Comments

Comments:

Hey Johan,

I see your point but I don't agree with you. I believe a study with ten people could be a qualitative study, maybe not in all areas and maybe the paper you read should have used another one. But I think in some cases, if the study is very narrow and only concerns a specific case, you could evaluate ten people and get a valid result. Of course you can not generalize the case to a whole country or a whole city but only to the specific narrow case.

Anyway, thank you for some interesting reading.http://dm2572theroyandmethod.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-6-reflection.html

I do believe that visual programming could give you a deeper understanding since it's easier to se how everything is connected than for example in Python. So I don't think Python provides a better picture of how computers are built. I agree with you that physical programming could be used as "programming for dummies" as you call it, but I would consider having a visual programming language in our basic courses. I think it is easier to see the flow and fallow the process in a programming with visual programming than with Python and my opinion is that the most important thing to get on basic level is understanding on how it works.http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/12/reflections-on-theme-5.html?showComment=1387464583410#c4074838337554416737

Thanks for your comment.

The results of the study varied but the students who used the web-based writing program in general had a greater development during the course, especially in content and organization. Even though I believe web-based system lack some qualities I do think it will be used more in the future. It is efficient and less time consuming to use. I would prefer a mix of web-based tutoring and class held lectures.http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html?showComment=1387464074808#c7146633613720912358

Hi Micke!

I was also thinking about that it is impossible to get perfect results since people interpret things differently and react differently to different situations and from day to day. Say that one of your interviewees had an awful day maybe he/she will express him/her in a different way than usual. This will in some extent affect your results. What I think is important to remember is to keep this in mind when you are researching and try to determine your studies weaknesses and how to avoid falling in to pitfalls.http://kjellnas.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_18.html#comment-form

Hi Jenny,

I agree with you. As I wrote, one of many benefits with questionnaires is the possibility of anonymity. What I was trying to highlight was the disadvantages of using questionnaires as a qualitative method. I would personally consider questionnaires as a better quantitative method than a qualitative method since it's difficult to get a deeper understanding of the participants through a questionnaire.http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html?showComment=1387401321074#c970426422284490336

I do not think physical programming will take over entirely, but I do believe it will expand. I can't imagine that it will over power Python as programming language at KTH. It would be interesting looking at the possibilities of visual programming. To me it seems more logical than for example Python. What is your opinion about visual programming?
http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/12/reflections-on-theme-5.html?showComment=1387401797273#c4070148017415898783

I see what your point, but I would rather prefer starting with a low-fidelity prototype since it is cheaper to develop and often takes less time and after that do a high-fidelity prototype. Another good thing with low-fidelity prototypes is that they are often not totally developed and often more like a "sketch" which invites the target group to criticize and evaluate the product with out having a clear image of it. Just like you say, one risk is that the users may evaluate the prototype itself more than the overall concept.
http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-5-design-research.html?showComment=1387402200365#c5135925500224663824

In my case I was lucky, I don't think I would have gotten the as good results as I did if I had done it the other way around. My idea was to get some knowledge of the test persons' habits through the questionnaire and then get deeper understanding of people with appropriate habits and their usage during the interviews.

I do believe it could have been a good experience making a mistake as well since than I would have gotten a greater knowledge about quantitative and qualitative methods right away rather than now almost almost a year later.http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/12/post-reflection-on-theme-4.html?showComment=1387403090712#c6253885017831046585

I absolutely agree with you. It is good to look at the extremes sometimes to put more context to the normal, all though it could be equally diffusing if you don't understand the alternatives. For me in this case with Russell it gave me a better understanding because I've familiar with Descartes, but for someone who is not maybe he/she would have been more confused trying to figure out Descartes as well as Russell.http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/11/seminar-1-russell.html?showComment=1387404026305#c3275368495933359369

I agree with you, one of the weaknesses in this her text is that she doesn't explain and motivate her choices. I believe that the most important things when writing a paper like this is to think through your choices, motivate them well and criticize them. In my opinion, that is what separates an OK paper from a really good one. If this is achieved I believe the author has a greater knowledge of what he/she is examining.

http://dm2572tmm-cim.blogspot.se/2013/11/theme-3-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1387404413384#c3791318666964529819

Reflections on theme 6

This week I read two texts about e-learning, one that used a qualitative study and the other one a case study. E-learning was to me a bit familiar since we've talked about it in the course Social Media Technologies. I did how ever learn thing that I didn't know before. I also realized that what we learn from this course is rather personal. For example this week when we got to choose two articles independently, I read about e-learning and other students read about other topics. I like that the course is so open that we can chose subjects based on our own interests.

