Tag Archives: Anthropology

Preparing our paper about the online-on-campus research for the AAA

16 Nov

We are now in the analysis phase of our research that explores the similarities and differences between an on-campus and online graduate level seminar. The course was taught at UNT and both on-campus and online were taught at the same time, by the same professor, with the same readings, etc. Our data now consists of interviews with all of the students in the course, three weeks of discussion board threads for online, three one hour teleconferences that were part of the online course, and three weeks worth of video recordings of the on-campus class meeting. We chose to focus on the same three weeks in both courses.

From what I can tell so far, there have not been many (well, I have not found any) studies that have focus on both on-campus and online courses taught at the same time by the same professor. I have found a lot of articles in my extensive literature review that compare asynchronous and synchronous elements of an online course.

While the study was met to be more of a pilot (due to only being able to focus on three weeks) it’s turning out to be much more fruitful than a pilot! I would have never imagined we would end up with so much data!

We’ll be presenting Saturday, December 1, at 8:00 am at the AAA conference. Thus, we are working on the paper and presentation now. Much like it has been for the last two months of analysis- we’re finding that it’s difficult deciding what to focus on! There is so much to say, frameworks to use, etc. It’s been a good experience to have to help decide what to focus on, and there has been a fair amount of back and forth about it.

The analysis is somewhat interdisciplinary project in that we are drawing on distance education, education, computer-mediated communication, language ideologies, and of course, linguistic anthropology. This has also been a good experience.

The last important lesson I’ve learned is how quickly data can become overwhelming, both in quality and quantity!

The project is applied in nature and thus we’ve started making design recommendations from the data to inform both course development and the electronic learning software. I think our recommendations are great and when we presented preliminary findings to the department last month, we got some valuable feedback about the recommendations.

For AAA we’ll likely narrow our focus to ‘presence’ (as defined by Garrison and others) online and on-campus. I’ll post more about the actual findings after the conference, but I can tell you that we are finding that both on-campus and online have their strengths and weaknesses :)
We’ve been doing analysis

My third semester at UNT is wrapping up…

15 Nov

My classes are winding down and the end of this semester will be much easier than the last two. I’m taking Organizational Behavior (elective) and the UNT department’s required pre-practicum course.

The pre-practicum course is meant to prepare us for our practicum. Master’s students at UNT are required to do an applied research project for a client in lieu of thesis. I like this approach because it provides far more practical experience than writing a research paper. The course has finally got to the point where we discuss our practicums, etc. Up until recently we’ve focused more on professional development (resume, networking, etc.) This has been helpful, but I have to admit I would have preferred for the course to focus more on our practicums. The course is being taught by someone who is not part of the faculty because the usual professor for the course is not teaching this semester. I’m not sure how different the course would be if we had the UNT professor – my guess is that it would focus more on the practicum.

I have to write a practicum proposal as the final assignment for the course. I wrote a project statement for it last week (think 30 second elevator talk for your project on paper).
I think the project proposal will be a bit difficult because the very idea of doing this without consulting with the client is absurd to me, but this is more for practice than for us to actually use.

I don’t have an organizational behavior exam, just our typical homework assignment, group work, and multiple choice test. Having just the one project due will be a refreshing change from the last year!

And, my project over winter break is to go back and tag old posts about UNT as such because I’ve since learned that people find those posts interesting and/or find them while doing searches about the online program.

Communities of Practice & the internet

14 Nov

Yesterday I did a post about ‘Communities of Practice’ (CoP) that I feel could be of interest to applied/practicing anthropologists, anthropologists in the tech field, and design anthropologists.

I created the list as part of an assignment for my pre-practicum course. The professor wanted us to find professional organizations that would serve as our CoP post graduation. For the sake of the assignment, professional organizations were pseudo-synonymous with CoP and vice versa. Professional organizations (the AAA and SfAA would be examples) are those that charge for membership and in return you receive benefits such as publications, and also networking opportunities.

I’m wondering how relevant these professional organizations really are in the age of the internet. There are many, many social networks that can be used to network both socially and professionally. Such networks are very accessible (if you have the internet), are free to join, take as much (or little) effort as you want to maintain, and there are no face-to-face conferences for you to be tempted to attend. Virtual social networks can also be a great way for shy or timid people to begin networking or for people to get to know people in other cities, etc.

Now, these social networks do not offer tangible membership benefits immediately, nor do they guarantee such results BUT if you maintain, nurture, and give to your network you can receive many benefits!

Will social networks replace what professional organizations have to offer? Well, the beautiful thing about social networks is that they are what you want them to be. If you are looking for professional development, connections, inspirations, relationships, job opportunities, etc. then find people to add that can offer those to you – and make sure you give back to them!

