Preparation for seminar with group reports' discussion

A1: Mixed Methods Performed Online

An example of what you learnt when you read the report.

Thanks to this report I learnt that there are some templates of online-based software that helps to conduct mixed research – using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It seems very useful that there is software where you could link the qualitative data (for example, interviews with the data from quantitative data).

Something you especially liked with the report.

I really love the structure of the report – it seems very rational and clear even for a person who is not familiar with the topic: firstly, the definition of qualitative and quantitative methods, then the definition of mixed research method (with the explanation of what exactly is being mixed) and then the benefits, limitations  and discussion of it.

Something that can be improved.

I would add some examples of mixed researches that have already been successfully conducted and explanation why is mixed method is better for precisely this case.

A question you would like to ask the group.

Don’t you think that this “mixed method” had already been used for a long-long time as a simple combination of qualitative and quantitative methods  with correlation between them? (For example, in my master thesis I am using this sort of “mixed research” just to prove and strengthen my points).

A3: Phone versus face-to-face Qualitative Interviews in Media Technology Research

An example of what you learnt when you read the report.

I used to believe that face-to-face interviews are definitely better than phone interviews, so for me it was quite a surprise when I read that sometimes (of course depending on the field) there is no big difference in the collected data.

Something you especially liked with the report.

In this report I also admire the structure of exploring the topic.

Something that can be improved.

In my opinion, the topic is really broad and actually the conclusion that is made is not very unexpected. I would constrict the topic to any precise field of media technology and analyze the real examples with real data.

A question you would like to ask the group.

Are you conducting interviews for your master thesis? If you are which kind of interviews have you chosen and why?

5 themes / 36 comments

Reflections "after" / Theme 5

Design research topic was quite new for me. I never read academic papers on this topic, so the structure and the development of one particular idea were quite new and interesting for me. I found the lecture on design research quite nice and (what is more important) applicable to life.

During the lecture we discussed how to come up with ideas and not only how to solve appearing problems, but also how to define the problem. Professor Li gave us nice example of the case of the Hungry Bear and we‘ve got an understanding that you can never solve a problem in a good way, unless you have not defined it right.
The most interesting part of the lecture in my opinion is the discussion about “I have no great idea”. Because sometimes I feel it myself like having the idea, but I understand that it’s not a great one. Haibo gave us some advice how to start our own business – firstly, to validate an idea, get some sort of proof of concept, and even potentially get some customers, then to raise some money.

The seminar on design research I find quite useful because it gave me the sense of structure (I love to have “plans” or structures in my head, it puts in order my thoughts) what design research represents itself. We discussed the fundamental principle of design science research  -  knowledge and understanding of a design problem and its solution are acquired in the building and application of an artifact.

Then, we have been working in two seminar groups discussing the papers and creating the scheme for each one. I found pretty interesting the paper that Fernanda chose (despite it was pretty old – from 2000) – about the  Mobile information and communication tools in the hospital  where the researchers have developed mobile digital assistant as a prototype - the system that examined the application fields of mobile communication in health care environments and then developed the system based on the study. I found the method – simulation study -  quite interesting because it 'does not allow a complete evaluation of technical systems, but rather aims to obtain design proposals for a new technology from experts in the field and from future users' [1].

References: 
[1] Elske Ammenwertha, Anke Buchauera, Bernd Bludaub, Reinhold Haux Mobile information and communication tools in the hospital. Volume 57, Issue 1, January 2000, Pages 21–40 Available: [http://www.sciencedirect.com.focus.lib.kth.se/science/article/pii/S1386505699000568].

Reflections "before" / Theme 5

I chose these two following questions because in my opinion this paper itself is the perfect answer to both of them. It could become a great example for young researchers who are developing design research and confused about evaluating the results and presenting the idea.

How can media technologies be evaluated?

