Facharbeit (special academic Abitur-project)

While I was in the Oberstufe in Hamburg, students doing their Abitur were allowed to undertake a special academic project in one of their two intensive course subjects. Such project is called Facharbeit. For such project, the students were required to produce a piece of work on their own and to present it to a special teaching committee. Just like a little dissertation. The project was required to show a deeper insight into the subject area and demonstrate an ability in problem solving and independent critical analysis. In case of a good mark, the project assessment can replace a part of the assessments for the intensive courses in the final average result.

I have conducted such a project for computer science. It was mainly concerned with software engineering and programming. The title of the project was:
"TeleList" - Object Oriented System Analysis and Database Design; Implementation of a Catalogue-example in C++.

The idea for the project came from my decision to upgrade the catalogue system of the students' library I was administering from paper cards to a computer based system. The piece of software I produced for the project is essentially the same as I produced for the library, except for little cosmetic changes and the essay/report I had to write for the presentation.

The mark I received for the project was a bit disappointing and surprising to me. To be honest, taking in account the average level of knowledge in Informatics among the most students and the piece of work I produced, I was hoping for 15 points. The sheer volume of the project was worth it. So, can you imagine my disappointment when I received 13 points and when I asked for the reason, the teachers told me: "Too many typing mistakes" !!!! Personally I believe, that the true reason was that I was the first student doing a Facharbeit in computer science at that school and they were simply afraid to create a precedence case of a student receiving 100% for a special academic project. Well, I will leave this kind of behaviour uncommented in order to avoid swearing ;).

You can download the project files below.