embedded ethics is an approach where lecturers in all courses are discussing ethics aspects regarding their own subject. a number of studies [eg. 1, 2] have been conducted indicating that this is a better approach than offering a seperated »ethics in technology« course.

some universities have created extensive »open source« repositories of the materials created by and for various lectureres that showcase the inclusion of ethics aspects into all kinds of subjects.

in this bachelor- or master thesis project, these materials will be examined for the use in teaching in mandatory courses of the TU wien informatics bachelor program. basically, each course at TU wien will be matched with appropriate entries in the repositories; then, the content of these entries will be translated and localized, and, where appropriate, materials will be produced. the results of these process will be documented in a format that also will have to be developed, and made available to the lecturers in the respective courses.

additional councelling by our resident AI ethics professor will be available.

It is completely unthinkable that somebody studies physics without learning about Gallileo or Newton, or philosophy without thinking about what Socrates or Kant wrote. Unfortunately, it is quite common to study informatics without knowing anything about the history of the discipline, or the origin of the ideas and concepts of informatics.

As a consequence, a lazy default story about US-american startups, run by white men, has taken hold. Since this is neither accurate nor flattering for the discipline, this master thesis project is focussed on the goal to picture a more inclusive story of the history of the IT industry, of the field of informatics, and of the ideas in this field. from this research, a card game (eg. trading card game), maybe based on a fantasy theme (like pride, prejudice and zombies) or similar to pokemon etc. should be designed and, ideally, deployed and evaluated.

while the game should be a real-world card game, it could have a digital component via QR codes or NFC tags.

Für eine organisatorisch und inhaltlich komplexe Lehrveranstaltung (Denkweisen der Informatik) soll ein browser-basiertes Online-Planungssystem entwickelt werden. Mit Hilfe dieses Systems sollen Studierende in die Lage versetzt werden, personalisierte Kalenderdaten (iCalendar-Standard, für den Import in eigene Kalender) zu erstellen, die dabei helfen sollen, die Anforderungen und Abgaben der LVA zeitgerecht zu erfüllen. Die dabei entstehenden Planungsdaten sollen auch der LVA-Leitung zur Verfügung stehen.

Idealerweise ist dieses System als Teil von TUWEL angelegt. Ein früher Prototyp eines solchen Systems wurde bereits mittels der Datenbank-Komponente von TUWEL umgesetzt, wobei die Erfahrungen sehr gemischt waren. Im Idealfall bekommen Studierende ein Tool, mit dem Sie die durch Reihung und Priorisierung der eigenen Arbeiten über das Semester hinweg eine Reihe wirklich individueller Kalendereinträge generieren, mit denen die erfolgreiche Absolvierung der LVA (also der Leistungsanforderungen durch die LVA) unterstützt wird.

DIese Bachelorarbeit für ein bis zwei Studierende umfasst den Entwurf, die Gestaltung und Implementierung sowie den Test dieser Lösung, im Idealfall durch aktive Begleitung während des WS 2025. Dafür ist eine Anstellung als Tutor_in denkbar.

Es soll ein Online-Memory-Spiel entworfen, implementiert und getestet werden, mit dem das Lösen eines Memory-Spiels als notenrelevante Leisung in TUWEL ermöglicht wird.

In den »Denkweisen der Informatik« gibt es acht Kapitel. Um eine Überprüfbarkeit der Auseinandersetzung mit den Inhalten dieser Kapitel zu ermöglichen, wurden verschiedene Ansätze ausprobiert (Arbeitsblätter, Multiple-Choice Quizzes, Volltext-Leitfragen), die alle auf ihre eigene Art gescheitert sind.

Für das Wintersemester 2025 soll daher ein neuer Ansatz versucht werden: die »Schlüsselbegriff-Memory«-Spiele, die bisher im Rahmen des Game-Based-Learning-Ansatzes der LVA verwendet wurden, sollen online verfügbar gemacht werden, indem sie als notenrelevante Leistung in TUWEL umgesetzt werden.

Dabei bietet sich beispielsweise H5P als Technologie an, für das es als proof-of-concept bereits (mäßig brauchbare) Memory-Spiele gibt. Ziel der Bachelorarbeit für 1-2 Personen wäre, die Studierendenseite wie auch die für den geplanten Einsatzzweck optimierte Administrationsseite einer solchen Lösung zu entwerfen, gestalten, implementieren und evaluieren. Die Lösung soll im WS2025 eingesetzt werden.