I think that this paper has one of the perfect examples of evaluation new media technology. The researchers are applying their technology by checking 3 main aspects of user usability: effectiveness (the possibility of accomplishing the task with the specific system), efficiency (that implies the quantity of efforts that are necessary to finish the task) and user satisfaction (this aspect is evaluation the comfort of using the system). But researchers should be very careful and pay great attention during checking and preparing users for such kind of studies. For example, as it turned out, when the participants finished the first experiment and started doing the second one, the researchers could think that they became more experienced (because they had been trained by the first experiment). But the analysis

showed that the training had no influence on efficiency (but at the same time a significant effect on effectiveness). So it could be a very high potential of a risk of users being confused by training.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

The paper could become a great example of presenting the design research work. The paper is organized into 7 sections that make the subject clear even for people who are not familiar with the topic at all (as me;-) [1]:

-introduction of the main ideas

-design guidelines along with necessary human touch perception issues

-vibrotactile coding schemes for a football game

-explaining the experimental platform along with system evaluation parameters

-presentation of user studies

-detailed user test results

-and conclusions

In my opinion the structure of presenting is very good - the main focus of it on the experimental checking- the user studies, because as far as this paper is presenting new media technology it should be evaluated to prove the quality of it.

I have chosen the high quality research paper “Social Media Recommendation based on People and Tags” by Ido Guy, Naama Zwerdling, Inbal Ronen, David Carmel, Erel Uziel IBM Research Lab.

In this design paper researchers invented a new application based on social recommendations within item recommendation within an business activity - set of organizations  that includes blogs, bookmarks, communities, wikis, and shared files [2]. The researchers propose a novel method for recommending social media items based on both related people and related tags. This social software application suite  includes seven  main social media applications that are being used: profiles (of all employees), activities, bookmarks, blogs, communities, files, and wikis [2].

The researchers evaluated their recommender system through two steps. Firstly, they conducted a user-syrvey with the sample of 200 users that has been testing about 30 used and 30 incoming tags. They made it to explore the most effective way to  build a user’s tag profile. Then they did an extensive user study that eventually showed that it's very beneficial to use tags for social media recommendation. The study itself was designed in a specific way - they tried to compare the people-based recommender (PBR), the tag-based recommender (TBR), and two combinations of these two recommenders (PTBRs) [2].  As far as the evaluation in this study is mostly based on rating an initial set of recommended items, I would recommend the researchers to try exploring the behaviour of users who regularly access the system. It could be more challenging. 

[1] Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6), 1022-1033.

[2]  “Social Media Recommendation based on People and Tags” by Ido Guy, Naama Zwerdling, Inbal Ronen, David Carmel, Erel Uziel IBM Research Lab

Reflections "after" / Theme 4

Last week studying experience was very interesting for me. As far as I have some experience in qualitative research and I enjoy using it when I am writing my academic research papers it was very interesting to get to know about some new methods that I haven't explored in depth.

In our seminar group we have been discussing three main qualitative methods: interview, focus groups and diary. When we were editing the wiki-page of the course we realized that the main tricky question that every researcher should ask yourself (it doesn't matter which method he uses) is: "Am I sure that these people are really representative of the society or the target audience you are aiming at."

 Especially interesting discussion in our group was about diary as one of the qualitative research. As far as I have experience in conducting a survey about students' media consumption habits where they should have had write a diary I can say that this method I'd really time-consuming and the results often don't match the reality. People keep forgetting about adding the information at the time they need to and in the evening that usually don't remember all the details. And as Stefan fairly noticed, if the researcher really wants to get good results, he needs to call and remind people about it all the time and this is very tiresome and exhausting. We also have been discussing another method - testing or evaluation (in our case it was the game evaluation), but we were not sure that this is the pure qualitative method.

