: “Creating Appropriate Trust for Autonomous Vehicles – A framework for HMI design”, as the topic has many overlaps to my research field and intended thesis topic. 

The level of design and first feeling of this thesis is positive. The cover looks attractive, the length of 76 pages (101 in total) and a structure with 9 main chapters gives a solid first impression. A basic point that I can only criticize is the formatting of the text in two columns, which made the reading and navigation through the content difficult.  

The chapters separate the phases of the work in the overview of backgrounds, literature and methodology and practical user testing. Afterwards the framework, the concept development and the validation are documented. It is completed by an example concept and the discussion of the results, including future perspectives. The outline and structure are done well, but still it is not very easy to find specific parts of the methods, unless you studied the structure thoroughly beforehand. 

The introductory part gives a fair overview of the autonomous driving context and the aims and limitations of the work. The thesis states to be limited to the scope of Level 3 automation, which is understandable, as further derivations could be made for Level 4 scenarios. 

I would assess the scope of the work as sufficient. The literature analysis excessively describes the topic of trust, showing a solid understanding of the main and most important aspects of human trust in automation and in autonomous driving. Afterwards it discusses the relevant aspects to build the framework and validates main points. 

Regarding independence and innovation, the authors worked with scientific methods throughout the whole research process of the literature and user testing.  

The user testing was carried out in an interesting way lacking a fully automated vehicle, with a simulation setup using a right-hand drive vehicle to give the left-hand test driver the autonomous ride feeling.  

A novel graph called Optimal Life Cycle of Trust was also created to visualize the change of trust through the user journey. The framework is based on the information gathered from the research, but it sums up the necessary areas of interest regarding trust thoroughly.  

This framework is one of the main results of the thesis and can be helpful for HMI designers. It is probably not a highly innovative solution but gives a solid basis for concept development. An iterative concept development was also done with the use of this framework, that gives as further results three example concepts of new user interfaces. 

The degree of communication is clear, the explanations and concept derivations are understandable. Once the reader has understood the whole methodology and structure of the work, the explanations are comprehensible. 

Regarding orthography and accuracy, the texts were written in an understandable yet scientific form. Abbreviations were explained beforehand, and no grammatical mistakes were found. 

The bibliography is not formatted in the most readable way and misses some source details at a few points, but in general it is thorough and excessive, including many books as well as other media, which appear to be reliable sources. 

Source: 

Ekman, Fredrick/Johansson, Mikael: Creating appropriate trust for autonomous vehicles. A framework for HMI design. Master Thesis at: Chalmers University of Technology Department of Product and Production Development, Division of Design & Human Factors, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015), 
https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/226342/226342.pdf (last opened on 29.11.2022) 

by Olena Davletshyn -

Master’s Thesis Evaluation

Design and evaluation of mobile fitness application to encourage people in physical activity Raquel Catalina Vaquero and Rodolfo Morales Lopez

1.1 Level of design

In my opinion, the level of design is not developed quite well. They have old fashion tables and the image quality is low. Some information in the tables is hard to read because they didn’t adjust the font size. The example screens which are shown are not big enough to read data on them clearly. The style of the whole Master thesis is classic, the layout is typical for research papers. The whole text is not centered. 

1.2 Degree of innovation

This research paper is focusing on designing and evaluating the iOS mobile application. The app is about fitness and how to anchorage people to train more (with a trainer or without). The field of study is User Experience Design and Interaction Design.

1.3 Independence

The Research paper-making process wasn’t independent. The authors got external help from the SportyFly OY. members. The main author is still Raquel Catalania Vaquero and Rodolfo Morales was helping with it. 

1.4 Outline and structure

I think that structure and outline are in their places, they are logical and understandable. There is an Abstract, Division of Work, Table of Content,  Introduction, Literature Review, Theory, Content, Prototype, Evaluation, Discussion and Conclusion, Bibliography, List of figures, List of Tables, List of Symbols and Abbreviations. 

1.5 Degree of communication

Raquel and Rodolfo have a clear and structured way of communication. They use many sources to prove their point, many references help to understand the topics they are talking about better. The way of the thesis is structured really well and you always can find a point where you were before, I think that list of symbols and Abbreviations is really helpful in this kind of paper. 

