Theme 4

 The article that I chose for this week’s assignment is ”Knowledge and networks: An experimental test of how network knowledge affects coordination” by Daniel Enemark, Mathew D. McCubbins, Nicholas Weller.

The motivation for the paper lies in a previous argument that adding connections to a network or changing the structure of existing connections in a network can support successful coordination. However, changing connections or network structure can also have negative effects and there is therefor a need to search for an alternative way to add connections when dealing with network coordination problems.

The article presents experimental evidence that a network doesn’t have to change structure to increase people’s knowledge and coordination, but that people quickly can coordinate over networks when they have the opportunity to observe the full network; a more complete view over the network leads to faster coordination.

By using an experimental method they are able to test how the design of a network affects the coordination and performance. Their study is built on two main theories – graph theory and game theory. One issue that is brought up is when performing experimental tasks there are obstacles to generalizability which means that no matter of how many tasks they run, they can’t be sure to demonstrate that the effects are universal. However, by using two different coordination forms and a broad range of network structures the range of environment helps in improving the generalization.

For this particular study the use of a experimental method is really helpful since the authors wants to observe how people interact and coordinate within certain networks. One thing that they didn’t consider in their study is the knowledge of different network structure that the subjects already possess. This may have an impact on the outcome of the study.

Qualitative methods are helpful when looking at certain behaviors, and in this case how people interact with a system. By only collecting data regarding how people for example think that they would act (a more quantitative method) would not only be less detailed but could also provide wrong information about what is really going on in the situation. What people think that they do and what they actually do are two completely different things.

For this week we also read the article “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Fernaeus, Y and Jacobsson, M. The article presents ActDress which is a form of physical programming using physical markings to be attached directly to a digital artifact. Examples could be using physical labels, clothing or other accessories for controlling physically embodied systems.

The motivation and purpose of the ActDress concept is to provide the end-user with their own control and programming language when it comes to electronic devices.

A question that I would like to discuss for next time is whether qualitative or quantitative methods are becoming more important in our digitalized world?

Reflections on Theme 3 – Quantitative Methods

This week’s topic was about quantitative methods, more specifically what’s included within the concept and when to use it. We had a guest lecturer, Martha Cleveland-Innes, whom we also read an article by - “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment”. Martha brought up some really good points about quantitative methods in her lecture, since she has a background as a quantitative researcher her insight into the method was highly defined and well grounded.

Some of the key points during her presentation were: when to use a quantitative method, what the difference is between using a quantitative and a qualitative method and what questions should be asked when deciding what method to use. She also discussed when to use a “mixed method” which was also the topic of our second article for the week - “Mixed Research and Online Learning: Strategies for Improvement”. Martha also pointed out that since we are now living in a technical and digitalized world with more and more data it’s even more important to look into different options of what method to use when doing research. Not only sticking to what’s most convenient for the researcher and what the researcher is used to but to be creative and come use methods that fits the purpose of the study.

She also talked about using deductive and inductive principles when approaching a research area. Often it’s common that people think that one or the other is the best principle but Martha argues that they are both important and that it’s actually an iterative process between the two principles. Deductive means that you start with a more general principle and then go towards more specific goals, whilst the inductive principles starts by looking at the specific details and then goes on towards a more general view. 

We also had a lab exercise with Ester Appelgren, unfortunately the software crashed a lot in the previous group so we never conducted the actual lab. We did however get an introduction of the software that we were suppose to use for analyzing quantitative datasets.

Theme 3

-->

The articles for this week’s theme are connected to research and research quality on online learning environments. Since the rise of the digital age this topic has been highly discussed but the research regarding the matter has been pore and with low quality. With poorly conducted studies there has been a need to use mixed research to fully address the problems and issues related to the matter.

The first article "Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment" by Martha Cleveland-Innes consists of two main phases which are separated by two main questions. The first questions is whether there is an emotion connected to an online learning environment, and the second phase consists of the reconsideration of the role of emotion in the conceptual model of online learning.

Emotions are an important factor for students’ success in the learning process in an online teaching environment. Research in negative and positive emotions indicate that people that experience stress and anger tend to make more inappropriate decisions than positive emotions.

The article presents the results of a quantitative user study which main target audience were graduate students participating in online courses. The first phase of the study resulted in a more deep understanding of when emotions play a part in online learning environments. The second phase showed that the expressed language in discussion forums lay far beyond the expression of social presence.

