Amsterdam Adventures

Non-verifiable question:
1. Do students who use wikis as an extension of the classroom believe that the wikis will increase their learning?

2. Verifiable question:
Does the use of the wiki as an extension of the classroom environment enhance face-to-face learning?

My thoughts on these questions and the humanities methods:
The non-verifiable questions center around attitudes and beliefs, which are hard to quantify and replicate. In a question, the use of a language such as belief, believe, attitude, feel, sense, notice, etc., are all metaphors for non-verifiable questions. The verifiable questions are focused on more quantifiable and repeatable data. For instance, it is important to specify exactly what is meant by the term "learning" and then identifying examples of the occurrence of that learning.

Humanists would read my stories and want to know how the students felt when using the technology, if they believed it made them smarter or more learned if they used these technologies as an extension of the classroom space. Did they feel as though the use of the technology enhanced their experience? They would focus on the opinions of the students and teachers.

Social scientists (like me) would look at the trends in how the technologies were used. Did the students demonstrate cognitive process? Were there times when the student acted as teacher in the discourse? Was there cooperation between students or rivalry? The social scientist would look at tangible results to interpret and the humanist would look at trends in feelings and beliefs.

One could look at the organized power regime as the software manufacturer and the manufacturer manipulating how users will use the software, thus influencing knowledge production.

As for what I don't know, maybe I don't know or understand how students learn (or anyone learns). I might assume I know how they learn or what an example of learning is. Maybe there are other types of learning or maybe learning means something completely different than what I think it means.

I really like this book. I started reading and I couldn't stop. Maybe the fact that the stories are pretty short helps since I'm in my mid-quarter "don't-have-too-much-time-to-spend-on-one-thing-'cause-there-are-a-bunch-of-other-things piling-up-behind-it" phase. Anyway, a couple of stories that I read really struck me. They are Chickens by Simon Carmiggelt, The Three Galleries by J. Bernlef and Living in the Red-Light District by Maarten t'Hart. All three of these stories have such strong imagery of the city. It made me feel like I was there in the day-to-day lives of all of these characters.

The description of the neighbor in the Chickens story is great: "[He] kept only serious thoughts in an unusually high-formed pointed head over which he pulled a black hat like a sheath every time he left his house." I see that neighbor standing in front of me. I not only get a sense of his physical characteristics from that sentence, but of the feeling he brings to a room.

The Three Galleries made me happy and sad (and a bunch of other things) all at once. So much of the story is about Tony's confusion and lack of direction which results in being taken advantage of my so many "art" dealers. But it's also a really nice story of Tony and Kookie and it really comes full circle in the end.

I liked Living in the Red-Light District because it added some humanity to an otherwise seemingly inhuman area of Amsterdam. Not that the red-light district seems cruel or barbaric, but just vacant. Reading about the people who live in the district and interact with the women in the windows for more than just sex was great. Putting a human face on the people who work there is very important.

I've got two so far, so I thought I would post them. I'll update with the third when I finish my research. So here's what I've found:

1. AIS SIGED: International Academy for Information Management - This is an educational SIG (Special Interest Group) associated with the International Academy for Information Management (IAIM), which is affiliated with the Association for Information Systems. I found a couple of interesting conference sessions from the 2005 Las Vegas Conference. They are: "Collaborative Learning in an e-Learning Environment: a Case Study" presented by Prof. Carina de Villiers (carina.devilliers@up.ac.za), Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria and "The hybrid course: Using asynchronous learning tools in the classroom" presented by James Novitzki (j_novitzki@jhu.edu), Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Information Technology, Johns Hopkins University.
   
   This site is useful because it has a conference proceedings from the last six years, including summaries of the presentations and contact information. It also has a link to its journal, The Journal of Informatics Education Research. It also has a lot of its officers which might be helpful, too. Overall, it has a lot of good links to literature and people in the field.
   


2. Ray Schroeder (schroeder.ray@uis.edu) is a Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois at Springfield. His site is especially interesting because he maintains several blogs about online learning and educational technology. These blogs are a collection of thoughts he has as well as links to articles and news stories he thinks are interesting. He also uses technologies extensively in his classes.
   


3. Hawaii International Conference on System Science - this is an annual conference sponsored by the University of Hawaii. Hala Annabi (an Assistant Professor in the iSchool) has presented at this conference a number of times and my research interests are very close to a lot of work she has done. This site has some interesting papers, presentation and presenters. There's a whole track for the 2007 Conference on Collaboration Systems and the co-chairs of that track are good people for me to contact. They are Robert Briggs (bob@GroupSystems.com) from Group Systems.Com and Jay F. Nunamaker (nunamaker@cmi.arizona.edu) from the University of Arizona.
   

I never thought much about how the Internet as research medium influences data that is collected. I've definitely thought about other advantages of online data collection (higher response rates to surveys, cost, speedier responses, etc.) but I had not really thought much about how the medium influences disclosure, interaction, communication, presentation of respondents, etc. How does one even measure the influence the medium has on the data collection? And the ethics of online researching are complicated, too, for both the researcher and the subject. Just because I post in a public forum, am I giving permission for that to be used by a researcher?

I find the idea of Google Bombing troublesome because people are essentially able to covertly manipulate search results thus impacting my search results. And users are on the whole unaware of this practice. Of course, Google is manipulating the results anyway with their secret algorithms. It's troublesome though because of the use and influence Google has. Everyone uses it, even librarians who are supposed to be the information gurus. The more I hear about and study this sort of information manipulation, I continue to wonder how much of what I see online is accurate, correct and exact?