1.6 Scope of the work

The project was based on cooperation with an existing company. They created an app that helps people do more sports, they based their approach on User Experience Design and User Centric Design methodology. They start with briefing and understanding all complications the previous version had. They did great User Research which helped them to understand how to redesign an app better.

1.7 Orthography and accuracy

From the language perspective of view, the research is on a good level, you can easily understand what the authors wanted to communicate, I personally didn’t find mistakes(Orthographic or grammatical). Sometimes text wasn’t visible enough to read. 

1.8 Literature

Literature Quantity is brought, they included a lot of useful design books. There were also a lot of online references which will also be helpful in my own Master’s Thesis. 

Bibliography 
Raquel, C; Rodolfo, M; “Design and evaluation of mobile fitness application to encourage people in physical activity” Master’s Thesis  Tampere University of Technology,  September 2016;

by Max Müller -

_TASK III: Critical Evaluation of a Master’s Thesis


For my review of a Master’s Thesis, I chose the work of Mikel Elias Polzer with the title “Designing Casual Games for Subverting (Hetero-)Normative Attitudes”. I came across this work by researching with the Austria-wide online tool of the FH library.


_Level of design

There was almost no design aspect to it, other than the most basic formatting was done in terms of layout. Structure was done quite okay and there were the occasional pictures and visualisations in it, but they only served the purpose to explain certain points in the thesis. Although the choice of font and typography was done in a very safe way, where nothing can go wrong that easily – from a readability standpoint the forced full justification text is a quite difficult to enjoy whilst reading; so, there is room for improvement on this front. The use of bright red and blue on text looks in the end – mainly just off. It makes certain things look like the rough outline or something, which still needs to be discussed – for me it does not give the impression of being done when text is highlighted red.


_Degree of innovation

The thesis deals with interesting and important topics for our current century, mainly the perception of gender in games – there is only little work done on this field because it is a rather unexplored discipline. To now quantify it by just that parameter would be possible, but not justified. Therefore, I consider this thesis as an innovative piece of scientific work.


_Independence

It relies heavily on citations, but the experimental and scientific approach of this work would qualify it as a very good independent thesis.


_Outline and structure

Something which struck me a little odd was the fact that the author included a full curriculum vitae on the 4th page. It was straight after the cover and the acknowledgements before the table of contents. I guess it must be some requirement of the university where this thesis was published; yet I do not see the need of giving a detailed look at the person’s life before I read their thesis. Also, on another note, the CV was equipped with the full name, nationality, birthday, and even email address – form a data protection standpoint a problem. Otherwise, was the structure well laid out, you had enough introduction to the upcoming topics, and nothing felt out of place. The ending was merely a quote and had only little conclusion to offer, it ended all rather abruptly. At least the whole PDF was formatted as an interactive file, so you could easily use the in-file links to hop between chapters, sources, and citations.


_Degree of communication

The heavy use of parentheses makes reading and following – on top of very long constructed sentences which could use a break here and there – makes reading this thesis a little bit more challenging. It’s not your everyday easy evening read.


_Scope of the work

The work did not try to get everything under one hat, it clearly decided for one aspect and honed right into this. The author talked about the talking points they wanted and had to and then got straight into experiments which they called ‘semi- quantitative testing’ to get a grasp on the subjective perceptions of various participants.


_Orthography and accuracy

Sometimes poor wording and occasionally spelling mistakes in terms of misplacing commas into words. Besides that, I was not able to locate any graver mistakes. The only thing I would point out is the misuse of the basic hyphen “-“ instead of the classic “–“ en-dash – but that’s more of a style and typography issue which I take a bit personal, otherwise it’s alright.


_Literature

The literature consists of a huge and vast library of books from different fields, but all coming from a certified scientific aspect. There were also a lot of books which I also already came across in my research or I knew already.


_Source

Polzer, Mikel Elias: Designing Casual Games for Subverting (Hetero-)Normative Attitudes. Master’s Thesis, University Vienna, 2017. In: https://utheses.univie.ac.at/detail/42249 (zuletzt aufgerufen am 01.12.2022)

by Kerstin Slany -

Evalulierung Masterarbeit

Echtzeit. Daten. Haushalt. Die Schlagwörter für meine Masterarbeit stehen fest, jetzt ist die Frage, wie man sie gemeinsam verständlich unter einem Dach kombinieren kann.

