{"id":1795,"date":"2010-09-07T16:11:39","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T21:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2023-12-20T16:25:15","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T21:25:15","slug":"starting-my-thesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2010\/09\/07\/starting-my-thesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Starting My Thesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’ve been given the go-ahead to start writing my thesis.\u00a0 I was going to post up some more exciting numbers\/findings from my experiment, but that’ll have to wait – the thesis beckons.<\/p>\n

I’ve started writing it, and holy smokes, it’s hard.\u00a0 It’s hard because I have to zoom out from my current perspective, and start right from scratch, explaining where every single decision came from.<\/p>\n

And I have to do it in a formal, academic tone – without<\/em> awesome photos.<\/p>\n

Plan of Attack<\/h3>\n

I think I’m going to go with Alecia on this one, and start with my outline.\u00a0 That’s what I always did for any of my Drama classes where I had to write a big essay:\u00a0 start with the outline, and treat it like the skeleton…then slowly put more flesh on the skeleton.\u00a0 Keep fleshing it out, throw on some skin, some clothes, a lick of varnish, and bam:\u00a0 it’s all done.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, that’s my plan of attack.\u00a0 So I need an outline.\u00a0 Let me show you what I have.<\/p>\n

Tentative Outline<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Intro\n
      \n
    1. Title Page<\/li>\n
    2. Abstract<\/li>\n
    3. Acknowledgments<\/li>\n
    4. Table of Contents<\/li>\n
    5. List of Tables (where applicable)<\/li>\n
    6. List of Plates (where applicable)<\/li>\n
    7. List of Figures<\/li>\n
    8. List of Appendices (where applicable)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    9. The Meat\n
        \n
      1. Background\n
          \n
        1. Code Review\n
            <\/ol>\n
              \n
            1. What it is, how it is commonly used in industry<\/li>\n
            2. Proven to be effective (Jason Cohen study)<\/li>\n
            3. Helps to spread learning in a development team<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
                \n
              1. If code review is so good at spreading learning, why isn’t it part of the pedagogy in the undergrad curriculum?\n
                  <\/ol>\n
                    \n
                  1. How do we teach it?<\/li>\n
                  2. The curriculum is already packed – how do we fit it in?<\/li>\n
                  3. Joorden’s and Pare’s peerScholar approach<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
                      \n
                    1. The idea:\n
                        <\/ol>\n
                          \n
                        1. Have students evaluate one another after assignments, and give them a code review grade based on agreement with the TA grades.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                        2. Unanswered questions:\n
                            \n
                          1. Would students actually benefit from this idea?<\/li>\n
                          2. What is the relationship between the marks given by TAs, and the marks given by student evaluators?<\/li>\n
                          3. How would students feel about grading one another?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                          4. The experiment\n
                              \n
                            1. Terminology\n
                                \n
                              1. Assignment specification<\/li>\n
                              2. Submission<\/li>\n
                              3. Subject<\/li>\n
                              4. Grader<\/li>\n
                              5. Peer Grader<\/li>\n
                              6. Marking<\/li>\n
                              7. Marking Rubric<\/li>\n
                              8. Peer Average<\/li>\n
                              9. Agreement<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                              10. Design\n
                                  \n
                                1. Single-blind, with two groups (control and treatment)\n
                                    \n
                                  1. In both groups, subjects would:<\/li>\n
                                  2. fill out brief questionnaire<\/li>\n
                                  3. work on two programming assignments<\/li>\n
                                  4. have a maximum of half an hour to complete each assignment<\/li>\n
                                  5. perform another activity during the time between assignments, dependent on their particular group:\n
                                      \n
                                    1. treatment group would perform some grading<\/li>\n
                                    2. control group would work on a vocabulary exercise<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                    3. Subjects in the treatment group would then fill out a post-experiment questionnaire to get their feedback on their marking experience<\/li>\n
                                    4. Counter-balancing?<\/li>\n
                                    5. Graders would mark shuffled submissions<\/li>\n
                                    6. Graders would choose their preferred submission<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                    7. Instruments\n
                                        \n
                                      1. Pre-experiment Questionnaire<\/li>\n
                                      2. Assignment Specifications\n
                                          \n
                                        1. Flights and Passengers<\/li>\n
                                        2. Decks and Cards<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                        3. Assignment Rubrics<\/li>\n
                                        4. Mock-ups<\/li>\n
                                        5. Vocabulary Exercise<\/li>\n
                                        6. Post-experiment Questionnaire<\/li>\n
                                        7. Working Environment\n
                                            \n
                                          1. IDE<\/li>\n
                                          2. Count-down widget<\/li>\n
                                          3. Screen capture<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                          4. Subjects\n
                                              \n
                                            1. Undergraduates with 4+ months of Python programming experience<\/li>\n
                                            2. Months as a unit of experience<\/li>\n
                                            3. The two graders<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                            4. Assignment Sessions\n
