Comments Theme 1-5

Theme 1

1.Kunthika Macharoensak

http://dm2572tmm.blogspot.se

Do you think this guideline called 4C is worth taking into account? How will the companies use it? You said that the 4C was for developing strategies for monitoring, understanding and responding to social media activities. I would like to add to this point as well. I was working as a social media manager and it was my job to develop such strategies for different brands and companies. I am sure that without knowing your TA and monitoring your company’s performance you can lose money or fans because the most important part of this management is not only developing strategies but implement them in a right way, for example, increase user engagement, build relationships with your TA, posting relevant content and answer to their questions.

2.Johan

http://johan-dm2572.blogspot.se/

I think that users can create even both profiles (idealized and real). Do you have any thoughts on how to measure their participation then?

To ekksen: I don't think that FB made lonelier instead we can talk to our friends every time and discuss different stuff in FB chats and then meet offline  if we talk about projects etc. It's a good way to organize things but the problem is that we spend too much time on Facebook. Social networks earn money from us and our attention.

3.Andreas Rehn

http://andreasrehn.blogspot.se

Do you personally consider that there are some boundaries on Twitter? In my point of view, hashtags # help to analyze the ties within the same metropolitan region. Nowadays this powerful social media tool provides a new challenge to a news industry because it changed the way how humans get news and share it. Using hashtags one can always find immediate tweets on some event happening right now, e.g. protests, actions, live shows and so on. Sometimes I feel that there no borders at all and we have an open space to communicate and it doesn’t matter where we live.

4.Nicole DeAndres

http://dm25722012.blogspot.se

Nicole, did they use Facebook Ads or promoted Tweets?

To Media Manager Master (Florian): Compared to other marketing channels social media is indeed relatively cheaper for producers and it’s possible to increase sales using it as a part of their promotion campaign.

5.Ekaterina Ksenofontova

http://tdm2572.blogspot.se

Katya, do you have this "fifth estate" in your home country? And is it actually possible to establish it? You mentioned that ‘there are no censorship on the Internet, that makes this type of democracy quite real and exciting’. We did a group project a few weeks ago and found out that one of the most popular blog platform in Russian-speaking countries LiveJournal is blocked for some reasons in China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. Therefore, in my opinion, it depends on the country and government and the censorship exists.

6.Mary Shelukho

http://mshelukho.blogspot.se/

Mary, what is the most powerful media nowadays? What is your opinion? I vote for new media as well! Of course, for us (digital natives) is a place where we live every day. It’s not just to chat with our friends but also to get news and communicate with our favorite brands and companies.

Theme 2

1.Nicklas Holmgrens

http://dm2572nicklas.blogspot.se

Hej Nicklas! Do you personally feel that media made an impact on your behavior in Facebook? Humans always observe how others behave and then create their own rules and attitudes but  I noticed that media can definitely change our perception and show some events from different perspective as we considered it before. The more people hear the more they start to concern about their personal behavior.

2.Bridget

http://introrendispection.blogspot.se

Bridget, I found it interesting as well to know about this "attention data" and how it can be used in research. Although it's difficult to measure such data but the theory itself has a right to exist. It is evident that blogs can contribute to professional and scientific knowledge. Many scholars cite blogs in their papers and some of them base their research on them.

3. Bart

http://tmm12.blogspot.se

Hey Bart! I've noticed a lot of buzz on the web regarding e-society, e-democracy etc. Do you consider it's going to be our future? Do you personally think that it's better to vote online, for instance?

You pointed out that online voting “could be more reliable in well developed countries, where the adoption of new technology in society is very fast”. Estonians have been doing it since 2005.According to the statistics, only 2 percent of Estonians took advantage of the system when it first came out, but the number rose to 25 % by 2011. What’s Estonia’s secret? The thing is that all Estonians are issued a government ID with a scannable chip and a PIN number that gives them a unique online identity. They can use this identity to file their taxes or pay library fines or buy bus passes. It makes Internet voting workable.

4. Katerina

http://mediatechnologymethod.blogspot.se/

Katerina, hey! How did the authors describe those predictions? I guess, television-Web synergy models are suitable and effective because in this case you can reach your TA widely. For instance, first you need to show them an image and then repeat it several times but in various ways. In my point of view, it make sense as we all tend to forget something and our brain is overloaded nowadays even more that it was before.