Da der nächste Schritt die theoretische Recherche, sowie das Verstehen der technischen Umsetzung sein wird, hab ich bewusst eine Masterarbeit ausgewählt, die folgendes intensiv behandelt.

Masterarbeit von Micha Severin

“Konzeption und Realisierung einer Plattform zur Echtzeit-Netzwerkdatenanalyse” der Fakultät Technik und Informatik der Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg, aus dem Jahr 2017

Gestaltung.

Da bei dieser Arbeit das Design nicht im Vordergrund steht, beinhaltet sie keine visuelle Umsetzung, dennoch ist die Arbeit schlicht, verständlich und ordentlich aufgebaut. Auffällig ist die bewusste Hervorhebung der Quellen durch rote Schriftfarbe.

Innovationsgrad.

Der Autor beschreibt in seiner Motivation, das Unternehmensentscheidungen immer mehr auf Datenverarbeitung und -analysen basieren. In einer immer digitaler werdenden Gesellschaft finde ich, vor allem hinsichtlich des Erscheinungsjahr von 2017, ist dies eine sehr innovative Thematik.

Selbstständigkeit & Gliederung und  Struktur.

Die Arbeit beinhaltet einen Autor und ist daher selbstständig verfasst, hinsichtlich Arbeitsweise habe ich allerdings keinen Einblick in den Entstehungsprozess. Durch die Arbeit selbst, zieht sich ein ersichtlicher roter Faden, und sie ist sehr strukturiert aufgebaut. Besonders hervorzuheben sind die Zusammenfassungen am Ende eines Kapitels, in dem der Autor seine Erkenntnisse kurz wiedergibt.

Kommunikationsgrad & Umfang der Arbeit.

Die Arbeit beinhaltet 123 Seiten, das Thema, sowie die Forschungsfrage sind klar und verständlich formuliert und durch einen strukturierten Aufbau der gesamten Arbeit kann man den Forschungsweg klar nachvollziehen, wodurch die Arbeit in Kommunikation und Umfang ordentlich ausgearbeitet ist.

Orthographie sowie Sorgfalt und Genauigkeit.

Sachlich und professionelle Formulierungen, sowie die Verwendung von Fachjargon spiegeln Professionalität und Sachlichkeit wieder. Die Arbeit wurde sorgfältig gelayouted, sowie auf Rechtschreibfehler überprüft, folglich sind keine Auffälligkeiten zu finden.

Literatur.

Sechs Seiten der Arbeit sind reines Literaturverzeichnis, welches representative Quellen aus der Informatikbranche aufweisen. Die angegebenen Zitationen mit Onlinezugang, sind ebenfalls von vertrauenswürdigen und professionellen Herausgeber:innen, wodurch die Arbeit einen thematischen und hochwertigen Content aufweist.

by Laura Varhegyi -

Critical Evaluation of a master’s thesis

Designing Future-Friendly Content: Modeling production data for industrial applications by domain experts

By Diana Solkazian

Level of design

The layout was designed according to the guidelines of the FH in Salzburg, therefore it is in Times New Roman with consistent spacing and has a serious look.

Degree of innovation

The thesis is about the development of an engineering tool integrated in an international software platform from the Austrian company Copa-Data. Different methods were compared and analyzed and UCEID was used in the end. User tests and the development of high-fidelity prototypes was another part of the work.

Independence

The work is autonomous and in cooperation with Copa-Data. The author wasn’t just highlighting the progress and the results of the thesis, but also included unexpected events occurred during the usability tests. Which also gave her valuable learnings because she did remote tests for the first time. These are also little details that show that the work was developed independently.

Outline and structure

The table of content is well structured and gives a great overview over the thesis. The structure is very clear and logical, and each chapter ends with a summary. The author added a list of figures, that gives deeper insights especially to designers who want to take a quick look at the documentation of the project without the theoretical research. She used an appendix for all other relevant prototypes, the survey and the link to the figma prototype.

