Lost in motivation

Motivation is a really tricky thing. Sometimes it seems that it's motivated people who are rolling the Earth (not Ralf Ringer shoes :)). Recently I've been thinking on motivation system for under- and post-graduate students in order to improve their results and gently push them towards self-study.

To tell the truth I was inspired by Steven MacConnell's book "Professional Software Development" where he describes the programme for the professional growth which is used in the Construx company. It gives quite clear picture of professional growth based upon improvement of experience of SW developer (side remark: funny, I've just noticed, that SW stands for both 'Software' and 'Star Wars' as well :)), and was created to motivate self-study, professionalism in general, communication etc.

So here is a sketch of what came into my mind. But in the first place some axioms, which I've tried to follow:
- people's relations are prior.
- benefit for the group.
- reasonable formalism -- there should be clear rules, but these rules should not constrain one's scientific growth and trajectory.
- motivation system should not lead to envy, misjudging, grievance etc. (hopefully)

...a-a-and here it comes:
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Student of the Month title is established accompanied by a humble reward. The winner is defined by the following measures (the calculation of final decision is yet to be thought about):
- Defense of the thesis.
- Passed exam.
- Personal grant/scholarship obtained.
- Participation in the process of winning group grant, contract (helping with aplicatin, making research for a scientific scientific reserve, reviews etc.).
- Awards in competitions.
- Receiving professional certificates.
- Documents, which acknowledge usage of scientific results in real systems.
- Published papers in journals, conference proceedings.
- Oral and poster reports made on conferences.
- Reports on inner group seminars.
- Scientific service for organization of conferences, workshops, journal reviews.
- Source code of algorithms and modules, which can be used by other members of the group (with a short how-to documentation/manual). Open-source is highly encouraged.
- Scientific web-publication (posts in blogs, personal web-site etc.)
- Attracting new members to the group.
- Various proposals to improve group's organization and working.
- Transition to the next Level (see below).
- Marriage, birth of the child and so on.

Attributes (to think further):
- Challenge cup
- Hat/Crown/Helmet of the Winner.
- (something else).

Remarks:
- The winner is defined at the beginning of each month.
- There might be no winner at all.
- If uncertain situation arises then group members to decide the winner themselves (via open or secret voting or something like that).
- Think about Student of the Year (with extended reward) and Student of the Half-Year.
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Levels - designed to show ones progress and scientific growth.

Level 1. Entry level. Very small experience in scientific research, writing, programming etc.

Level 2. Small experience in programming in the major domain. Knowledge of essential books (2-3) and some publications related to thesis. Short survey on the thesis theme.

Level 3. Average programming experience in the major domain. Quite good knowledge of books (5-6) and publications related to thesis. Knowledge of essential books (2-3) on neighboring themes. Good knowledge of publications made by leading specialists during last 3 years. The emergence of the second major. 1-2 written thesis chapters or 2-3 good journal papers. Scientific consulting/joint research with the student.

Level 4. Programming experience in the major domain is significantly above average. Very good knowledge of books (9-10) and publications related to thesis. Good knowledge of books (5-6) on neighboring majors. Good knowledge of publications made by leading specialists during last 5 years. The emergence of the second major. Thesis draft, or 4-5 good journal papers, or participation in writing joint monograph.

Level 5. Ready to independent scientific work. Defended PhD thesis. Great knowledge of books (14-15) and publications related to thesis. Good knowledge of books (6-7) on neighboring majors. Very good knowledge of publications made by leading specialists for the major during last 5 years and good knowledge of publications made by leading specialists for the neighboring majors during last 3 years. Reasonably good possession of the second specialization. Own published monograph.

Notes:
- levels are necessary for writing applications for grants and projects. A student can attract other group students only if he or she has level 3 or higher. Besides, only students with lower or equal level can be considered as collaborators. Only students at level 5 can invite PhDs as collaborators. I hope that this rule will push students to promote to higher levels to make their own projects.
- transition on each level can be made with violation of desirable achievement (for example level 5 can be reached without defending PhD).
- to approve book reading the student should make a report on the group seminar which states what information from the book and in what way can used to obtain dissertation goals. Some analysis of the approach should be made and it's quite desirable that some discussion could be made on this theme. Short excuse-phrases like "I'd like to use method X, I hope it'll work", should not score in no way, there should be some speculations behind this.
- student who only read books and don't do anything else should not be promoted to the next level. Knowledge is good only when combined with practice.
- a book should not be scientific in the first place. It's enough that the book contains useful ideas or approaches which can be used to make disseration (good examples: biographies of known people, some books which develop imagination, like 'Alice in Wonderland' etc.).