5. Cheatana

http://cheatana.blogspot.se

Hey! Did you try to develop your own theory during the seminar? And if yes, what was the most difficult?

6. http://sannadm2572.blogspot.se

Hej! What is the most common type of theory regarding to the articles of your colleagues during the seminar? Did you find it hard to define it in your paper? I think that all theories based on an initial analysis of the data, literature etc and then we can come up with some ideas.

Theme 3

1.Mikael

http://mikaeljuntti.blogspot.se

Mikael,

would you like to study in the blended environment or just face-to-face?

I learnt from the lecture that researchers are unable to make a profound analysis without quantitative methods but I agree with the statement that a mixed research has more benefits.

2.Philip

http://dm2572journey.blogspot.se

Philip, after discussing emotional presence and its influence on online learning do you feel that it had an impact on your own online learning progress? By the way, In SPSS you can really create a lot of tables and it takes some days to get used to this programs.

3. Nicklas Holmgrens

http://dm2572nicklas.blogspot.se

Nicklas, was it effective to use Google Docs Excel-equivalent program for your thesis? Have you tried to apply other quantitative methods? Btw you mentioned that SPSS was in a leading position on the market. Do you know the companies which employ it?

4. Chen Wang

http://chenwtmmt.blogspot.se

Hej! It also gave me a kind of inspiration to use SPSS later for my master thesis because I can test different relationships and multiply variables. In your point of view, what is the most widespread quantitative method?

5. Nicole

http://dm25722012.blogspot.se

I personally tried e-learning on Coursera and Stanford Online platform and I came to the conclusion that it is good to mix online and offline environments. It's not enough just to sit in front of your laptop or iPad and listen to the lectures online but to be involved in the community. Of course, you can get it online I mean forming FB groups to discuss some stuff related to your course but its better to meet with people studying the same course offline.

6. Stenvall

http://stenvalldm2572.blogspot.se

Hej!

Martha talked about randomizing if researcher want to get more accurate results but also to pay attention on the group of people itself. If we would like to ask KTH students some questions about education in Stockholm, do you consider it can be biased? Or it is enough? And we don't have to do the same with KI and SU students to analyze education environment in the city?

Theme 4

1.Sebastian

http://tamfmtsebastian.blogspot.se

Sebastian, it's the first time I've heard about such method as using probes. I guess during some trainings or workshops people apply this method to get more information about human behavior and interactions with internal and external world. In addition, it helps to understand human motivations sometimes. Did you find any paper with probes as a qualitative method?

2.Beatrice

http://bejoha2.blogspot.se

I was thinking the same about objective/subjective point when you are doing a research. It depends on human interpretation and not always show correct data. Beatrice, how did you analyze a chat-flow on a Facebook group page? Why did you choose this specific chat?

3.Niklas

http://dm2572-niklasf.blogspot.se/

Niklas, in my point of view, all those mentioned methods are not easy to implement. Nevertheless, we should try to use them for research and get different kinds of data. You noted in your reflection post that interviews can be structured, semi-structured or unstructured. What is the purpose of applying structured or semi-structured? Do you think it can make a difference?

4.Jonas

http://dm2572-jj.blogspot.se

Jonas, I agree with you that it's better to combine different methods to get profound data. You can observe and examine user's comments in content analysis and behavior at the same time. We definitely should try to develop new methods and use them for our researches, for example, while writing a thesis. But sometimes its difficult to find new approaches if we have so many already existing. By the way, our digital culture could result in additional methods of evaluation.

5.Katerina

http://mediatechnologymethod.blogspot.se

Katerina, in my opinion, observation is what we do every day. It can be on one's workplace, university or even sitting in front of a laptop and surfing on the Web and looking for high quality papers or analyze our friend's posts on Facebook. Therefore, we are collecting data from day to day and use them for our personal needs. From my point of view, in media field the most common qualitative method is content analysis.

6. Media Manager Master (Florian)

http://mediamanagermaster.blogspot.se

Florian, you've mentioned that you used interviews in your bachelor thesis. How did you define interviewers and type of interview (structured, semi-structured and unstructured)? What was the main difficulty while making analysis of data?

For me the paper about Act Dress wasn't kind of full because it could be interesting to look at some data how often people buy such clothes for robots or how companies attract them, what feeling humans have playing with dressed robots etc. Probably its not enough to apply only content analysis in this case.