The second article “Mixed Research and Online Learning: Strategies for Improvement” by Patrick R. Lowenthal brings up the issues and complexities that arises with research on online learning communities. The article argues that the quantitative data set that has been collected in previous studies on online learning sites can hardly answer all research questions. Often the results have been directly compared to face-to-face learning environments and not looking deeply enough into the dynamics of online learning communities. The non-diversity in research methods has lead to a one-way understanding of the online media, while missing the important nuances that actually do exist.

The article therefor focuses on explaining the importance of using a mixed research processes to fully understand the complexity of online learning issues. The paper also defines and gives a background of what is included in the concept of mixed research and mixed research methods.

Mixed research consists of using both quantitative and qualitative approaches while conducting a study of some sort. Believers in this research argue that this is the best method to better understand the research problem. But formulating the right mixed research questions is hard, since the questions should not only be quantitatively or qualitatively formulated, and so the paper presents some guidelines for how this is done.

While reading these texts I learned differences in using quantitative and qualitative methods in research. I was pretty confident about what they meant before hand but now I have a better understanding of when to use them (at least when it comes to studies regarding online learning environment).

Reflections on Theme 2 – Theory

-->

During our second week, and third seminar, the theme was ”theory” and what is included and not included in the concept of theory.

Before going into this week’s theme I thought I had a pretty good idea of what theory was, but the more I read about it the more confused I got, or at least in the beginning. Even going into the seminar I wasn’t sure I’d fully understood the concept completely. I did however feel that I got a better understanding during the seminar when we were able to discuss it more deeply.

Something that I learned that I hadn’t considered before was what defines a “good” theory and what’s a “bad” theory.  I also realized that the view of what theory is that I had before was more of the common use of the word and not the research and academic definition. Meaning that when we use the word “theory” in our daily language it doesn’t correspond to the specific definition of what a theory is that is being used in the academia.

Theme 2

1.              Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not.

Theory can be defined in a lot of ways. According to the dictionary it could mean “a mental view” or “contemplation”, a “ conception or mental scheme of something to be done”, for “the method of doing something”. A normal view of theory is to see it as a way of providing explanations and predictions but also to be testable.  Theories can also be viewed as universal statements, where the statements are tested against observations of what happens in the real world. However theory itself is not to be confused or mixed with results, references or data of research. The word theory is often overused in a way that it’s sometimes almost becomes meaningless in its context. Since the description is so diverse there is a lack of consensus what theory really is and therefor how to use theory in a right and “strong” way. To have a strong theory it’s important to ask why curtain data occurred or why particular findings were important for the result.

As an example of showing where strong theory is needed I want you to look at this “Fanta commercial”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5rMBvuJMM

Here is a great example of where the data collected would show that there is correlation between people drinking Fanta and having bad haircuts. However the data itself would not say anything about what is causing the other, therefor only using the data would possible come to the wrong conclusions. One conclusion could for example be that drinking Fanta leads to your hair falling off. Here there should be different kinds of theories applied. One theory could be that there are enzymes in Fanta that makes your hair fall off. Theories that are looking into more specifics of where the data came from and why, is in this case essential. In this case the explanation turns out to be dependent on a third part. There is a middle link connecting the two phenomena, which is an almost blind hairdresser who gives out free Fanta to everyone getting a haircut. Only collecting the data that “people with bad hair drink Fanta” would never in itself reveal the real reason for why this is true. Strong theory is grounded on underlying processes so as to understand systematic reasons for a particular occurrence or nonoccurrence.

2.              Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

I chose the article “Visual Methods for Analyzing Time-Oriented Data”. The article uses a design and action theory type according to Gregor’s definition of this theory type. The article analyzes different visual methods that have been used to previously visualize data but argues that the time aspect hasn’t been fully looked at and that this parameter has to be taken in account when developing new frameworks and methods. I found that the ground for their theory was well discussed and also why this was important to look at. The theory is also close connected to the EP theory which goes deeper into the understanding of when, why, how, where and what will be.

3.              Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories

Dealing with a lot of theories, which I found was the case in my paper, it can become almost a bit to much theory based. A lot of the theories used are also based on previous research and their theories and this makes it even harder to distinguish what theories lead to other theories, especially for the design theory method which rely on “what is to become” more than “why something is becoming”.