During the lecture we discussed what is meant by qualitative and empirical data, informed opinion, subjective experience and objective knowledge, the role of time when studying technology and what make a project become research. Actually, the lecture was more or less explanation of the paper that we read so it was quite interesting to remember all main points. Especially I found very interesting in-depth telling about semiotics -the study of sign. As far as I am writing in my master thesis about Rolan Bart and his theory of signs it was nice to hear some examples of signifiers and signifieds in comics and fashion sphere. I was quite surprised with the comparison to the programming code (because comics depict dynamic activities using a static representation). But I found not very interesting the discussion of the paper at the end of class, because in my opinion the questions were kind of tricky and nobody could come up with the answer.

Reflections "before" / Theme 4

I chose the research paper “US teenagers’ perceptions and awareness of digital technology: a focus group approach”  by Heather L. Hundley and Leonard Shyles from the journal “New Media & Society” (IF=1.394).

In my opinion in this paper authors are perfectly applying one of the main qualitative methods – focus group. Focus groups is one of the forms of qualitative research when certain group of people (it's better when it represents the target audience) is asked about their ideas,  opinions,  concerns, perceptions, beliefs, relationships or attitudes to some services, products, ideas etc. The group represents an interactive group where all the participants are free to talk to other members and discuss some points. This article is a research on how teenagers are using digital media devices. The researchers were conducting focus groups with 80 middle- and high-school teenagers (there were provided 2 geographical regions for interesting regional comparisons - the eastern and western USA) [1]. The main purpose of this study is to get to know what adolescents are thinking about different kinds of digital devices - such as mobile phones, video game systems, the internet etc. and to realize which the functions they play in the daily life. There have been developed four main  themes  from 11 focus group interviews: "(1) an awareness of digital devices; (2) a sense of temporal displacement; (3) social functions; and (4) a palpable sense of risk associated with using them" [1].

According to the researchers and my surprise the use of focus groups was decided to be appropriate for the ages of the participants. But in my opinion the limitations of this method is much deeper than advantages - because in focus group participants are supposed to discuss together and express opinions. But in this age people are shy and not ready to show their real attitude to some issues, or they just wanna brag in front of mates. Also the issue with strong opinion leader who could convince everyone in his point of view could affect the results.The findings are not broad and general but thay are more focused and specific.  But I think, despite these small limitations, this approach is one of the best for such kind of study. But what I suggest the researchers for the future study is to complement the paper with quantitative methods in order to get more objective results. 

Concerning the paper “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M., I found it quite interesting, but for me some points were pretty much difficult to grasp (only when I reached the part with examples I really understood everything). The researchers are making a short overview of approaches to physical programming and focusing on the concept of actDresses (that was inspired by comic sign system and practices of clothing and accessorising) and supporting it by three example scenarios of how the concept can be used for controlling, programming, and predicting the behavior of robotic systems (e.g. using physical clothing, labels, and accessories for controlling physically embodied systems). My favorite scenario is the first one which is designed for the Pleo robot dinosaur.  

Seminar question: In your opinion, is mixed research better than using separately qualitative and quantitative?

References: 
[1] “US teenagers’ perceptions and awareness of digital technology: a focus group approach”  by Heather L. Hundley and Leonard Shyles from the journal “New Media & Society”

Reflections "after" / Theme 3

I must say that I have already had experience in working with both quantitative  (and SPSS-program in particular) and qualitative methods. Concerning quantitative methods, last year I was taking part in a mutual research “Public discussion and agenda-formation in Russia” of The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and National Research Institute - Higher School of Economics, Russia. And what about qualitative method, I usually work with it when I’m writing my course-papers. But I must confess I have never deeply thought about advantages and disadvantages of this method and probability to combine qualitative and quantitative methods.

That’s why I find this week very fruitful – it gave me a lot of reflections on both methods and I got to know about a totally new and very promising method - mixed research.  During the lecture our main focus was on applying different kind of methods to online-learning - we have looked through different types of behavior in online-environment: social presence, teaching presence, cognitive presence. It turned out that gender makes no difference at all in the amount of activities. The lecturer told us that they used the approach of autoethnography that is creating research focus, documenting personal reflection data, self-observation data, personal memory data and comparing to external data. Now we are able to describe 5 characteristics of quantitative methods, explain rationale for choosing quantitative methods, outline the challenges of quantitative method. Also during the lecture we tried to answer the questions what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge, what are its sources, what is its structure and what are its limits.