Theme 5

1.Victor Bleichner

http://dm2572victor.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5.html

Victor, you noticed that some problems arose while conducting qualitative methods, especially focus groups, in design research. Probably because they are so pervasive, focus groups received the most attention in such kind of research. As a result, they've evolved into a broad range of related methods, for example, traditional focus groups, mini focus groups, 1-on-1 interviews, dyads etc. Most marketing managers think that qualitative design research is unscientific and naive. I guess, the results depends on a moderator as well, who actually interviewed consumers. Some of them don't want to learn about the people who would eventually use a product but tend to follow a written instructions. And you mentioned the participatory design approach in the case study. I consider it as one of the most fascinating aspect of creating new products and delegating a power to potential consumers. Therefore, one should carefully listen to them and watching them when they experience one's products.

2. Sepehr Amoor Pour

http://sepehramoorpour.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5.html

You said that it was common in HCI when the usability-testing of some technology could be regarded as the evaluation. Even the sample size of these studies may be small, but they can generate a large amount of data. The focus of usability research is on the details of the user’s interaction with the product and it’s not just ‘likability’ testing. I think, usability research helps the designer make the product more compelling and usable. In my point of view, that’s why it seems to be like an evaluation in some cases.

3. Christian Croona

http://ccroona-tmetm.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5-design-research-and-prototypes.html

Christian, I agree with you that people tend to think that they have a great idea before testing it on real users. It’s definitely cheaper to create a prototype or so called beta version (in web design) to determine whether a product can actually satisfy the audience. I found out that many insights come from metrics such as time-to-task. It requires a prototype near completion so the user can be seen in action and it’s ideal if  the participant  isn't interrupted. The point of these timed exercises is that all of the features may be in place but none of them may be working appropriately for the user in a timely manner. In my opinion, it’s kind of interesting to do such research because nowadays users don’t want to lose their time and search for fast and effective smart devices and systems.  

4. Miriam Gauffin

http://miriamdm2572.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5.html

Miriam,

you mentioned that it was too expensive to create a prototype but the thing is that if you really want to show it to potential investors or test different features you need it. You can save money making prototype instead launch your product without analyzing it.

Referring to your article, experts believe that by 2020 voice will be the interaction channel between humans and computers in 50 % of all Web and mobile customer service interactions [MIT Tech Review].  I’m interested how we will be affected by this issue. Probably we’re going to talk to our personal voice assistance easily soon and we have been already introduced some of them like Siri, YuDian, Google Glass.  I’m pretty sure that Google Project/Glass prototype was expensive for Google but it’s worth due to a growing demand in speech recognition programs. And they even showed it for a public before producing. It’s a good way to test their potential consumers and indentify their needs.

5.Kunthika Macharoensak

http://dm2572tmm.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme5-design-research.html

I think, that product/technology evaluations of your company or competitors are always useful to get an overview of the field. These evaluations can be loosely based on heuristic methods [Nielsen]. It's well-known fact that in HCI a heuristic evaluation is a usability-testing technique devised by expert usability consultants. In such kind of  evaluation, the user interface is reviewed by experts and its compliance to usability heuristics (broadly stated characteristics of a good user interface, based on prior experience) is assessed, and any violating aspects are recorded [Wikipedia]. I guess, using such methods is meant to ground the evaluation through a set of pre-defined metrics.

6.Niklas Fyrvald

http://dm2572-niklasf.blogspot.se/2012/11/theme-5.html

Collaborative design seems to be like a "participatory" design method, which involves consumers in the development of the products and services they will subsequently buy. But in this case different people were those "consumers" and tried to make their own input. I would agree with Jonas that those people should have worked together on it. But the challenge is to keep people's input fresh and representative.

Theme 5: reflection

This week was quite productive for me in terms of getting new knowledge.  In my previous blogpost I mentioned that I was curious how companies used design research in their work. Therefore, I was plunged in design research articles/books and cases.  I noticed that the field of design often uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. For instance, quantitative research is used once research objectives are defined and it helps to understand how to make things simpler and easier to use, how to find the ‘best’ product using experimental design and how to link attitudes to behaviors and set benchmarks to value improvements. Regarding qualitative methods in design research, I read a story of one guy with more than 15 years in marketing who shared his thoughts about the role these methods should play in the creation process. He stressed that clients typically had very narrow views of qualitative research and projects were isolated from the overall development process. He did a qualitative project for Disney and he had to conduct focus groups with moms to identify their design preferences. He didn’t follow a written guide prepared by Disney but made some changes to the traditional focus group approach. The guy played careful attention to each women in the group, by considering her lifestyle and personality and by asking ad hoc ‘what if’ questions.  I realized how it was important to be involved in conversation with potential consumers and then it could change the initial product design based on their impressions and feelings.