Degree of communication

Diana has a very accurate literary expression, and her writing style is at a very high level. This makes her work even more sophisticated. She presents a theoretical background and has a clear understanding of the topic. The author uses many references to other sources and breaks down the complexity of the work in many interesting smaller paragraphs. This makes it very easy and fascinating to read. She was very thorough, and her thesis gives a great example of the structure, terminology, and case study of a master’s thesis. She could have shown more of the product or the documentation, but this was probably not possible because of privacy reasons.

Scope of the work

The UCEID framework was the basis of her methodology. She also used a user-centered approach and the ecological interface design to develop the new interface. The results are based on user testing and a survey. Concluding there is a good variety of theoretical background and methods being used.

Orthography and accuracy

I couldn’t find any errors or misspelling in the thesis. She has a very deliberate way of expressing herself that guides the reader through her work.

Literature

When you look through the resources you see that Diana researched in detail about the different topics. There are many online sources, but also books found on google books and scientific sites. The sources are comprehensive and correctly cited. 

Solkazian, Diana: Designing Future-Friendly Content: Modeling production data for industrial applications by domain experts. Mag. -Arb. FH Salzburg. Salzburg 2021.

by Florian Schaubmaier -

BEWERTETE MASTERARBEIT:

Robert Clarke

University of California

Acoustic Ecology and Sound Mapping the University of Central Florida Main Campus

Aufgerufen am 01.12.2022

https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7768&context=etd

Meine bewertete Masterarbeit ist eigentlich eine Dissertation, da Sie aber sehr gut zu meinem Thema passte ( → Soundmap) empfand ich sie als passend.

Gestaltungshöhe

Die Arbeit ist vermutlich ohne konkrete Formatvorlage gestaltet worden, nicht sehr originell oder kreativ, aber auf jeden Fall Stiltreu. Indizien für die freie Gestaltung sind zum Beispiel der Große Zeilenabstand, und das Einrücken des ersten Satzes in einem Absatz, was nicht störend ist, ich mir jedoch auch nicht vorstellen kann, dass eine Universitaet dieses Format vorgibt. Auf Umrahmungen oder sonstige Stilmittel wurde verzichtet, trotzdem wirkt die Arbeit nicht zu trocken und Bilder unterstreichen immer wieder Sinnvoll das Geschriebene.

Innovationsgrad

Das Thema behandelt Soundmaps respektive auf Laermbelastung an einem Universitätscampus in Florida. Die Dissertation wurde in dem Fach Philosophie abgelegt, darum gelten meiner Meinung nicht dieselben Kriterien, welche von einem Sounddesign Studiengang geltend sind. Als Sounddesign Student muss ich sagen, dass ich die Idee nicht allzu innovativ finde. Der Autor hat sorgfältig gearbeitet und tatsächliche Probleme sichtbar gemacht ( → Lärm), aber nicht unbedingt einen neuen Ansatz geschaffen oder einen neuen Weg eröffnet.

Gliederung und Struktur

Die  Arbeit umfasst mit Anhang 102 Seiten und 4 Kapiteln, die Unterkapitel sind nicht nummeriert (was ich schrecklich finde und sie deswegen nicht zaehle). Die Kapitel teilen sich auf in:

1 Introduction, 32 Seiten – Erzählungen zum Hintergrund und der Themenfindung, sowie Projektübersicht

2 Place, Space and Campus Design,  21 Seiten – Campus Design und Vorstellung verschiedener Bereiche der Universität

3 Methodology, 30 Seiten – Research, Recording und Erstellung der Soundmap

4 Bringing it all back home, 12 Seiten –  Analyse, Reflexion und weitere Forschung

Die Kapitel und Seitenzahl sind ausgewogen über die gesamte Arbeit verteilt, nur dem letzten Kapitel  fehlt es etwas an Fülle. 

Kommunikationsgrad

Die Sprache ist simpel, nicht überladen mit Fachbegriffen, gut verständlich aber trotzdem auf angebrachten Niveau, was ich als sehr angenehm empfinde.

Umfang der Arbeit

Die Arbeit umfasst 102 Seiten, wobei der Kern 93 Seiten umfasst. Da ich nicht weiss, was bei einer Doktorarbeit üblich ist, kann ich nur nach den Kriterien der Masterarbeit urteilen und das finde ich als angebracht.

