Thesis writer (TW) : tapping scale effects in academic writing instruction

Writing a thesis is no less challenging a task for students, than for organizations who instruct and tutor thesis writing at higher education institutions. Annually within just our departments, 1000 undergraduates face the task of writing a thesis. Increasing student numbers and stagnating resources pose management problems, as well as constant threats to the quality of instruction. In reaction to this, we started exploring how instruction and supervision of thesis writers and related administrative tasks could be electronically supported, allowing for scale effects. A learning environment named Thesis Writer (TW) was developed, and piloted during the fall of 2015. TW supports individual writing and collaboration between writers, peers, tutors, and supervisors. This web-based software runs in common web browsers, independently of the operating system. In this paper we highlight the core functions of TW and address such uses in which scale effects can be realized. Conference attendees can use and test the system including real-time collaboration, in either English or German, and discuss experiences made and data collected during the pilot by 300 BA students