Orientation

Type				Team Size
Me, Myself and I	Group Collaboration	The Academic System	Software	1	2-10	11-30	30+

   

What, Why & When

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1 ORIENTATION - 6.11.2023 At the beginning of the bachelor thesis it appears to be very overwhelming. That is why it is important to get an overview of everything that needs to be taken care of. This includes finding a supervisor and building a peer network. To make the bachelor thesis as relaxed as possible, it is essential to deal with time management. In this section you will find some tips that will help you to set up a suitable structure and work setting.

This table shows you an overview of the aspects you need to consider in the individual phases. To get more information about the individual phases, have a look at the respective sections in Moodle and ask questions in the lecture or tutorial. Some of these steps may happen at the same time for you, adapt these suggestions to your own needs.

Supervisor Communication

How to approach potential supervisors You can choose the topic of your Bachelor's thesis yourself. However, it is also possible to write your Bachelor's thesis on a given topic. In this case, members of the University of Lüneburg or another university that is authorised to teach can specify a topic. However, it is also possible to choose an external person as second supervisor, if this is done in agreement with the first supervisor, whereby the Bachelor's thesis can also be written at an institute or in a company. For suggestions of topics for your Bachelor's thesis, it is best to ask a professor at Leuphana University of Lüneburg

Here you will find a list of institutes and working groups that can be considered for your bachelor thesis.

Topic suggestions for the bachelor thesis of various working groups can be found here:

If you have your own topic ideas and want to find a supervisor, you can proceed the following way:

1.Find topic idea(s)

• This can be rough and not completely narrowed down yet.
• BUT: A first literature search has to be done beforehand.

2.Find suitable persons or institutes on the faculty website

• https://www.leuphana.de/einrichtungen/fakultaet/nachhaltigkeit/institute.html

3.Contact suitable supervisor(s) (select favourite)

• The following information should be provided when contacting the supervisor
  • Topic and scope
  • Time period in which the bachelor's thesis is to be written
  • Possible ideas for the methodological design
• Who could be a second supervisor?

The supervisor

Can you identify a specific gap in knowledge or contribution to existing research that resonated with you, and made you return to it again and again? Who from the faculty raised this to you, or may supervise it? Since not everybody can come up with a topic by themselves, maybe a suggestion of a potential supervisor might help. The more structured you approach your potential supervisor with your request, the happier they will be to help, at least in my experience. People are often inspired by projects that potential supervisors conduct, and would like to integrate their thesis into the large project. To this end, I would give some cautionary and sobering advise: Most projects that exist are already underway, and most of the time a thesis is an add-on, and not exactly a pivotal part of the project. This should not be a reason to feel that the work is irrelevant. More often than not additional questions arise through your contribution to a project. Yet, you might need to acknowledge that the project was designed a long time ago by someone who probably was not you. Hence the demand in such a project is often quite precise and the questions are already rather specific, and I would suggest that you are clear about what is expected from you. However, this may be a good opportunity to be under the wing of a PhD or somebody else in the project, and get a closer interaction that you would get with most supervisors. (https://sustainabilitymethods.org/index.php/How_to_write_a_thesis#The_supervisor)

PEER-TO-PEER

What is Peer-to-Peer?

Peer learning is about creating an exchange that takes place at an equal level. In this way, students can support each other in the process of the bachelor thesis. The aim is to exchange perspectives on topics such as the writing process, self-organisation or formalities of the Bachelor thesis.

Why having a peer network is important

Assemble a team. How did previous students orientate themselves? Ask around in your peer-group, and start to engage early with people who write their thesis. The insights and experience that they already have may allow you to orientate yourself on a different level later. You need to find people that are either complementary to or aligned with your work style and ethics. This is the most important point since you need to exchange with peers on a very regular basis. This is not so much about the goals, but more about the way. Peers can become an important reflexive space, with more time than your supervisors, and more knowledge of your specific needs. In addition, your peers can help you to think out loud on the progressive track that you are ideally on and give you emotional support. This is what friends are for. Most people we know as scientific geniuses were embedded into a larger group, and exchanged frequently and regularly with their peers. Peers often share a similar set of goals (i.e. writing a thesis), and also a comparable rhythm (https://sustainabilitymethods.org/index.php/How_to_write_a_thesis#The_peers).

