fredag 6 december 2013

One more social annotation project application

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My last blog post treated a relatively small application for pedagogical funds that me and my colleague Björn Hedin recently handed in. Well, we actually handed in not just one, but two applications to the same call.

Our second application, "Increased thesis quality through increased goal focus and peer- and self-assessment" tags on to another small action-oriented development/research application for pedagogical funds that we handed in back in October and that I wrote about back then. That application was called "Social annotation systems and formative peer feedback for bachelors' theses" - and, we got the project funded! Well, actually we did get the project funded, but our asked-for budget was decreased by 25% and it is right now not totally clear which of the stated project goals we won't need to feel committed to any longer...

Anyway, in this second application on "the same" topic, we offer to extend the work we got funded to do in the previous (approved) application so that it will cover not only the Media Technology programme's bachelor's thesis course (DM129X), but also our master's theses course (DM228X). The new application also promises to modularise our findings/results so that the results can be used in other bachelor's and/or master's theses courses - for example the corresponding courses on the Computer Science and Engineering programme.

While it might seem strange to apply for two project that are so close to each other topically, it is important to notice that the funding for these two projects comes from different sources. Also, a lot has in fact happened since mid-October when we handed in the previous application and there is now a lot of pressure on CSC to improve the quality of our bachelor's and master's theses at both the Media Technology and the Computer Science and Engineering programmes. This second application of ours could in fact be framed as an altruistic offer to "do our bit" in helping our School out of a precarious situation by leveraging/spreading the great results we currently have in Media Technology bachelor's thesis course. Our School has to show progress a year from now and funding this project of ours could be one way that the School can show it is working seriously on improving the general quality of all the theses written at our School.


As it turns out, only seven applications were handed in this time around, but these applications together applied for 50% more money that what has been set aside in the call. Both of the applications that I and Björn have written are relatively near the average asked-for amount of money. I guess that might mean that it's possible to fund as many as five out of these seven applications - if the non-funded applications are on the more expensive side of the spectrum. At least four of these applications (57% approval rate) "should" get funded though and I thus think our chances are great (says the eternal optimist). We'll get to know more sometime during the second half of January. Some applicants will get conditional acceptance (a soft rejection?) and will have the opportunity to complement their applications before the final decisions will be taken before the end of February.
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