Orthographie sowie Sorgfalt und Genauigkeit

Der Autor hat über einen Zeitraum von 4 Jahren ein umfangreiches Soundarchiv erstellt und dieses aufbereitet. Er unterstreicht Statements mit Begründung, Notwendigkeit und Zitieren, somit gehe ich davon aus, dass sorgfältig gearbeitet wurde. Absätze wurden alle sinnvoll gestaltet, sind nicht zu kurz oder lang und die Arbeit lässt sich flüssig lesen.

Literatur

Die Literaturliste umfasst 5 Seiten und etwa die Hälfte aller Quellen stammt aus dem Netz. Viele Quellen sind aktuell, manche aber auch aus 1970 (Zur Verteidigung, dies betrifft hauptsächlich philosophische Werke, z.B. Martin Heidegger). Da der Großteil des Werkes eigenes schaffen war, kann man diese Anzahl womöglich vertreten, es scheint mir trotzdem etwas wenig zu sein.

by Patricia Rohrbacher -

Analyis of a master thesis

Kuliraniyil Jose, Shibu: HOW REAL IS THE VIRTUAL? AN ONTOLOGICAL INTROSPECTION INTO VIRTUAL REALITY. unabr. Masters’ thesis. University of Innsbruck. Innsbruck 2019

introduction

In the Master’s thesis “How real is the virtual? An ontological introspection into virtual reality” from Shibu Jose Kuliraniyil, the author poses the question of ‘reality’ in a virtual world, which by its very addition of ‘virtual’ does not seem to be real. He discusses both the definition of the concept and the development of virtual spaces, as well as the advantages and disadvantages that exist around the topic. Furthermore, Kuliraniyil ties in current examples from the state of the art around virtual reality. The author’s main wish is to give the readers a better understanding of virtual reality with the help of his work and at the same time to list and compare the different approaches to the topic.

Level of design

The written pdf file has a very clear and simple form in terms of layout and design. Written in a classic font, it contains both recurring line spacing and legible paragraphs, which drives the reading flow throughout. This indicates that there was most likely a uniform university thesis template. As for the colour scheme of the Master’s thesis, it is kept very simple: Black writing on pure white paper. Citations are not noticeable at first glance, as they have been cleverly worked into the justification. Only when you look more closely at the footnotes do you realise that a lot of citations have been made. The bibliography is a real battleground when it comes to paragraph shifts and different font formatting.

degree of innovation

The topic of virtual reality is more topical than ever and is already being used purposefully in many fields of work. However, the thesis question is very vaguely defined and leaves far too much room for interpretation. With a more interesting main question, the master’s thesis would definitely be more worth reading, but in its current form it resembles a thick textbook from an upper secondary school with a focus on computer science.

Independence

The work appears to be written in the same way through and through, which leads me to conclude that the likelihood of cheating is very low. The text feels like it was written by one person alone from start to finish without help from others.
The work itself is very dependent on further supporting literature, as many passages are worded in a way that is very incomprehensible to lay people.

outline and structure

Kuliraniyil divides his work into three main parts: Exploring Virtual Reality, Advantages and Disadvantages of Virtual Reality and a Philosophical Questioning of the Concept of Virtual Reality. There are thus 3 main chapters, each with 3-5 sub-chapters. These are in turn split into sub-sub-chapters. In my opinion, the 4th subdivision into sub-sub-chapters is not necessary and makes the table of contents unnecessarily long, especially since some chapters are no longer than half a page. The entire work is very theoretically structured and contains no physical workpiece that is described. However, I find the division into three sections very pleasant, as one is thus forced to deal with the topic in different ways.

degree of communication

As far as the level of communication of the work is concerned, as a person who has already dealt with the topic a bit, I feel that the written text is quite understandable. However, many terms are probably too sophisticated for every reader to understand the content of the work. In my eyes, it also seems as if the work was translated into English after the fact, as many words are very stilted and forced into the sentence structure. On the plus side, the author does elaborate on some of the difficult-to-understand terms in the footnotes.

