Comments on my and others blogg

Anna12 december 2013 16:44

Thanks for the tip, I did look at others but Since reflections is about what "I" specifically learned I felt like I couldn't simply "copy" any other persons thoughts and reflection. Though It did help, to se what others had wrote.

4 december 2013 15:15

Hi, well when it comes to theory I think it depends on the area of the research. In some areas there would be hard to get your theory accepted unless reviewed by other researchers in that specific area. But I think there where a lot of different opinions on that and as the teacher said during the seminar next year another opinion might turn up or another definition could be explained for theory. I feel It was nice to discuss it but to much discussion could just make people disagree more and we should just try to understand that Theory is something that is never going to be a subject that is set in stone.

29 november 2013 13:31

A great point I think, but as I was not able to attend the lecture that week I did not know these things. It is good thing that you forwarded this information to me and I can absolutely agree with what you say about we not talking to more people because of "new media". My point was not to say that we do but that we reach out to more people, saying that before it would have taken longer time for us to get information from around the world while now it could take us seconds. But as we only had a limited amount of words to put into each post I had to limit my explanation on some questions because I was interested in answering others more thoroughly.

29 november 2013 13:37

Good questions you have there, that I have not considered myself. You asked "What does that make us?" Well the first thing I thought of when reading that was "we are all liars" and we kind of are, if you really think about it do we go one day without telling some kind of lie? I would say we do not, and we probably don't do it on purpose every time and we are not bad people because of it, we are just Humans.

29 november 2013 13:41

I agree with you, science for me when I was a kid was always something strict and boring. But now I see why the complexity of it and how it sometimes can lead to "endless" conversations and discussion that in the end can change how you think about a certain thing.

29 november 2013 13:46

Thanks for that comment I'll try to answer the questions you have about it. Well, the big companies changed it because they put legal pressure on YouTube to change. A lot of the companies thought that the laws and regulations was not followed completely by YouTube and that is why we have the YouTube we have today. And the users have not just been happy about the changes so of course regular users like you and me, have pressured YouTube to stay as "open" ass possible to us. Hope that made it a bit clearer for you else I would refer you to actually read the text(If you got time) it actually had a lot of interesting history on YouTube, things I did not know before.

19 november 2013 11:50

Thank you Jenny, I appreciate the comment, I didn't know If this would be a good example our not but thought it was something that I could relate to, not just because I am a women but because it is something that is happening right now and not something that happened a hundred years ago.

19 november 2013 11:56

Thank you for that comment. It feels good to know I got some things right because I was really unsure when reading the text. I have read things like this before but it still makes me confused at times. So getting confirmation on that is appreciated.

Theme 6: Reflection [post 2]

So this last week we talked about qualitative and case study research. I thought it was interesting though hard to find both a qualitative and a case study research. Because my lack of information about case study research It took me longer to find that kind of research but on the seminar it was described more in detail what it really was about. Though I wish I had that information before I started to search on a paper with that specific criteria.

It was interesting to talk and se what kind of research everyone else had and though we (in our group) agreed on what qualitative and case study research was we had very different papers to present and it took some time to get the right definition down on paper.

I felt I learned more about case study research this week and it got me to understand how it can be useful, especially in this area that we study. And as discussed on the seminar not all research papers that say they are case studies are actually defined like it but it is some times hard to draw the line on what is a case study and what is not.

I will quickly say something about the course as a whole and I think its been really interesting though sometimes hard. I liked the seminars and how it helped us understand some of the topics in a better way. I feel like, even though I have had similar courses trough my bachelor studies this course has given me a more depth into what Research and Theory is and how to use methods in the right way. And it did help to know some of these things before hand because it helped when it came to searching for research and finding the right thing for the right theme.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research [post 1]

Qualitative research: “The validity of game-based assessment of persistence” (2013) Ventura.M, Shute.V, Florida state university, USA. Published in the journal of Computer in human behavior.

1.Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The research paper selected for this week I thought was qualitative, but in the end it used both qualitative and quantitative methods. But since I have no more time to change to another paper I will use the one I chose and try to answer the questions as good as I can. So this research paper used observation of their collected data. They where looking at if persistence in game play was valid. They collected game-play data and analysed it to see if persistence had to do with how difficult a specific problem in the game was to solve. The benefits of observing and analysing data is that you can get more accurate data and with this small focus group it would be easier to find specific details in the study. The limitations are though that you cannot get the children's point of view of the game and see why they where persistent.

2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

Not more than I already knew, and because the paper was not really good for this weeks theme it was hard to get any more knowledge about qualitative methods.

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of qualitative method or methods have been improved?

They could have observed the children more thoroughly, by sitting beside them and see if they quit right away if a problem was to difficult to solve and they could have observed their reaction. They could also have seen if solving problems made the persistence of a particularly hard problem be longer. They could also have been able to analyse the kids facial expression and body language, to se if that made an impact on their persistence.

Case study research: “Structuring the discourse on social networks for learning: Case studies on blogs and microblogs” (2013) Marques. M.A, Krejci.R, Siqueria. S, Pimentel.M, Braz.H.M, Federal university of the state of Rio the janeiro. Published in Computers in human behaviour journal.

Briefly explain to a first year student what a case study is.

A case study, is research that is specific and special. This means that the authors are trying to study something that has never been studied before or something that is a special case of another research study. There is a lot of argument on what a case study is, I have during this week read a lot of different opinions on what it is and what it is not. But I think that Eisenhardt has the best explanation for it, and in the first sentence I tried to explain my point of view of what a Case study is.