In a book Design research: methods and perspectives [Ed.] Brenda Laurel MIT Press, 2003 recommended me by Stefan I became familiar with certain phases at the beginning, middle and end of quantitative design research which can successfully form the design of products and processes.

Research at the beginning: working with thought leaders, talking to the right people and concept testing.

Research at the middle: feature testing (beginning to middle) and usability.

Research at the end: validation and standardization, segmentation and brand experience.

Moreover, it isn’t easy to say that quantitative research should take the place of qualitative research. In my opinion, it has a definite place and value of its own, especially in an iterative design process.

By the way, during the seminar we had some conversations with guys about collaborative design and prototypes. We had a paper in which several prototypes were developed and then combined into one. We also noticed that authors didn’t define research questions and started their paper explaining that the aim was to evaluate and test usability. It seems to be a  common practice in design research papers. 

Theme 5

The paper Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration by Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008) is a good example of design research because it describes not only an idea of using vibration for live streaming on mobile device but also the authors made some design guidelines, showed coding schemes, conducted user studies and then evaluated results. They made conclusions  how vibration could be used as means of rendering live dynamic information for mobile phones and add some main remarks.

The technology of real-time streaming using vibration was evaluated based on experimental platform, usability analysis and trainability[1]. In my opinion, the most important part is usability in this case and it’s usually defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which users can achieve particular goals in specific environments. One should always try to show a new developed prototype to the user in order to test it and then probably avoid some defects.

Moreover, I am curious how companies apply design research in their work. I found out that the design process is characterized by four core strategies such as need finding through user research methods to establish constraints, ideation to generate many possible ideas and then select promising ones, prototyping to create specific models and approximations based on those ideas, and iterative refinement to test generated prototypes.

A few words about prototyping. 

Houde and Hill [2] defined three types of questions a prototype can address: the role of a product in the larger use context, then its look and feel and in the end its technical implementation.  It is possible to use prototype testing to reduce the risk and it’s not so expensive and time-consuming as a development of the full design.

I selected a paper The effects of touch screen technology on the usability of e-reading devices by Eva Siegenthaler, Yves Bochud, Pascal Wurtz, Laura Schmid, and Per Bergamin (Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 7, Issue 3, May 2012, pp. 94 – 104). This study investigated the effect of touch screen technology on the usability of electronic reading devices. Three different types of devices (two Sony e-readers and one iPad) were compared and participants completed different use case scenarios for each device. They also filled in a questionnaire and tried to rate the usability of the navigation, handiness, design, as well as  handling of each device. There were only 12 participants taking part in the experiment from 20 to 26 years old. I guess, that it would be better to compare different age range in this study and not only take into account young people.

The authors defined several research questions if touch screens increase the reading experience and  if the sensitivity of the touch screen seems to become important. The researches wanted to know if  the interaction with a multi-touch display were more usable for the user and it actually provided a more direct interaction with the e-reader.

They hypothesized that touch screens contribute to the improvement of the usability of an e-reading device and the sensitivity of a touch screen has a positive influence on the usability.

I have learnt from this paper that while conducting a design research one can use both qualitative and quantitative methods to support concepts and/or confirm a hypothesis. In such kind of research one should make end user analysis and evaluate results of experiments.

[1] Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration by (2008)

[2] Houde, S. and Hill, C. What do Prototypes Prototype? In M. Helander, T.K. Landauer and P. Prabhu, eds., Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction. Elsevier Science BV, 1997.

[3] Eva Siegenthaler, Yves Bochud, Pascal Wurtz, Laura Schmid, and Per Bergamin The effects of touch screen technology on the usability of e-reading devices (Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 7, Issue 3, May 2012, pp. 94 – 104)

Theme 4: reflection

So the question is still the same: what methods are qualitative and how to verify the quality? What are the benefits and limitations of using different methods of collecting data? During the seminar and the lecture we tried to figure it out.