Basis dieser Bachelorarbeit für 1 Person ist der Artikel The hardest working font in Manhattan. Der Artikel beschreibt, einen Font, bestenfalls unter dem Namen »Gorton« bekannt, der durch die Produktion eines Gravurgerätes ca. 1897 massenhafte Verbreitung zumindest an der US-amerikanischen Ostküste gefunden hat.

Um dem charakteristischen Schriftbild neues Leben einzuhauchen, soll eine Web-Applikation entwickelt werden, mit der aus eingegebenem Text 3D-Modelle gravierter Platten in hoher Auflösung entstehen können. Dabei sollen unterschiedliche Templates zur Auswahl stehen. Im Idealfall findet die gesamte Verarbeitung in JavaScript im Browser statt, sodass das HTML auf einfachen Webservern gehostet werden kann.

In Denkweisen der Informatik (ways of thinking in informatics), a unique first-semester course for all informatics bachelor students at TU Wien, we organized (more or less) weekly panel discussions where experts of the respective fields answer and discuss the students’ questions. To collect the questions, we use the Q&A-Tool of the zoom webinar format.

While this is readily available, it has some serious drawbacks, eg. questions can only be submitted once the webinar has started, while it would be helpful if students could post questions whenever they have them.

The goal of this master thesis project is to design and implement a little platform (probably using django) that mirrors the possibilities of the Zoom Q&A-tool and extends them in the direction we need it. There are some role models, like mentimeter, mukana or the old best and worst of informatics tool we used when Aurora was still around, but basically this should be designed from ground up along the necessities of its intended use.

A format to translate lecture slides into a semi-booklike format has been developed and refined over the recent years. An example can be seen here:

https://dwi.lva.tuwien.ac.at/dwi20221117.html

Slidebooks are created using a convoluted pipeline of processing steps, from the creation of slides in Apple Keynote, the annotation of these slides using the »presenter notes« functionality in Keynote, the extraction of all content from Keynote using AppleScript, ImageMagick and curl and the encoding into a text-only format, to a python script that creates an HTML + javascript-file that can then be uploaded to a web server.

This pipeline is not only relatively slow, unreliable and error-prone, it is also a nightmare to maintain and update. The goal of this master thesis for one person is to take everything that has been learned so far, completely rethink the process and create a »service« that makes it easy to create slideBooks.

In addition, new elements for SlideBooks that enhance the interactivity (like quizzes, crosslinks between slidebooks, gameful elements) should be devised, designed and prototyped or implemented.

ChatGPT has created a conundrum for teachers everywhere. Simple »text production« tasks are endangered by the glorious »stochastic parroting« qualities of chatGPT, and asking students/pupils to summarize something will soon be a completely useless assignment.

So discussions, how this can be avoided/mitigated/used productively have sprung up everywhere. Some US school districts are banning chatGPT, detection tools are being developed, and others try to find productive uses of the system in classes - and this is just a short overview over some reactions. As chatGPT can also produce quite competent code, these problems affect not only text-centered assignments, but also introductory coding or engineering classes.

In this bachelor thesis (in german or english language) for one or two students, the goal is to gain an overview over the current discussion, and develop mitigation strategies for first-semester university courses with 500+ students (like we have at TU Wien), especially in informatics-programs

smart phones are amazing collections of sensor technologies. can these sensors, especially location, orientation and maybe the camera be used to facilitate new forms of teaching and learning in the course »ways of thinking in informatics« (denkweisen der informatik).

the goal of this bachelor or master thesis is to find a simple and easy to adapt strategie that can be used to create »distribued« learning units. this includes looking at existing approaches like educaching, QR rallys or hybrid scavenger hunts,, designing and implementing elements of an approach that is easy to maintain and fill with content, and evaluate those elements with students in the context of a large first-year informatics course.

cory doctorow is an science fiction/tech fiction author creating books in amazing frequency. some of his books are set in a near future where the technologies seem absolutely realistic or at least almost possible. this diploma thesis will explores how realistic those the technologies really are? using some of his works as a starting point (esp. the trilogy little brother, homeland and attack surface as well as walkaway and the novella-collection radicalized) the work should examine how much of the technology described in a »near future« settings are attainable or available today. if they don’t exist, could they be implemented/created? should they exist? the work should pose and answer technological, ethical and political questions regarding the concepts of his books. ideally, a particularily interesting technology is implemented in a prototypical way.