This week also got me thinking about what kind of research could be considered as a qualitative method. My first paper used a questionnaire as a qualitative method and before reading the text I would have considered questionnaires as a quantitative method. Now I realized that the method itself is not the main thing when deciding if it is a quantitative or qualitative method, rather than why you are using it and how. For example in this paper the questionnaire was used to get a greater knowledge about the participants and create a deeper understanding. The authors could argument and motivate why the method is a quantitative or a qualitative one. Of course there are some guidelines and ground rules of what a qualitative study is but as long as the author motivates why his/her choice of method is qualitative I think it is reasonable. I think it is because of this grey area the definition of quantitative and qualitative studies is rather complex. What I’ll take with me from this week is once again something I’ve written about in my earlier blog posts; the importance of motivating your choices. The author in my article convinced me that a questionnaire could be a qualitative study, I will keep that in mind the next time I’m writing a paper.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Qualitative methods
This week I chose the study "The Effect of a Web-based Writing Program in College English Writing Classes" by Wenli Tsou published in Advanced Learning Technologies (2008). The study is about a web-based writing program and tests the program's ability to improve students’ English writing. The study consists of two parts one quantitative where data was gathered of students’ result when tested the program. The other part is a qualitative one and contains a questionnaire to find out students’ opinions about the program and semi-structured interviews were held with teachers to find out their thoughts about using the program.

At first when I read the paper I thought it was better to choose another one since I didn’t consider questionnaires as a qualitative study. But the author clearly stated that he had used a qualitative and a quantitative study so I decided to read a bit more about qualitative studies. Just as two weeks ago when we talked about quantitative studies I got surprised that I had so little knowledge about something I believed to know. After reading up on qualitative studies, I changed my mind. The questionnaires in the paper aim to get more depth in the study and find out how and why the student’s results and thoughts differed from each other. Therefor the questionnaires could be a qualitative study depending on the format of the questions and execution. I had no doubt from the beginning that the interviews were a qualitative method.

The study is of small extent and unfortunately the author doesn’t describe how the questionnaires or the interviews where done. Therefore it’s difficult to know how qualitative his study really is. I think he should have been more critical to his choice of methods and motivated his decisions in order to strengthen his paper. Since he didn’t gather a great quantitative of data I think he could have improved his study by doing interviews with the students as well as the teachers. You could gather a lot more qualitative information from a face-to-face meeting than from a questionnaire. I believe that the misunderstandings and misinterpretations would decrease with interviews. In an interview you can explain the questions more thoroughly and you can see the interviewee’s reactions and interact on a higher-level.

Case Study
A case study is a research method in which you examine a certain case. The method aims to give a deeper understanding through empirical data. A case study is used when you want to observe something specific. For example you can do a case study by examining a group of people, an incident or an organization etc. A case study could be investigating, explanatory or descriptive. In a case study you often focus on one or a few specific cases to get a more detailed knowledge and understanding of the situation.

I read the paper “Student experiences: Collaboration for group assignment in distance education” by Lisa Soon and Maryam Sarrafzadeh published 2010 on IEEE. The paper studies the use of learning management systems (LMS) for group assignments in distance. The study is made in Australia where the authors have done a case study at Charles Sturt University on their LMS “Interact”. The study involved 73 undergraduate students who were divided into groups with assignments to carry out. They were given a set of communication tools such as the LMS Interact to use as communication channels. To gather data and the students’ opinions a web-based survey were sent out to the ones that participated.

In my opinion the authors did a good case study in a well thought out way. Here follows an examination of the paper with the help of "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, 1989)

Getting Started: The study aims to explore collaboration through Internet in distance educations but I believe the research question could be clarified.

Selecting Cases: The authors have done a good job choosing and limit the cases. They chose to study one course and the students who took the course. Even though they don’t define a specific old or origin of their target group I think they have managed to circumscribe the participants.