Qualitative research is all about exploring issues, gaining profound knowledge, investigating phenomena and answering different questions. We are doing such kind of research almost every day and it happens in almost every workplace and study environment. As one could notice, it involves the analysis of any unstructured data such as open-ended survey responses, literature reviews, pictures and sites and even audio recordings. There are also other methods that are used such as focus groups, content analysis, in-depth interviews, diary, ethnography, evaluation and semiotics.

In our group we discussed content analysis and its advantages or/and disadvantages. The data were based on YouTube comments and mentions on social media websites. In this type of qualitative research the conclusions might be very subjective because it depends on human interpretation and that’s why sometimes there is a need to do the second research after defining some categories on the first stage and then to prove them. If those categories were tied after doing the second analysis and a confidence is  like 90%,  it means that they  are described in a right way.

I came up with the conclusion that qualitative researchers tend to combine different approaches in their studies. Sometimes they use triangulation in their studies to increase the credibility or validity of the results and extend existing findings. In addition, the term 'triangulation' often indicates that more than two methods are applied in a study in order to double or even triple checking results. It can definitely be used to refer to  the multi method research in which quantitative and qualitative methods are combined to provide a more complete set of findings.

Denzin (1970) indentified four forms of triangulation:

Data triangulation entails collecting data through several sampling approaches. Therefore, data at different social situations/times  and on a variety of people are accumulated.

Investigator triangulation refers to the use of more than one researcher in the field to assemble and interpret data.

Theoretical triangulation describes the use of more than one theoretical position in interpreting data.

Methodological triangulation explains the use of more than one method for collecting data.

On Wed Ylva Ferneaus shared with us her knowledge and explained how she did her research about ActDress.  The lecture was more about concepting and sketching based on qualitative data.  Ylva mentioned that the most important thing is to define research questions and then one should develop conceps and apply various methods. In the paper the authors explained their findings through semiotics and theory. In general, semiotic theories take signs, as well as sign systems as their object of study. Ylva told about content analysis as a part of qualitative research in this paper. The community of Pleo’s owners and and their blogs were examined. This project ActDress is a research because some concepts were established and scenarios.  

Theme 4

I selected a paper Understanding consumer conversations around ads in a Web 2.0 world by Colin Campbell, Leyland F. Pitt, Michael Parent, and Pierre R. Berthon (Journal of Advertising). It's mentioned that user-generated content poses a problem when it takes the form of advertising. Consumer-generated (CG) advertising challenges scholars to understand consumers’ responses to ads and to the responses of other consumers, and, of course, the implications these may have for various brands. Traditional research methods (a viewer response testing) could be limited when the viewer becomes a part of the particular conversation. This exploratory research has an aim  to interpret the conversations consumers have around CG ads using their comments. The authors showed how conversations around ads could be mapped and interpreted, and then developed a typology of consumer-generated ad conversations.

They gathered information making analysis of user comments posted to an ad’s Web page (YouTube) in an effort to find meaning of consumer responses. CG ads on YouTube can range broadly in topic and one can get everything from the video’s content and  its production, the brand, the video’s author, the comments of other viewers and many other things. The authors introduced the content analysis software Leximancer for the comprehension of advertising feedback that came from understanding conversation around CG advertising, especially targeted at recognized brands. They draw conclusions from this analysis, and explained the technique’s broader applicability.

Content analysis of CG ads showed that consumers have four basic motivations for creating and broadcasting ads: intrinsic enjoyment, self-promotion, perception change, and a combination of all three motivations. Their purpose was to demonstrate a new text analysis tool called Leximancer, which is considered to be a relatively elementary but powerful device for interpreting complex textual communications. Content analysis is an important element of media evaluation/media analysis and is not limited as to the types of variables that could be measured or the context in which the messages are created. Based on data of the text analysis they developed four response archetypes to CG ads, which were termed the inquiry, the laudation, the debate, and the flame.

Content analysis approach to the mapping of unique viewer conversations about CG ads has a number of limitations. Firstly, the authorship of both the ads and comments examined are unknown due to the anonymity of the Internet. Obviously it is completely possible that companies have already  begun seeding the Internet with content to their benefit. Secondly, this study could be very subjective and  relies on human interpretation as all qualitative research tools do. Moreover, it might be argued that mapping makes  interpretation of complex human interaction easier, but the evident fact remains that other advertising researchers might see things in the maps that differ from the construals in this research. And finally the analysis only considered four ads. By the way, and a number of checks on reliability and validity have not been carried out.  It means that we have a lot of unanswered questions.