Unfortunately our SPSS-lab wasn’t very successful, because there was some kind of error in program, but I managed to practice at home. First of all, I defined a data set which contained several questions about the different platforms-usage for listening to radio. Hence, I conducted an overview analysis of the variables in the dataset.  

Then I run frequences and percentages in SPSS, by choosing a selection of variables and copied the tables from SPSS to Excel where I formed a bar-chart. The bar was presenting the total amount of people answering (100%) the people using it (90%) and the ones, who don't use pod radio (10%), displayed either wise in numbers or percentages. The final task was about crosstabs in the SPSS program – that are Suitable for occasional analysis of two or three variables; here I decided to choose web radio and pod radio as the variables – and it gave me the perfect overview of two variables at the same time. 

Reflections "before" / Theme 3

To be honest I was fascinated by both articles “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009) and “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. They are both concerning very current and up-to-date topic – online education. And as far as this sort of education is growing (and I often use it) we definitely need to increase the quality of it and understand better all the problems and details concerning it. 

The main problem of the first paper “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009)  is a very low quality of research on e-learning. The researchers are comparing online-learning and traditional way of learning. In this particular chapter the researchers are inventing a new method to collect data, that they name mixed research. Mixed research is a new  strategy of researching that  unites quantitative and qualitative analysis to achieve a more trustworthy way to do a research. In my opinion, the purpose of study more exploratory because the researches are creating a new method to grow the quality and trustworthiness of online research studies. According to Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. qualitative data have to be checked with a comparative analysis:  content analysis,  the number of words, social presence, keywords, domain analysis, taxonomic analysis and  component analysis. The researchers are claiming that if we are relying on the only one kind of analysis, there could some interpretative (hermeneutics) errors happen. They come to conclusion that using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis will help solve some kinds of problems  that one method or even several methods approaches will not [1]. But I must say that researchers totally understand that such kind of research is definitely much more complicated than simply quantitative and/or qualitative studies separately. But this new way of researching in turn will definitely increase both quality of online-learning research and all that we know about e-learning. I think that this method is a good way to combine the best parts of qualitative and quantitative analysis. But I think the paper is lacking some more information, data and, actually, critique against this method, because it can’t be so that this method is the best one in the world.

The main problem of the second paper “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. is the question of the presence of emotion in online learning. The researchers are wondering if emotion influence  the experience of online learning (as far as online learning is using new technologies). The purpose of the study is explanatory. They are using mostly quantitative methods – their data is collected from surveys, conferences, discussion transcripts and is presented in the following “Findings” part of the paper. But they also have qualitative data from the open questions in the survey. They come to conclusion that emotion may constrain learning as a distracter, but on the other hand, it may perform as an enabler in support for such activities as thinking, decision‑making, stimulation and directing [2]. And they conclude that emotions are definitely present in e-learning communities. The researchers define emotional presence as an experience which is overhang in the online environment. They also have many questions and aims for the further research (such as, e.g. 'how do emotions impact design and organization, facilitation and direct instruction' [2]?) I find this as a really good example of how qualitative methods can be used in research to obtain a very good result.

References:
[1] Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009). Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement. In T. T. Kidd (Ed.), Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for teaching practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
[2] Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. (in press). Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.

Reflections "after"/ Theme 2

During this week I have learned both practical and theoretical things that I definitely going to use in my academic researches.

