Supervision of Seminar Papers and Theses

I am happy to support your seminar papers – and theses!

Registration periods

You can freely decide when you want to register for your work. I would like to avoid that the four-week correction period after your submission falls in one of my vacation months, in February or August. Please think about that when you register!

Seminar papers

For seminar papers, it is sufficient to write a “mini exposé” for an overview. In this exposé you only write a few sentences about the obligatory categories (e.g. about the research question). You can use the following template.

Theses

To prepare me for a first consultation meeting for theses, it is useful to send me a six-liner. Within the framework of the theses, you can also write more than one sentence for each point and give more details. Please send me the short text via email before our meeting – either as a word file or directly in the email.

After the first consultation in the “preparation phase” I suggest that you write your exposé in the next “concept phase” and send it to me in a word file. Information about writing an exposé and citation guidelines is available below.

In general, I would like you to come to my consultation regularly. It would be possible to have a session during each of the “preparation”, “concept”, “realisation”, and “final” phases. So I can support you in the best way, it is useful to shortly prepare meetings: please let me know your agenda (the issues you want to talk about) via email before you come to my consultation. If the topics are milestones like the exposé, the draft version, the corrected version, please also send me the texts as a word document. In my opinion, it is more helpful for you to participate in my thesis seminar that I offer because the group framework helps to learn from each other.

Additionally, I want you to contact me in a timely manner if you experience stumbling blocks so we can find a solution together. I personally find a continuous consultation important which is only possible if we stay in touch.

Assessment criteria of written papers

Here you can find the current version of my assessment criteria for written papers. The criteria apply to all types of written work – from the first seminar paper to your thesis. The expectation on how strongly you can achieve the separate criteria, is dependent on the type of written work, so it’s also about your stage of studies. This is why I expect a bachelor’s thesis to meet the criteria more extensively than a first seminar paper, in which your own intellectual contribution can be much smaller.

Literature tips

There are a lot of companions on scientific writing and more general about scientific research. General references on companions are therefore as helpful as a sip from a hydrant. This is why I would like to (selectively and not presentatively) call attention to “only” three books that may be helpful for you (additional to the book on writing consulting mentioned above). All three books can be downloaded from the UTB page until the end of the year:

1. Breuer, Esther; Güngör, Nagihan; Klassen, Mareike; Riesenweber, Martin; Vinnen, Johanna (Hg.) (2021): Wissenschaftlich schreiben - gewusst wie! Tipps von Studierenden für Studierende. 2. vollst. aktual. Aufl. Stuttgart: UTB. This book could be interesting because it is written from a student’s perspective – surely a novelty with added value!
2. Franck, Norbert (2019): Handbuch Wissenschaftliches Schreiben. Eine Anleitung von A bis Z. 1. Auflage. Stuttgart: UTB. This book seems useful because the structure is in alphabetical order and you can look up certain questions easily? Which elements belong to an introduction? The two-page summary of the essentials of academic writing at the end of the book is surely also worth reading. The author has been writing companions in this area for a long time and also accompanied my studies.
3. Esselborn-Krumbiegel, Helga (2021): Die erste Hausarbeit - FAQ. 2., aktual. Auflage. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. (Stark fürs Studium). The same applys to this author. Especially for writing beginners, this book seems to be very suitable to get to know the various phases of a writing project and the typical problems. Especially since the sections of the book are phrased in questions and problems, so it could be useful as a reference book for concrete writing problems.
4. Werner, Melanie; Vogt, Stefanie; Scheithauer, Lydia (2017): Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten in der Sozialen Arbeit. Schwalbach/Ts.: Wochenschau Verlag (Wochenschau Studium). This book especially deals with scientific writing in social work and describes the tasks that study beginners need to deal with when writing their first paper in a practical and realistic way.

You are naturally welcome to read more literature. In general, I recommend having one, two or three books in your inventory to look things up during your studies.

Notes about writing an exposé

An exposé for a thesis consists of approx. five pages (depending on the formatting, without the cover) and should include the following parts:

• Cover with title and author
• Initial problem: the problem is the topic of your paper. What do you want to want to be occupied with and for whom is this topic significant in which way?
• Research question: which question do you want to answer with the help of your work?
  While the topic itself only describes a significant problem, the research question specifically describes what you want to work on and find out. You should phrase this question as a question.
• Goal of the work: What goal are you pursuing with the answering of your research question? What are those findings relevant for?
• Optional: theory and models. Are there certain theories or models you want to base your work on? How do you want to use thesis concepts and theories to answer your research question?
• Possible approach: how do you want to proceed to answer your question?
  For empirical works this concerns data collection, data processing and data evaluation. For literature work this concerns the underlying literature and how you want to answer the research question with the help of the described findings, models and theories. Do you want to e.g. compare two theories to achieve a synthesis afterwards? Or do you want to work on the explanatory value of different theories for a phenomenon?
• Optional: possible proposition. Do you already have a presumption of the answer to your research question? It is useful to be aware of those presumptions.
• Possible literature: Which literature have you already read and which would be useful for your further work?
• Structure with (!) argumentation (one to two pages): the structuring of “mere headlines” does not say much about the planned argumentation of the paper. Please describe each section (best also subsections) in whole sentences and explain what you want to state in each chapter. (see link to six-liner above)
• Time schedule: To not get lost in details, it is reasonable to make a rough time schedule for your thesis which includes the milestones of the most important steps: collect material, structure material, write the draft version, revise it and receive feedback, correct and complete it. An overview of the different working phases is available here. Please also keep in mind that the revision of the draft version will take some time and you also need to check the deeper levels of the content. The more thoughtful your work is designed, the less you need to edit later.

The exposé should help you to figure out the planned thesis. For me, it is material to support you more specifically. I will support you as much as possible and as necessary during the required working steps. But in the end, you need to carry out those steps on your own.

Notes on citation and the creation of a bibliography

Recommendations about citation and the creation of a bibliography are available on the pages that Mr. Prof. Dr. Thomas Martens kindly placed online: http://www.techniken-wissenschaftlichen-arbeitens.de/

My personal recommendation is to create your own knowledge and literature database from the beginning of your first semester – for example with the help of the software Citavi, which you can get via the University of Applied Sciences.