I do belong to professional organizations, but I’m not sure if I’ll renew my membership to most. I get more out of my social networks than those professional organizations ;)

Communities of Practice for Applied/Practicing (Design) Anthropologists (with a focus on the tech industry)

13 Nov

I’m currently taking a Pre-Practicum course at UNT. The course is meant to prepare us for doing our practicum, which is essentially a full applied anthropology research project in which we work directly with a client and it is in lieu of a master’s thesis (read practical, real world experience ;) .

This course has focused on professional development; resume, 30 second elevator speech of personal interests/experience, a research paper about your field of interest, grant writing, IRB, types of anthropological research, and communities of practice (CoP).

For the sake of the course, ‘communities of practice’ were essentially professional organizations e.g., SfAA or AAA. I felt this definition was rather limiting and somewhat ill-informed in the age of the internet (doesn’t account for social networks, etc.) but that was the definition we were told to work from. So, for the course, I compiled a list of CoP’s that I felt would be relevant to me (design anthropologist in the tech field). I thought I’d share the list with you since I spent so much time on it :) I’ve broken it into sections and put a “*” to denote organizations I belong to.

The idea of CoP is that you’ll have places to network, to stay informed about current trends, etc. and you’ll receive the benefits that said membership offers, such as newsletters, etc. However, a CoP is what you make of it and the reasons, benefits, etc. probably will vary by person to person.

Professional Organizations of Interest to Applied & Practicing Anthropologists

*American Anthropological Association (AAA)

*Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA)

*National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA)

*National Association of Student Anthropologists (NASA)

Consortium of Practicing & Applied Anthropology Programs (COPAA)

Local Practitioner Organizations (LPO)

Professional Organizations of Interest to Applied & Practicing Design Anthropologists

*Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA)

*AnthroDesign Listserv

Interaction Design Association (IxDA)

*Human Factors & Ergonomics Society (HFES)

Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)

Design Research Society

User Experience Network (UXnet)

Updated December 9, 2007: This was a comment posted by a reader (to another related post) “As for your list, note that UXnet is not a professional organization like the others – you cannot join it as a member (only as a volunteer). UXnet is more about helping you make sense of all of the user experience CoP out there.” Thanks Keith, I appreciate your correction!

Professional Organizations of Interest to Applied & Practicing Design Anthropologists in Tech

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

ACM SIGCHI
you have to be a member of ACM

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The American Anthropological Association (AAA) has a blog

7 Nov

That’s right, the AAA now has a blog (note that it’s a free blogspot blog – see, it doesn’t have to cost much money to step into the 20th Century ;)

The first (and only) entry is about the “AAA Board Statement on HTS” (the embedded anthropologists in the military). There are a few comments on the entry. I’m not sure if the blog was started to comment on the Board’s decision or not, it doesn’t really matter what the reasons were – I just hope someone will keep it up.

I’m very happy to see the amount of discussion that took place in the last few weeks regarding the HTS. There was much discussion on blogs, listervs, the SfAA Ning network, etc. It seems that once the discipline has some dilemma that people will bond, unite, and discuss it – it’s nice to see some soft of community :)

Here are a few entries about the AAA blog from other anthropology bloggers:
AnthroBlogs
Savage Minds
Anthropology.net

Last notes about the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC)

5 Nov

On Monday, I wrote about my experience at EPIC back in October, but I have a few last thoughts.

I mentioned the Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, this was a break out done on Friday afternoon. Attendees started to propose topics for the sessions and others voted on the ones they were most interested. On Friday after lunch the topics were finalized and we met in groups for about 2 hours (or something like that). I went into a group with Amy Goldmacher, Chris Miller, Mark Dawson, and many other folks. Our topic was ‘what students need in order to be able to actually practice once they graduate.’ The majority of the group were anthropologists and thus we focused on what anthropology students need to learn in terms of experience, skills, knowledge, etc. in order to be employable after they graduate. The session was very informative and Amy is working on setting up a listserv for us to continue the conversation. We’ll also be using Student Anthropology to continue the discussion.

The BoF part of the conference was probably my favorite portion. Our particular group was super productive and we had a good mix of practitioners, academics, students, and other disciplines to complement the view points. I’d never done a BoF before, it’s something that you’d never see at the AAA or SfAA, except for the informal ad hoc meetings in the hallway. Ugh, I just used ‘ad hoc’ in a sentence =P

Here is a link to photos from EPIC2007 on Flickr. LINK

Here’s a picture of me that is in the photo set, I’m the one standing up on the left. LINK

Here is a link to the EPIC2007 website; abstracts, notes, papers, etc. should be uploaded (or will be coming soon if they’re not there now). LINK

Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC)

3 Nov

This post is so late that I questioned the value of writing it all together, and obviously decided to go a head and do it. I went out to Keystone Resort in Colorado back in early October for the EPIC conference. I had the great honor of attending the conference on an Intel sponsored student scholarship. For those poor souls that had to pay, the cost of attendance was actually quite reasonable; a little more than the SfAA or AAA cost, but significantly lower than most other conferences. I’d say it’s affordable for students, and I would absolutely say that it’s worth it to students.