Crafting Instruments and Protocols:  The data was gathered through a web-based survey. It would be a much bigger study if the authors had decided to do interviews with all the participants but I believe that you miss some of the data through a survey. Nevertheless a survey is an efficient way to collect data and offers the opportunity to be anonymous.

  

Enfolding literature: The literature that is used is well organized and strengthens the study.

Analyzing data: The data is analyzed and the results are shown in intuitive graphs. The data is categorized and then analyzed which makes it easy to follow.

Reaching closure:  The conclusion is based on the data but is very general about e-learning and its advantages and disadvantages. 

Reflections on theme 5

I liked this week’s theme since I’ve taken some HCI courses and enjoy working with design in different fields I thought the theme was really interesting. Nevertheless the themes of this week’s texts were new to me. I realized that it’s possible to look at programming from a different perspective than I did before. I like to think that programming is something that I could enjoy and think is fun since I know how important it is in order to get technology to work. After this week I’ve opened my mind to the possibility of changing opinion about programming. I think physical programming is a great idea to start with when you learn how to code just to get use to the way of thinking. I would like to read more about it and maybe try it to see how usable it is in my opinion. In the future I will try to look at design in a broader prospective since I have now realized that even programming could be thought of as a design process.

The other text about visualizing a football game with cellphone vibrations wasn’t as interesting as the first text since I’m not a fan of football. But I still think the idea is innovative and interesting. I think it’s difficult to imagine how we are going to consume media in the future but it is a really fascinating topic that I would love to explore more. I wish we got the opportunity to do more prototyping and develop our ideas in our education. I got to try it out a little in the interaction design course but I think it would be relevant to explore the possibility of this in other courses in media technology as well. What I’ll take with me from this week is to remember to think outside the box and try to discover other forms of design than I’m used to.

Theme 5: Design research

I thought this week’s papers were really interesting, I guess it appeals to me since I like HCI and design. The thoughts presented in both of the papers were intriguing. Especially the text “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” (2009) by Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. I have not read a lot about physical design before and thought it was a fascinating and innovative way of working with design. I liked how the authors compared programming with comics and fashion. I personally am not that fond of programming and think it’s difficult and complex, and I’ve taken some courses in the subject. What about people who doesn’t have an interest for technology or programming? I guess they have an even harder time understanding programming. That’s why I think physical programming is great. You don’t need a lot of knowledge about coding to act as the programmer in the examples in the text; everybody can understand it and do it. I’ve never thought of programming as they do in the text. For example that programming is like fashion, you can combine different clothes and style to create a new style. But in programming you combine different functions and modules to create new programs. I’ve actually never thought of programming as a way to design things. I’ve seen programming more like a puzzle; you put together a bunch of letters, words and signs and if you do anything wrong it won’t work. I guess that’s why I never liked it.

The other text “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration” (2008) by Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. was also interesting. I’ve read about prototyping in the book “Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction” (2011) by Rogers, Sharp and Preece. I personally really like the prototyping step in a design process. I believe that it was really important in this study as well. I can only reflect on projects I’ve done and before actually sitting down and started making the prototype we have had a lot of different thoughts of the product that were not coherent to each other. To explain the product and how it works to other people would have been impossible with different ideas of its purpose and functions. That’s why prototyping is great, you can create a version of your product and when you do you might realize things you didn’t think of before.

In this case with the vibration and the football game I think it would have been difficult to evaluate their idea without a prototype. As a designer it’s easy to think that everybody else understands what you’re doing and how your product is suppose to work. To gather all the visual information you get from a football game and turn it into vibrations is a complex process. Without a prototype it would have been hard to get peoples opinion about the system and how it was suppose to work. Prototypes are not always to your benefit. They also have faults and downsides for example the prototype they develop in the text is a high-fidelity prototype and it’s expensive to design and takes a lot of time. Say that you put a lot of effort in designing a high-fidelity prototype and when you test it you realize the target group is not at all interested in what you’ve developed. Then you’ve spent all your time designing this product when you could have been doing something more valuable. Another limitation with prototyping is that if you show the users a prototype that is almost finished it can restrict their thoughts. Most of them won’t come with own ideas on how improving your product if it means rebuilding it. They will comment on colors and fonts etc. since you’ve given them an almost complete product their imagination will be limited.

In spite of the downsides of prototypes I believe that prototyping in the future will play an important role especially when the design process and the product are complicated.