Reflections on Theme 1 – Research Publications/Theory of Science

During this introduction week we started by having one seminar about research publications. This seminar also familiarized us a bit more with the topics in the class and we decided on the groups for the project as well. The research papers that were presented varied a lot and it became even clearer to me that “media technology” is a broad research area. Even though most papers were in some way related to social media and social networks there were also other papers with a more technical approach, like computer graphics, simulation, visualization etc. I think it is a good thing that we’re finally getting to focus a bit on what research areas there are and how to search in journals and papers after articles related to curtain topics and areas.

One thing that I’ve noticed that I believe is a bit confusing is the value of the impact factor. I believe that this number varies a lot also regarding to research areas. A specific impact factor in physics doesn’t necessarily stand for the same quality as the same impact factor in chemistry. Since media technology is a fairly new topic and subject I would want to know where media technology is on this impact factor scale as well.

During our second seminar (with Leif Dahlberg) we spent most of the time discussing Bertrand Russell’s book “The Problems of Philosophy”. I had a really hard time understanding the concepts of philosophy while reading the book, but it made more sense after discussing the questions in small groups. I still find philosophy rather complicated and it definitely brings up a new way of thinking that I’m not used to. However, I found it much easier to deal with the different theories and ideas connected to the subject when discussing it in the group.

I wish we had spent a little more time on the connection between engineering and philosophy. Even though most time was spent on questions like “what is knowledge?” I still didn’t really grasp the connection to engineering in a sense that philosophy could be a helping tool for engineers.

However, I did noticed that when I was reading a proposition about “innovation and research initiatives in the Stockholm region” and they discussed the importance of keeping Stockholm on top as a “knowledge-city” I found myself pausing for a minute… 

Theme 1

The IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics is a journal that present important research results and state-of-the-art seminal papers within subjects related to computer graphics and visualization techniques, systems, software, hardware, and user interface issues. (Impact factor 2.215)

Visualization Rhetoric: Framing Effects in Narrative Visualization

The article discusses the complexity of visualizing data. How social and cultural norms affect the end-users understanding and interpretation of the visualization, and also how important the creators task is to design an objective visualization without ambiguity issues. The important task of deciding what to include and what to leave out creates a lot of questions regarding the creator’s objectivity. To deal with all these influences there has to be strategies, which are discussed as rhetoric techniques, objective ways of dealing and handling with visualized data. The contribution of this article is to present these techniques and categorize them so that it makes it easier for the end-user to, in a critical way, look at narrative visualizations. It also explains that it's not only the visualization itself that has to be reviewed but in what context the visualization is meant to be used. Questions like who is the audience and what is the purpose of the visualization were explained and discussed. In the beginning of the article there are a lot of references to "InfoVis" but no real explanation of what it is. It kind of just assumes that the reader knows. They could have explained that it is a toolkit to create interactive data visualizations.

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Russell defines “sense-data” as things that are immediately known to us, such as colors, sounds, smells, and so on. This data gives us a sort of immediate sensation of how things are and appear to us; however, having a sensation of a color is not the same as the color itself. The color itself, together with things such as tables and other surroundings that we get a sensation of, is in Russell’s book referred to as a “sense-datum”, not to be mistaken with his definition of “sense-data”. 

Russell introduces these different notations to help in answering two questions related to sense-data and sense-datum. In his questions he is asking whether tables exist or not and what the sense-data is and is not telling us. He then also discusses what consequences this brings to the answers.

(1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?

2. What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

A proposition assigns curtain properties to a specific object. Russell also says that we can’t understand a proposition if we are not fully acquainted of all the constituents of the proposition. One example of a proposition could be “Bertrand Russell was a philosopher”.

A statement means something involving a description, which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.

3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

A definite description is a description that denotes only one singular object. This object is the nature of our knowledge however, we are not acquainted with the object. Phrases of the form “the so-and-so” is what Russell defines an object with a “definite description” unlike an “ambiguous description” of an object which is on the form “a so-and-so”.

4. In chapter 8 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 9 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

One problem that Russell’s addressing is that a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premisses from which it is deduced are true.

Another point that Russell addresses is that we by no means easily can discover criterions for intuitive beliefs, which leads Russell to a conclution that all our knowledge of truths is infected with some degree of doubt, and a theory which ignores this fact would be plainly wrong.