First of all, I found both articles by Gregor and Sutton & Staw very useful. After reading and fruitful discussion on the seminar I have a firm definition of what is theory. We tried to find answers (and I believe we succeed :) to the following questions: What is theory? Of what is theory constructed? How could theory be expressed? How could knowledge be applied? Should the knowledge be relevant and useful in a reasonable sense? Are there some political for example or social issues that are associated with the use of the disciplinary knowledge? Now I know that theory describes, explains, enhances understanding of the world and provides predictions of what will happen in the future and to give a basis for intervention and action. Theory is explanation of why and how acts, events, structure, and thoughts occur. Theory is definitely not data, references, variables, diagrams and hypothesis, but the theory can be supported and built on them. Also we got to know 5 different types of theories (analysis, explanation, prediction, explanation and prediction, design and action), their distinguishing attributes, structural components of theory and their definitions [1].

Second of all, I found very interesting the discussion about different kind of theories during the seminar. It was interesting to develop and sort out in “Game Theory”. With my group-mates we examined the definition and applicability of this theory. We made out that Game Theory provide both explanation (with a set of mathematical tools) and prediction of possible actions of individuals participating in some sort of game. It is a theory that has its roots in EP-theory - explanation-and-prediction-theory. EP-Theory in general does not however have its aim at explaining behavior by applying math methods, but it uses psychology. Also we had a very interesting discussion about applying this theory to practice (including the discussion of the movie “21”).

Thank to our seminar group I also know more about digital politics theory that is using the internet is a positive predictor for all forms of political participation for young people, and media richness theory that is used to rank and evaluate the richness of certain communication mediums, such as phone calls, video conferencing and e-mail.

References:
[1] Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3), 611-642.

Reflections "before" / Theme 2

In very general words, theory could be explained as providing explanations, predictions and being testable.  Theory has nothing to do with a subjective opinion of a researcher. Theories are always abstract and general, and they aim to describe, explain, predict what is going to happen in the future, reveal the relation between cause and events and give a basis for intervention and action. 

Theory is the answer to the rows of WHY. Theory is about the connections between phenomena, a story about WHY acts, events, structure, and thoughts happen. References, data,  variables, diagrams and hypothesis are not theory itself. They could support the theory and be some  kind of evidence. 

I chose the research paper “A game of win–win or win–lose?Revisiting the internet’s influence on sociability and use of traditional media” from the research journal “New Media & Society” (IF=1.394) 

The article examines the influence of internet adoption and internet usage on sociability and use of traditional media. It’s difficult to allocate their theory to one class. In my opinion their theory is primary analytic and explanatory but with the elements of perspective statements. They discuss and consider the impacts of the internet on sociability and use of traditional media, and   monitor closely the connections and relationships between sociability and traditional media, which is in their turn will head them to the determination of a false connections between the sociability, use of traditional media and the internet. 

As far as their theory on one the hand is analytic they use words, diagrams and tables to represent their research. They describe what they understand under the definition of traditional media and what had happened in the past when one traditional means of media replaced another. On the other hand, their theory in explanatory (according to Gregory we could label it as a theory for understanding, type II), because they are figuring out what is the connections (and kind or connection it is) between internet’s using and sociability and spending time on traditional media. They use primary constructs, statement of relationship, scope and causal explanations. The data of this study come from a series of annual telephone surveys that were primarily conducted  in Hong Kong at the end of 2003, 2004 and 2005. They use such measurement as Internet adoption status, Sophistication of internet usage, Diversity of Online Method, Adoption history and Control variables.

I think that authors are using these theories in an excellent way because their main questions are HOW and WHY this phenomena occur – and the explanatory theory fits them perfectly. But definitely there are some limitations of it, e.g. the first limitation of the study is that now we can't clearly figure the a product of the scopes between the internet, traditional media, and sociability because there technologies is rapidly changing in the contemporary world. The second limitation is the way of causation was hypothesized. It is could be fair to argue that if the person is an introvert, he will be use internet to socialize more than to enlighten and entertain (as extroverts for example).  The third limitation is about the method that was used to evaluate the interaction influence of adoption history.