2. Use the “Process of Building Theory from a Case Study Research” (Eisenhardt. summarised in Table 1) to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

The case study I read was actually very nicely done. It was organised and they knew exactly what their study was going to be about. They used both Qualitative and Quantitative research methods to get a better understanding of their study. They studied the learning possibility when using blogs or microblogs. They let student use the blogs and so observed and made interviews with the students to get their point of view on the use of these blogs as a learning tool. Similar research has been done before, but mostly on a technical point and not on social network or on blogs. The study could have contained more participants to get more accurate data, and to get a more understanding on the human behavior. 

References:

Marques. M.A, Krejci.R, Siqueria. S, Pimentel.M, Braz.H.M, “Structuring the discourse on social networks for learning: Case studies on blogs and microblogs” (2013) Federal university of the state of Rio the janeiro. Published in Computers in human behavior journal.

Ventura.M, Shute.V, “The validity of game-based assessment of persistence” (2013) Florida state university, USA. Published in the journal of Computer in human behavior.

Eisenhardt M.K “Building Theories from Case Study Research” (1989) Standford University, USA. 

Theme 5: Reflection [post 2]

So this weeks lectures where interesting. In one we got deeper into the paper we had read to that specific lecture and actually got to discuss it. In the other the guest lecture looked in to the actually topic more and tried to teach us how to work in a certain way, and the guest lecture made it really fun.

The lecture by Ylva Ferneaus was interesting because we got the opportunity to discuss the paper she had written and got new updated information about it. The lecture per say was about the paper so I learned no further about it from that. But it was interesting to her other peoples suggestions on future studies in this field. Though not many people where eager to discuss things, I think it was interesting hearing directly from the author herself and you got to ask questions about things you might not have understood completely before.

The other lecture by Haibo Li was also interesting by the fact that he talked about how you can come up with an idea and what to do with that idea in the research process. He also gave examples and gave us tips from his own experiences. I felt like I in the end got a better understanding about what kind of research there is out in the world and that whatever idea you have you can make it happen as long as you give it a try. Though not all ideas might be good, you should test and idea, because you might end up with something incredibly good and might surprise yourself in the process.

Theme 5: Design research [post 1]

How can media technologies be evaluated?

Personally I think that is a hard question to answer completely, but if I look at the texts we have read for this week I will try to evaluate it. Media technology is a pig area of research, it has many different branches stretching out from this subject, anything from web, to communication and technology. When researching media technology you can see research papers that want to understand technology better and try to study it. From the text we read we can see that they are both about design in a system, but they differ. One is more focused on the technological part of design while the other is more focused on the communicative part. And this is what Media technology is all about, you can research similar areas but with different focuses.

What role will prototypes play in research?

If this questions mean “what role will it have in the future”, then I think it will have a bigger role in some research areas and in some areas it will not change at all. Prototypes will probably make research more “real” as in you could actually, with a prototype make people se that your research works. I also think it can enhance the research by giving an actual example of that research. But for me I think it depends what kind of business you are in and in the Media technology business or area it will have a bigger role than say for example physiology areas. That does not mean I don’t think prototypes could help in other areas but that Media technology will have better use of it.

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

As the questions says it is “proof of concept” meaning that you can prove that the concept you are out of using could work in a real life situation. Or at least that is what Haibo Li and his colleges are trying to explain in their research paper. Not all concepts are good or will work in real life so to make a prototype and test it would make you see if it could work or not. If you would not do it, it could result in you having to change the concept after a long time of research and have to start all over again, but by making a prototype you could avoid it.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

A prototype is a “mini version” of what you want to create or just a “test version” of what you are trying to develop. For example if you try creating an application you might not have all the resources right away and so to get resources you might try to pitch the idea to someone by showing of a prototype of that idea. The limitations on prototypes though are that they are not a complete product and can be lacking in functions and its exact interaction between product and human. Prototypes are sometimes limited in what they can do because they are for example not made in the exact material as it should be or the program doesn’t work as it should because of limited time on the project.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

I would present it in a way that people could actually see the design and maybe even try it out. Because else the design is just numbers on a paper and not something real and I think it would be more interesting for people who read or hear about it to try it or see if it works(trough video etc.). For example, in Fernaeus and Jacobsson research they talked about a robot called “Pleo” that looks like a dinosaur. Who would not want to actually se how it worked and you put cloths on it. So the best way I could think of communicating or presenting design research is by showing(trough video) or letting people experience the research first hand.

Side note:

The things that I learned from the two text where a few, so I embedded them in the questions to make my answers more clear.

References:

Fernaeus.Y, Jacobsson.M, Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses (2009) Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista Sweden.

Réhmen.S, Sun.J, Liu.L, Li.H, Turn your mobile into the ball: Rendering live football game using vibrations (2008) IEEE Transactions on multimedia, VOL.10

Theme 4: Reflection [post 2]

I was not able to attended Wednesdays lecture and can therefore not evaluate my feelings about it. So I will talk mostly about the seminar for this week and what we talked about and what I learned of it. So this weeks topic was about Quantitative methods and we all had chosen a paper that had used that kind of method in their research. Something I felt I learned this week is that it doesn’t always have to be clear what kind of method you are using. One method that seems like a Qualitative research may have been used in a way that is more Quantitative and vice versa. It is very interesting to se others point of view on this method and on the topic of the different research we all had chosen. 

The assignment that we had during the seminar was also interesting and it made you think harder about what your research is really about and how you could categorise parts of the research to get a clearer view of the main point in it. For me it was hard to categorise the research paper I had chosen because I had never thought of doing it before and it was not always clear what the point was.

Now that I think back on the seminar, it is hard for me to summarise the whole week only having the seminar as a reference because we did not discuss much and I do not have the lecture to back me up on some of the things we did. But I feel like I have definitely learned more about Quantitative research and what methods can be used. And I also learned how different research papers can use the same Quantitative method in different ways and get different or similar results. It has been interesting and learning even though I felt I missed an important part of this weeks theme.