The first Rick Steves article reminded me how aware I became of my own country and my country's values and beliefs while living abroad. That time was the time I learned the most about myself, my country and my perception of the world. I arrived in Holland six days after the September 11th attacks and moved back to Seattle 6 months after the US invaded Iraq. These two experiences were strange bookends to my life in Holland. European sentiment towards Americans was so supportive and positive when I first moved to the Netherlands and so angry at our government when I moved back to the States. But one thing I learned is that Europeans are very good at separating people from their government. When I traveled and people I met found out that I was American, I never felt unsafe or unwelcome. They complained plenty about the US government but not individuals. I wish we could be more like this in this country.

The second article by Rick Steves made me think about how we can take the great things about the EU (human rights, environmental policies, support system for underprivileged) and incorporate those things into this country without losing all the positives we have here (entrepreneurial spirit, work hard and you'll succeed, etc.). There's got to be a way to have both.

Questions:

1. How can we in the US learn to separate a population from its government?
2. What qualities of the EU and US would we like to see strengthened and what qualities would we like to see go away?

Reading everyone's reflections on the interdisciplinary readings is really helpful, especially since they were kind of dry readings. One blog (I think it was Kathy's) really summed it up by saying that it's not just about bringing people from different disciplines together to work on one project...

So what is it? I'd love some more examples (the Unsworth speech was a good start) of interdisciplinary projects, especially relative to the development of the research questions. I understand how methods are different across disciplines and how perspectives might be different but how does working on an interdisciplinary project impact how you develop your research question? That's my burning question today...

These readings definitely made me think about interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in ways I had not thought about them before. Is my research project really want to do? I'm not sure now. I found the history of interdisciplinarity really interesting and had no idea it had such deep roots. I guess the Renaissance thinkers were really interdisciplinarians!

In Definitions of Interdisciplinarity, I found the tension between the comfort of individual disciplines and pull of new ideas in the interdisciplinary realm really telling. It's like it is a leap of faith to move towards interdisciplinary work but the payoff could be great. Researchers are caught between knowing they can produce in their disciplines but wanting to see if they can produce through interdisciplinary work.

I enjoyed the John Unsworth "New Methods for Humanities Research" the most. I liked hearing about the nora team members, all from different disciplines, what each discipline/team member brings to the project and how they are all being tied together. It got me thinking more about making my project more interdisciplinary than what I have been thinking. And the idea that methods and research apply to humanities is something that never really occurred to me before, despite the fact I have a humanities undergraduate degree.

Questions:
It seems like interdisciplinary projects can easily become too big or broad. How can you frame and narrow the question enough to be useful but still beneficial in it interdisciplinary respect?

How will I bring interdisciplinary research into my own project?

Title: Virtual 3rd Place

Preferred Threads: e-research, social networks, online learning communities

Author 1
Name and Institution: Aarron Kemp, University of Washington

Author 2
Name and Institution: Kathleen Walsh, University of Washington

Abstract:
The World Wide Web’s relationship to information and learning continues to evolve in the burgeoning 21st century, with many new tools being developed for merging face-to-face classrooms with asynchronous learning networks (ALNs). The research in “Virtual 3rd Place” focused on the overall impacts of ALN technologies upon the practices and results of interdisciplinary research communities across physical domains. We explored such ALN and e-Research techniques as collaborative software (blogs, wikis, tagging), interactive online learning communities and social software.

The use of ALNs is increasing for both residence and distance academic instruction, fueled by “evidence that ALNs generate high levels of cognitive activity” (Heckman, R., and Annabi, H. (2005). “A content analytic comparison of learning processes in online and face-to-face case study discussions.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(2), article 7, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/heckman.html). Yet, current understanding about the impact of ALNs on learning is relatively limited given their recent emergence, underpinning a lack of certainty about overall ALN effectiveness and consequence, especially across disciplines and physical locations.

We focused on the representatives for the University of Washington’s Amsterdam Honor’s Program. Our methods included observations, interviews, and statistical analysis in studying their patterns of research and learning, both in Seattle and in Amsterdam.

The research questions we answered are:

1) How do researchers interact with their studies and each other through various ALN technologies including: web logs (blogging), folksonomies (tagging), wikis, and other social software?

2) How do these technologies impact research and knowledge development,
especially across disciplines and physical locales?

Since the “Dot Com Bomb” of the early 21st Century, the uses of the Internet and World Wide Web (Web) have radically changed. The infancy of the Web saw domain name speculation, content management systems, and static directories as the dominant paradigms. The “Dot Com Bomb” forced everyone to reassess the functionality of the most powerful tool in information communication. This reassessment, coupled with the huge growth spurt of bandwidth access found in DSL and digital-cable technologies has led to the Web being cultivated for search engine optimization, wiki groups, folksonomies (tagging) and other collaborative and social software technologies. These are the innovations currently driving the global development of new online, or virtual, communities where information is being organized and shared through increasingly dynamic methods.

This new age of the Web, what some call Web 2.0, fosters many new opportunities for information gathering and sharing which are only just being realized. Our research is inspired by these opportunities which need to be explored to ascertain the benefits, costs, and overall impact that are inherent to their usages. The “Virtual 3rd Place” research project will be explicitly exploring the new research practices available in this Web 2.0 environment especially focused on the collaborative aspect of the technologies. Specifically, we will focus on researching the electronic information gathering, dissemination and collaborative practices of the researchers in the University of Washington Honors Program. Our main methods of research will be interview, observation and survey. Our primary questions are as follows:

1) How do researchers interact with their studies and each other through various collaborative technologies including: web logs (blogging), folksonomies(tagging), wikis, and other social software?

2) How do these technologies impact research and knowledge development?