In the paper Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses  Ylva Fernaeus and Mattias Jacobsson formed a concept of actdresses. It seems to be a sort of physical markings that can be directly attached to a digital artefact, which represents some property, action and behaviour of the artefact. They provided three short interaction scenarios designed for different kinds of robotic artefacts. I found it interesting to read how people personalize their digital devices and play with the robotic animals, e.g. by naming it etc.

I think robotics is going to be the third technological wave after social networks and mobile technologies. In the future we will be surrounded by the world of “smart devices”.

Theme 3: reflection

During the lecture Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes talked about quantitative methods and how she used them in her research of online and distance learning. I found it quite interesting for me to know more about this topic as education is about to change dramatically. It’s now possible to stream video classes with sophisticated interactive elements, and researchers can scoop up student data that could help them make teaching more effective. Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes believes that online education is much better than face to face learning but it’s even more useful to study in a blended environment, which consists of face to face and online activities. She explained us how she applied quantitative methods in her analysis of human behavior and, especially, emotions and their impact on our perception of learning process. Online environment entails a creation of a new form of communication “student-teacher” because a student can easily become a teacher while studying online.

I’ve learnt some fascinating facts that, according to the surveys, gender doesn’t matter when we use mobile devices and women interact with their devices more than men. Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes stressed that “sampling is everything” in the research and the best thing is when you randomize data to increase an experimental noise. Professor shared her thoughts that it wouldn’t be possible to collect such data and see these patterns without using quantitative methods.

The main aim of the article about mixed methods and emotional presence in online learning was to employ rigor in the research in the field of distance education. After several years of studying this subject scientists came to the conclusion that emotional presence exists and it can form a strong educational environment. Mixed method is more demanding and enables researchers to combine data from different sources and get more accurate results but it’s not always an easy task to find a proper question and to make hypothesis.

Dr. Martha Cleveland-Innes recommended to read "The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research" by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber (Ed.) in which it’s stated that nowadays people changed their way of interaction with each other using Internet and modern technologies. Therefore it has an impact on how we implement a  research.

In the lab Ester Appelgren introduced us SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), which is often used for survey analysis and other types of quantitative research methods. In SPSS I built one multiple response variable and tried to analyse this variable in the dataset and then run frequencies/percentages based on the variable. The data for this assignment was taken from Mediebarometern 2009. As I’ve got SPSS is widely applied in social sciences when researchers need to analyse data and to make calculations. 

Theme 3

Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement

The aim of this paper is to increase the quality and promote sternness in online education research. It seems that research on online learning has been conducted mostly using a monomethod approach. A broad range of scientific studies were based on comparison that online learning is as good as face-to-face learning. Nowadays many  researchers try to avoid conducting comparison studies. Probably they have failed to use strong research designs. Nevertheless,  they  still  tend to rely on survey data, which  seems to be self-report data. Obviously it is not appropriate to investigate all research problems based only on it.

Even though the most studies made on online learning currently is monomethod, the author pointed out the importance of using mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) when investigating online learning. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods of  data analysis could help find problems in ways that monomethod or even multiple method with two or more quantitative or qualitative approaches simply cannot.

The authors outlined  the common steps of the mixed research  proces, which are the next: research questions, research designs, sampling, and data analysis. They  also provided some suggestions  how to apply those steps. In the other words, the mixed method focuses specifically on collecting, analyzing and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in one study or series of studies. The most important part is to identify whether a problem should be studied with a mixed framework.

Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment.

This study describes the evidence of emotions in online environment and the fact that they might have an influence on the human experience of online learning. It’s said the technology often involves the development of new competencies. The purpose of this study is to explain the importance of emotions in the human experience and to prove that they are a core element of it. It’s mentioned in the paper that emotion is often mistaken “as a deterrent that hinders effective teaching and learning”.

The authors  developed a working hypothesis that emotion plays a great role in learning. Therefore, they are presented in online learning environments. The two steps of data collections were done. Firstly to provide access to conference discussion transcripts and then secondly to complete a survey of questions regarding online experience. The data is both quantitative  and qualitative as they sampled 217 students of two graduate programs at a single mode distance education university. The students were supposed to answer open-ended questions about their online experience.

