this is what I sent, sorry if there are grammatical errors/spelling mistakes...
Borna Safai, D-01
2005-11-09
borna@kth.se
Master's thesis proposal
I have since about three years back been a tutor for the courses of the Ruhí institute in Sweden. These courses are conduct in study circles, whose goal is to develop qualities such as social competence, ethics and morals, and courage. This is based on studying holy writings, reflecting upon them and discussing with the other participants, with the help of the tutor. There are also practical exercises for every book which mean that one "serves" in a social context on a level that progresses in the higher courses. The courses are ordered in a sequence of seven books, where the last one gives training in becoming a tutor for books 1-6. This means that the system is self sustaining with tutors.
All this is controlled by the Swedish Bahá'í Institute, which has the responsibility of promoting this process. To organize it a national coordinator has been assigned, who has the overall responsibility for the planning and execution of the courses. To the help of the national coordinator there are regional coordinators, who have the same responsibility as the national coordinator, but on their own regional level. These are often assigned according to county. Their job is to gather statistics of current courses, who is tutoring, who is participating, etc., and to report this to the national coordinator. Beyond this, there are others with the need of accessing the statistical information.
During the entire time of this activity, there has been no common, uniform system to manage the ever-growing crowd of participants. All tutors and coordinators have used their own systems, which have not always been compatible with each other, and any compilation of statistics has not been viable without great difficulties. Thus, it's been difficult to keep track of the development in the country. The tutors have not been able have an easy way of reporting new and finished study circles, but it has been done in many different ways - e-mail, phone, paper, etc. It is only recently that a somewhat developed system has been taking shape, using Excel sheets and a report system on the web, but they are still not integrated with each other, and not available to all.
What I have planned on doing as my master's thesis is to examine whether it is possible to design an interface, preferably web based, which is suited to all parts, and which is at the same time easy to learn and use. It should, in other words, be suited to:
My main question is whether this is possible at all to implement, or if the requirements are too different and contradictory. One can for example assume that the national coordinator could use a bit more time to get to know the whole system, whereas the tutors preferably would want everything to work at once without reflecting over the system. At the same time, both need access to the same information, and that's the main problem that has to be solved.
I have talked to the Swedish Bahá'í Institute and have their approval to do a master's thesis on this, now I hope that it is of sufficient scope according to KTH to do it as a master's thesis in HCI.
Borna Safai
All this is controlled by the Swedish Bahá'í Institute, which has the responsibility of promoting this process. To organize it a national coordinator has been assigned, who has the overall responsibility for the planning and execution of the courses. To the help of the national coordinator there are regional coordinators, who have the same responsibility as the national coordinator, but on their own regional level. These are often assigned according to county. Their job is to gather statistics of current courses, who is tutoring, who is participating, etc., and to report this to the national coordinator. Beyond this, there are others with the need of accessing the statistical information.
During the entire time of this activity, there has been no common, uniform system to manage the ever-growing crowd of participants. All tutors and coordinators have used their own systems, which have not always been compatible with each other, and any compilation of statistics has not been viable without great difficulties. Thus, it's been difficult to keep track of the development in the country. The tutors have not been able have an easy way of reporting new and finished study circles, but it has been done in many different ways - e-mail, phone, paper, etc. It is only recently that a somewhat developed system has been taking shape, using Excel sheets and a report system on the web, but they are still not integrated with each other, and not available to all.
What I have planned on doing as my master's thesis is to examine whether it is possible to design an interface, preferably web based, which is suited to all parts, and which is at the same time easy to learn and use. It should, in other words, be suited to:
- the national coordinator who should have access to everything
- the regional coordinators who should be able to see their region
- the tutors who should be able to report started and finished study circles
- those who only want to see reports of the statistics and development.
My main question is whether this is possible at all to implement, or if the requirements are too different and contradictory. One can for example assume that the national coordinator could use a bit more time to get to know the whole system, whereas the tutors preferably would want everything to work at once without reflecting over the system. At the same time, both need access to the same information, and that's the main problem that has to be solved.
I have talked to the Swedish Bahá'í Institute and have their approval to do a master's thesis on this, now I hope that it is of sufficient scope according to KTH to do it as a master's thesis in HCI.
Borna Safai
the original (in Swedish) can be found here
Greetings from the USA.
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