                                                \n
                                              1. Greeting, informed consent, withdrawal rights<\/li>\n
                                              2. Pre-experiment questionnaire<\/li>\n
                                              3. First Assignment Rules\n
                                                  \n
                                                1. 30 minutes maximum – finish early, let me know<\/li>\n
                                                2. full access to Internet<\/li>\n
                                                3. work may or may not be seen by other participants in the study<\/li>\n
                                                4. may ask for clarification<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                5. First Assignment begins\n
                                                    \n
                                                  1. Timer widget starts<\/li>\n
                                                  2. Screen capture begins<\/li>\n
                                                  3. Subject left alone<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                  4. Marking \/ vocabulary phase\n
                                                      \n
                                                    1. Treatment group\n
                                                        \n
                                                      1. Would be given 5 submissions (secretly mock-ups), given 5 rubrics, asked to fill out as much as possible<\/li>\n
                                                      2. 30 minute time limit<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                      3. Control group\n
                                                          \n
                                                        1. Given links to 5 vocabulary exercises found online<\/li>\n
                                                        2. Asked to complete as much as possible, and to self-report results on a sheet of paper<\/li>\n
                                                        3. 30 minute time limit<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                        4. Second Assignment Rules\n
                                                            \n
                                                          1. Same as first, but repeated for emphasis<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                          2. Second Assignment begins\n
                                                              \n
                                                            1. Timer widget starts<\/li>\n
                                                            2. Screen capture begins<\/li>\n
                                                            3. Subject left alone<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                            4. Control group subjects released<\/li>\n
                                                            5. Treatment group subjects fill out post-experiment questionnaire<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                            6. Grading\n
                                                                \n
                                                              1. Initial meeting, and then hand-off of submissions \/ rubrics<\/li>\n
                                                              2. Hands-off approach<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                              3. Choosing Phase\n
                                                                  \n
                                                                1. Submissions for each assignment were paired by the subject that wrote them<\/li>\n
                                                                2. Mock-ups not included<\/li>\n
                                                                3. Graders were asked to choose which one they preferred, and give a rating of the difference<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                                4. Analysis\n
                                                                    \n
                                                                  1. Pearson’s Correlation Co-efficient as a measure of agreement<\/li>\n
                                                                  2. Fisher’s z-score<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                                  3. Results\n
                                                                      \n
                                                                    1. On grader vs. grader agreement<\/li>\n
                                                                    2. On grader vs. peer average agreement<\/li>\n
                                                                    3. On treatment vs. control\n
                                                                        \n
                                                                      1. Difference in average<\/li>\n
                                                                      2. Grader preference<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                                      3. On student opinion wrt peer grading<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                                      4. Discussion<\/li>\n
                                                                      5. Threats to validity\n
                                                                          \n
                                                                        1. The 30 minute time limit<\/li>\n
                                                                        2. A rigid rubric<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
                                                                        3. Future work<\/li>\n
                                                                        4. Conclusion<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                                                                          That’s the current structure of it.\u00a0 I’m meeting my supervisor tomorrow and getting feedback, so this might change.\u00a0 Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                                                                          So I’ve been given the go-ahead to start writing my thesis.\u00a0 I was going to post up some more exciting numbers\/findings from my experiment, but that’ll have to wait – the thesis beckons. I’ve started writing it, and holy smokes, it’s hard.\u00a0 It’s hard because I have to zoom out from my current perspective, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[626],"tags":[846,843,842,844,503,182,845],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-computer-science-technology","tag-academic","tag-essay","tag-outline","tag-paper","tag-research","tag-thesis","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prmTy-sX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}