The conclusions were drawn from the data that emotions are presented in online learning communities. Emotions must be considered as an  influential part of learning. The authors defined emotional presence as an experience which is prominent in the online environment. Learners need to understand the role of emotions in our life and in learning and to realize their benefits. Researchers still have a lot of questions to explore  (e.g. Which emotions are unique in the triggering events, integration, exploration, and resolution found in cognitive presence?)

Theme 2: reflection

Even after the seminar and reading articles on what theory is I have a feeling that it’s not that much easy to prove that this is supposed to be a real theory or not. In our group discussion we came up with some conclusions that theory has to be replicable and actually theory itself  isn’t the complete truth. Let’s say there is a well-grounded hypothesis and I wrote an effective conclusion to it. Did it become a theory (hypothesis+conclusion= ...)?

I totally agree with my coleagues that at least from now I am trying to guess which type of theory was used in a paper and how an author described it, is it tested/replicable or without any ground, hypothesis or just some unconfirmed facts etc. The most important thing  to understand is that data, references, diagrams, lists of variables or constructs, hypothesis can explain a theory but not be it itself. All those types of theoris mentioned in the paper for the seminar is based on analyzing.

Our group shaped a new theory of digital politics. It is developed based on the article Good news for the future? Young people, Internet use, and political participation by Bakker, T.P. De Vreese, C.H. The type of theory is explanation and prediction (EP).

Description: Using the internet is a positive predictor for all forms of political participation for young people. The authors did some predictions about traditional and digital participation. Media can form our views and our perception of politics. Internet use does not affect all groups in society similarly, rather it depends on a complex combination of personal and social characteristics, as well as  the specific content and context of the medium.

It’s quite interesting topic of Internet use and political participation. Some scholars found out  that politicians are active online only before the elections and then it seems they forget about it at all. 

Theme 2

What theory is, and what theory is not:

The first year student probably have some difficulties to distinguish what theory is, and what theory is not. The good thing is that from now I came up with ideas how to explain to this student what is “to be or not to be”  if we talk about applying theory in our research. Let’s see what is considered to be “not theory”.

Before starting to write a paper try to think about a few “rules”, which help to do it properly. The first one: you need to prove why the theory results in a new theoretical question. Its not just enough to put a list of references in the paper because it seems like “a smoke screen to hide the fact that we didn’t understand the phenomenon in question”. You have to build  a new theoretical case with those references not just including them in the text. The second rule is that theory is not primarily based on data. I mean that empirical results can support the theory but they are not the theory themselves. The data helps to confirm or discredit existing theory and lead to the development of a new theory. The third recommendation is to avoid making theory besed on well-defined variables and constructs. They don’t compose theory but could state predictions in some equations. And the forth rule is to know that diagrams and figures are rarely forms of theory. It’s more thoughtful to apply them in building causal relationships in a logical odering. Finally hypotheses can be just links between theory and data and not as an independent theory. Futhermore, they are considered to be brief statements what is expected to occur not why.

The major theory in the  selected paper:

I selected Communication research journal (IF: 2.014) and a paper Good news for the future? Young people, Internet use, and political participation by Bakker, T. P. De Vreese, C. H.  This article  examines the relationships between media use (newspaper, Internet, and TV) and offline/online forms of political participation. Recent studies concede that Internet use is not just a unidimensional concept and it does not affect all groups in society in the same way. Moreover, its effects depend on a complex combination of personal and social characteristics, the specific content and context of the medium, and usage patterns.

In the selected paper the theory of explanation and prediction (EP theory) is used.  EP theory involves both understanding of underlying causes and prediction. It also describes  theoretical constructs and the relationships among them.

Some specific terms have been used to show diverging forms of civic and political involvement, which were ranging from social capital and civic literacy, political and civic engagement to more concrete terms (membership, political knowledge, and turnout). This paper primarily focuses on offline and online political participation in the  Netherlands. The authors have investigated five hypotheses.

Many research methods can be used to examine thoroughly aspects of the EP theory type.  The selected article includes an online survey conducted in the Netherlands. Ten thousand people in the age  group of 16 to 24 were sampled by inviting to fill in the questionnaire via email.

Examining both the traditional media and the Internet, the researchers found that using  the Internet for news is a positive predictor for all forms of participation. The authors made some predictions on traditional passive and active participation, as well as digital passive participation.

This type of theory can have contributions from both  process studies and  variance studies. With EP theory it is acceptable to have an overall dynamic theory but with feedback as in general system theory. The author could test hypotheses deduced from the theory in variance studies.