scope of work

The Master’s thesis “HOW REAL IS THE VIRTUAL? AN ONTOLOGICAL INTROSPECTION INTO VIRTUAL REALITY” deals with an enormously extensive topic. In my opinion, the master’s thesis was written without a concrete question, which makes the elaboration very superficial and much too far-reaching. Many questions are answered that no one has asked and therefore I find that the text feels more like an encyclopaedia entry than actually a well thought-out master’s thesis. The author covers too many topics and gives a very general overview of Virtual Reality.

orthography and accuracy

Due to the imprecision in defining the topic, the text initially feels uncharitable. However, the care with which the individual chapters were written should not be underestimated. It is noticeable that the author personally cares about the content of his work and has dealt with the topic sufficiently. The text is very clean and even a quick read-through does not reveal any gross spelling mistakes or the like. All in all, the Master’s thesis seems well thought out.

literature

The bibliography is a formal disaster; it switches between italics and normal, links to further reading are blue and underlined and the paragraph jumps back and forth constantly. There is no list of figures, but this is due to the fact that there are no illustrations. As far as the literature itself is concerned, there are many books and online documents, but you also find a lot of Wikipedia articles, which indicates not very qualitative research. At the end of the directory, I was very disappointed, as the work had seemed very credible until then and.

conclusion

All in all, it can be said that the content of Shibu Jose Kuliraniyil’s Master’s thesis was written to a very high standard. However, the design of the thesis was completely disregarded and no qualitative literature was used. I recognise the effort that went into the writing of the thesis, the design and structure of the master’s thesis are fine.

by Noah Rachdi -

ProMa | Critical Evaluation of a Master’s Thesis

Evaluation of the master’s thesis: From live to interactive electronics by Artemi – Maria Gioti, written in 2015.

Level of Design

The thesis was handed in at the University of Arts in Graz, which, like most universities, has a rather specific and strict style that theses need to adhere to. In the case of the University of Arts in Graz, this means an estimated font size of 11 and double line spacing on a white A4 sheets. The whole thesis is (even in its PDF-version) in black and white without a single spot of color to be found.

This of course makes it rather difficult to evaluate the design of this thesis – knowing that there was basically no design of choice involved. However, I still find this very minimal and “scientific” style to be rather pleasant, as long as the work sticks to a standard scientific structure, too.

Degree of Innovation

The thesis topic seems very innovative – live performance in symbiosis with software agents is a topic that strives to explore new ground on various levels: The technical background. the musical aspects, as well as the whole artistic perspective of performative arts.

Independence

I do not feel like I am in a position to evaluate the independence of this thesis. However, since the topic seems to stem from very individual interests, I am confident that the thesis was conducted with at least sufficient independence.

Outline and Structure

While the outline seems generally logical to me, I was heavily missing an introduction. The first part of the thesis is structured into background and terminology of the topic, which is an interesting and refreshing approach considering the field of performative arts. The second part talks about Gioti’s work, the system that she performed live with. While this becomes clear when reading, I still would have preferred to get to know about the approach to the structure within an introductory chapter. It also counts to say that the thesis is very short, with 26 pages in total. If it was longer, the outline might have been even more confusing and would have definitely needed structural guidance.

Degree of Communication

The author communicates very professionally in English, with complex enough sentences, that are still not too difficult to read. However, I feel like there is too much of an avoidance of writing first person statements and in turn too much passive voice, which are leading to some confusion about subjects in some sentences in my opinion.

Scope of the Work

While the topic seems very interesting, the thesis clearly turned out rather short. The theoretical first part is very general and also on point, and while there does not seem to be missing anything substantial, it also does not seem very specific – which is something I would usually expect from a master’s thesis.

The second part is well written and crisp, but extensive enough. This makes the first part slightly seem like a mandatory small effort contribution to the thesis to become complete.

Orthography and Accuracy

The thesis looks clean and well written. I did not come across any spelling mistakes or typos, however, there is a wrong page number stated in the table of contents.

Literature

For the small amount of pages, there seems to be an okay amount of references. Unfortunately a lot of the references are very old. I would estimate almost half were published more than 15 years before this thesis was written.

Gioti, A. From live to interactive electronics. Masterarbeit, 2015.