"My" bachelor's theses this spring

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This week has been extremely hectic; work, work and more work. It has hands-down been the toughest week during this academic year. I've worked 24/7 and haven't even been able to (allow myself to) sleep enough - and I still have a pile of urgent things to do over the week-end. The main culprits are the bachelors theses (which I wrote about when we kicked them off in the beginning of the term). I'm one of three examiners and have to read, evaluate and prepare critique and feedback for the upcoming presentations. But that would have been ok, had it not been for the fact that two other tasks ate up the major part of this past week - and I also had to spend yet more valuable time preparing for these two other tasks (instead of reading theses). Phew! I can't wait to be over with this glut of work (it finishes this coming Tuesday).

I will write a blog post later (just as I did last year) about the 10 theses that I'm reading/examining. Here and now I instead settle for presenting the 5 theses (10 students working in pairs) that I have been the advisor of during the spring.

I've been working with this groups of students during the major part of the spring and we have met as a group regularly, every second week or so. Everyone has been pretty involved in everyone else's thesis. It's the third year we do this and I think we have more or less perfected the process now and more or less everyone (teachers as well as students) are very content with this course and with our process for squeezing out theses. Seventy-something students wrote their theses (in pairs) and all but one thesis was completed before the deadline (this past Monday). Ask me about it if you are interested (by writing a comment below) and I'll tell you everything you want to know about our group advisory processes.

The five thesis I've been the advisor of have all been written in Swedish (the abstracts below are written in English) and they are:

- Bergendahl & Rehn, "Politisk filtrering på Facebook? En utvärderande studie med hjälp av personas" [Political filtering of Facebook? An evaluating study using personas]. Abstract. Thesis (pdf file).

- Fyrvald & Roth, "El i hemmet - Hur kan man visualisera den?" [Household electricity - How to make it visible?]. Abstract. Thesis (pdf file).

- Jeppson & Murselovic, "Från visualisering av elförbrukning till beteendeförändring?" [From visualization of energy consumption to behavior change?]. Abstract. Thesis (pdf file).

- Taberman & Thelenius, "Hållbar utveckling i teknikbranschen med socialt ansvar i fokus" [Sustainable development in the technology industry with focus on social responsibility]. Abstract. Thesis (pdf file).

- Gabrielsson & Lundh Heinstedt,"Ett nätverks betydelse - Hur påverkar kontakter en medieteknikers väg till drömjobbet?" [The importance of a network - What impact does contacts have for a media technologists way to their dream job?]. Abstract. Thesis (pdf file).

I think both me and the students are pretty happy about the resulting reports. The bachelor's thesis is  great practice for the students before they write an individual master's thesis that is twice as large (30 hp) two years later.
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