Get feedback from others

Getting feedback from your peers can help to gain a new perspective on the bachelor thesis. It can also be useful if you are stuck on a certain aspect. As many students have gone through similar problems, it is good to get feedback from time to time throughout the process and not only at the end of the Bachelor thesis. New ideas can be incorporated directly into the process and solutions to problems can be found more quickly. This may concern, for example, the following issues: Narrowing down the topic and the question/hypotheses, methodological design, presentation of your results.

Feedback towards the end of your Bachelor thesis

When you are ready to have written and revised parts of your thesis, it is time to get feedback from other people. It is important to allow enough time for the proofreading and it can be done by different people at the same time. Here are some general tips on how to get feedback. Make

* a list → who could revise your work?
* Distribute sections to different people
* Give each person an individual "work order" so that corrections do not overlap
* set deadlines for when you need them back to incorporate the feedback

To help you receive feedback that is useful to you, here are a few guiding questions in preparation for feedback.

• What is the overall topic of the text and where does the text excerpt fit in?
• In which editing phase is the text? (Raw version, already revised,...)
• What do you want feedback on? (e.g. structure, argumentation, reader orientation)

While giving feedback you could focus on some of these questions:

• What are the main messages?
• What is particularly successful?
• Which passages are unclear?
• What additional information would the reader like to have?
• Is it clear where own positions are presented and where those of the research?
• Is a structure recognizable?
• Is the argumentation comprehensible?
• Are there too many repetitions?
• Is the paragraphing coherent?
• Is the language understandable?
• Is a specific passage understandable?

Wiki-Article about Giving Feedback: https://sustainabilitymethods.org/index.php/Giving_Feedback

TIME MANAGEMENT AND MOTIVATION (TIMAMO)

A typical workday as a bachelor thesis writer Keeping the ball rolling and staying on top of things during the entire Bachelor thesis is not an easy task. However, there are some tips and tricks that can help. An outline and a matching schedule can be useful to keep you on track. Of course, the schedule will change over time, but it still makes sense to create a flexible schedule so that you can get through the bachelor thesis in a more relaxed manner. Each person has different ways of motivating and managing themselves. It also makes sense to think about how you have worked so far during your studies and which techniques have already helped you there.

Techniques (daily - monthly) It can be useful to learn techniques that will help you structure your thesis. There are tools that can be helpful for different time periods - daily, weekly, monthly. Not every technique is suitable for every person. Therefore, just try out several things until you find the right techniques. Here are a few tools that helped us stay motivated and move forward during the Bachelor and Master Daily and Weekly: To-Do, To-Done list with prioritization (and time goals) I think every person knows to-do lists. As simple as it sounds, to-do lists can quickly become overwhelming. For me, it is important to set realistic goals (rather few than too many). I also try to break larger tasks into smaller parts and because I sometimes can't estimate how long I need for a task, I set myself time goals. This helps me to stay motivated. Now the question remains: where do I start? I try to divide the tasks into three categories - must be done today, can be done tomorrow, not important at the moment. This way I can better assess which tasks I want to focus an. I write down on my to-do lists all the things (not only university-related) that need to be done. I also have a To-Done list, which contains things that are completed additionally. That way I realize how much more I have actually already finished. Monthly: Plan backwards You are facing the next month and don't know at all what and how you want to get everything done? In such moments it helped me to plan my month backwards. First of all you choose your goal for the month. In the next step you think about what has to happen before and work your way back to the current state of the work. The developed intermediate goals can then be set as weekly goals, for example. Be careful how much time you have in the respective weeks and include buffers. Most of the time I was a bit more motivated while planning than in reality. This technique really helped me to get a better overview and stay a little more relaxed.

