Designing and Executing a Large-Scale User Study on Scientific Text Simplification
Status: open / Type of Theses: Bachelor Theses / Location: Dresden
This topic is about making scientific texts more understandable. The goal is to automatically rewrite or translate academic articles so they become clear not only to field experts but also to researchers from other disciplines and interested laypeople. This role involves planning and conducting a user study. It’s a unique chance to actively engage in a project that could transform how we interact with scientific knowledge. You’ll gain experience in research methodology and user study design, directly contributing to making science more accessible to a broader audience.
What are the tasks?
- Designing a comprehensive user study (e.g., select and preprocess the scientific texts for the participants).
- Collecting and analyzing the response from the participants (e.g., who summarized or simplified scientific texts in their own words) so that the responses can be used as a ground truth (“perfect texts”) for AI models.
- If you have experience with programming: Implement generative AI models (e.g., GPT-based) which can summarize or simplify scientific texts automatically.
What prerequisites do you need?
- A passion for making scientific knowledge accessible to a broader audience.
- Strong interest in research, user study design, and data analysis.
- Good organizational skills to effectively design and manage a large user study (funded by the chair).
- Basic programming skills.