I registered for the conference and went out to Colorado thinking that it would be a “business anthropology” conference; many of the organizers have a background in the discipline, many business anthropologists that I know were going to be there, and “ethnography” is typically thought of as being anthropology’s baby within the academy. It’s true that many conference goers were anthropologists and that many sessions were “anthropological,” but post-conference, I don’t really feel like it was a “business anthropology” conference. If anything, I’d call it and applied ethnography conference. There was a heavy tech presence in the conference, but there were also medical professionals, designers of all sorts, and other people from other fields.

I’d actually recommend anyone planning on working in the private sector within the realm of applied social science research to go to the conference next year – and not only because it will be in Copenhagen, Denmark ;) Many, many of the presenters focused on the ways in which they use “rapid” versions of traditional ethnographic methods, and they did so in a very understandable way. After all, these are researchers that work in the business world, they are much more simple and to the point than our academic counterparts. I came home feeling like I understood how practitioners use ethnography in the fast-paced world of business and that really isn’t something you are likely to learn in school.

I really had a good time at the conference (aside from the altitude sickness!), it was a completely different vibe than either the SfAA or the AAA. Each morning the day started off with breakfast, then a keynote speaker. After a half hour break a panel of speakers started- everyone continued to be in one large room, there was no deciding what to attend (which is a hassle at the anthropology conferences because there are 15 sessions going on at the same time). Each day there was a catered lunch (they fed us well :) and in the afternoon there were a few breaks also. There was a lot of free time (but not too much) where people could socialize, or network, with each other (another nice aspect of the event). One afternoon there were two tracks and the second afternoon there was just the one panel. Saturday was full of free workshops, I heard they went well, but I actually left early to come home because of the altitude sickness.

Friday night there was a dinner for everyone. Everyone hung out (read open bar) for quite a few hours, ate, talked, and had an overall excellent time. This is really what set EPIC apart from other conferences in my mind, everyone was together, in one group, most of the time and there was plenty of fun time.

My favorite part of EPIC were the Birds of a Feather sessions, but more to come about that in a future post.

Student Anthropologists blog

1 Nov

Many moons ago, myself and a couple of students at Wayne State University (Amy Goldmacher & Chris Miller) discussed creating a blog for student anthropologists.

We all met up at the EPIC conference last month and were re-energized about this idea. The focus has changed a bit, I think we’re going to try to create a dialog about what students should know about industry that they won’t learn in school, about collaborating with other disciplines, and also a mentoring type site.

More to come in the next few weeks, we have a teleconference planned. For now, be sure to check out the blog at http://studentanthro.org/ Chris Miller has begun to post already.

Anthropological research can suck sometimes, why do we do it?

16 Sep

That was my thought last week as I looked back through my time cards from March – July and realized the amount of time I spent doing transcription over the last few months. I don’t like doing transcription, in fact, sometimes I despise it. Every time I’ve had to transcribe interviews, it’s been for a project with a linguistic focus (read super attention to detail and much harder transcription ;)

Despite my dislike for transcription, I realize it’s part of the research process (well, for grad students any way ;) and thus it is important. But than I thought about all of the hours that are a head of me coding those transcriptions. I like coding better than transcribing, but it’s not really “fun,” and on top of that, I’ve been staring at these interviews for nine months now and have read them all at least five times!

Well, the process does in deed suck sometimes, and that’s why we’re repeatedly told to only do research we love. I do love the research project I’m on and most days that’s enough to keep me going. But not always.

So what drives me? What causes me to push forward? What are my reasons for this seemingly self-torture?

I do anthropological research because I honestly believe that the outcomes may be (hopefully!) beneficial to others and this is why I am an applied anthropologist. As applied anthropologists we can work with the community to put the collected data into action, and the results can be very beneficial!

I’m not sure if it’s because I started out in an applied program, or if it’s the pragmatist in me, or what.. but I believe that it is very important to apply anthropological research. My hopes of helping is what keeps me going. I’m not sure that I understand what drives non-applied anthropologists, or other non-applied social scientists for that matter, to do research if no one will benefit from it… unless of course it’s an ego thing ;)

Software & Online Resources for Research summary of my 7 part series

16 Sep

I just finished my 7 part series about software and internet resources for research.
Part 1, “Inspiration for an Idea,” can be found here

part 2, “Literature Review,” can be found here,

part 3, “Research,” can be found here,

part 4, “Transcription”, can be found here,

part 5, “Analysis,” can be found here,

part 6, “Write up,” can be found here,

and part 7, “Publishing,” can be found here.

I hope to make the seven parts into wiki pages so that I can add resources as I learn about them and so that others may add their resources as well.

There are a few themes in almost each entry that I wanted to reiterate one last time. I mention the use of wikis and mind maps in many stages as a tool for organization, as well as maintaining PDFs in Yep.
Organization in research is very important and there are a lot of software and online tools that can help!

Related posts:
GTD – anthropology style
How to “network” as an (online) anthropology student

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