Work-life balance

It is clear that not all of your time can be spent on the bachelor thesis. It is also a learning process during the bachelor thesis to organize yourself and to put the appropriate amount of work into the bachelor thesis. To avoid fluctuating between doing nothing at all and just doing university stuff, it helps to schedule fixed times for the Bachelor thesis and leisure activities such as sports. But to be honest, there will probably be a short final phase in which you will do a lot more for the Bachelor thesis than have leisure time. You have to be aware that this is a limited period of time and not a permanent state. Two further aspects are relevant in the orientation phase. While designing your workspace and establishing your peer-network is crucial for any given endeavour, it is also relevant to consider the location where you work. Being for instance in another town or even country may seem appealing, also given the huge debates on work-life balance. For many people it seems however more appropriate to be at university to exchange with others and gain motivation. Universities are places of culture, and it is this culture that can help many to propel themselves through a Bachelor thesis phase. Consider writing at Leuphana, and because work life balance means not only to have great off-work options, but also to work concretely somewhere, and often best with others who share the same challenges and goals. Another vital part to keep your motivation up is to divide the huge endeavour that is a thesis into smaller parts. If you manage to have one tangible goal each day, and revise these in the morning and revisit them in the afternoon, you ideally get a reward structure that helps you to get a system underway that structures your day, and keeps the motivation up. After all, any given thesis is nothing but a huge box, with smaller boxes in there (e.g. introduction, methods, results), which contain even smaller packages, and each package contains three sentences. If you break your work down into such small chunks, you can develop an adaptive timeline and climb the highest intellectual mountains, step by step.

Work Settings

During the process of your thesis you will spend a lot of time at your desk. Of course this varies from person to person, maybe you are someone who works mainly at the library. But still, having a designated workplace at home, organized in a way that fits you, will help you a lot to stay focused and on track. We can not tell you how to organize your workspace or structure your day, but below you can find some examples and tips from us. You need to find out what works for you, ideally before or right when starting your thesis.

How we set up our work space

Lya's work space Many students live in shared flats or one-room flats, which sometimes makes it difficult to set up a good working environment as you have to work and relax in the same room. It really helped me to get into the habit of working at my desk and not using my bed as a workplace (even though it often seems much more comfortable). This way I usually got into a work flow much quicker and was able to relax better after working. Another habit I regularly applied was to tidy up my desk briefly after working on my bachelor's thesis. This simplified continuing work the next day by quite a bit.

After a while, I also got into the habit of not leaving my phone on my desk. This made it easier for me not to be distracted by notifications, for example. It helped me a lot to stay focused and to monitor my process. If I wasn't very motivated, I set myself work intervals of half an hour to get into a work mode without immediately running out of motivation.

Melissa's Work space I did mostly literature based work for my bachelor thesis, as well as calculations. So I spend my entire thesis sitting at my desk. That can be quite strenuous, mentally and physically. I really regret not getting a comfortable chair for my desk before my thesis. Adjustments to your desk area (Do you like to sit or stand? Is your chair comfortable? Is the direction your desk is facing good for your concentration?) can make a huge difference when it comes to sitting down and getting to work. Getting up regularly is also beneficial in my experience, I tried to fit in a walk with my parent’s dogs every day when I was writing my thesis. Try to keep your desk as simple and clean as possible. You can combine cleaning it up at the end of your day with watching a show or listening to some music or a podcast. This will also help to distract you from thinking about your thesis when you are done for the day. Having a lot of space on your desk for books, papers, notes, pens and your laptop / computer is necessary for you to stay organized when writing and doing research. As Lya already mentioned, I am also a big fand of timers and setting time slots for you to work in, rather than goals of pages or words, especially when you are at the beginning and it is just about getting started or you don’t feel motivated to do anything at all. During the last weeks of my thesis I was quite stressed and eating at my desk more often than not. This should be avoided if you can, but of course, not everything goes to plan and sacrifices will be made. Try to use meal times as times to socialize or relax away from your desk, eat alone while watching a show or just looking out of the window or in the garden or on your balcony or a park bench, eat with your roommates, friends, loved ones, whenever you can in order to think about something else other than your thesis

 

Links & Further reading

Papers

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The author of this entry is Sergey Belomestnykh.