Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 29, 2007
Ugh, I had entered into the NaBloPoMo challenge on November 1 in hopes of finally getting to my ridiculous backlog of posts. I managed to do 17 posts (that put a dent in my list of “to-do posts.”
All of the traveling I’ve had to do this month finally caught up to me and I’ve decided not to finish the other 13 posts this month. The posts are now on my winter break to-do list and I will get them posted before the New Year.
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Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 26, 2007
After a little encouragement from those around me (and most importantly from my research team), I’ve decided to attend the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting again this year.
I went to the meeting in San Jose last year and I was less than impressed with it. My main dislike for the conference last year was the general vibe, it felt stuffy, too academic, and semi-dull. After a few days there I felt better about it, but I still did not like it as much as the SfAA conference. People told me that last year’s Meeting was stuffier than usual, so that on top of presenting, convinced me to give it another go. Well, I’ve never been to DC so that is an added bonus!
I’ll be presenting, along with my advisor Christina Wasson and the other RA Megan Bannon, on Saturday morning (8 am is when the session starts!). Our panel is called “Issues in Applied Linguistic Anthropology.” It’s sure to be an interesting session for those of you interested in linguistics and there are some big names in the almost 4 hour long session! We are presenting on our online-on-campus research (and here and here).
I’ll be tweeting during the conference, so you can find me here on Twitter.
Let me know if you’ll be at the conference too, here’s my email.
I’ll be in DC from Nov. 27 – Dec 3.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: AAA, Anthropology, NaBloPoMo, Research, UNT Online Master's | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 16, 2007
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
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Anthropology, Grad School, NaBloPoMo, Research | 2 Comments »
Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 15, 2007
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.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Anthropology, Grad School, Life, NaBloPoMo, UNT Online Master's | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 14, 2007
During the month of November the challenge is to post one post every day, should you chose to accept it. I have accepted it, but I’m sort of playing by my own rules. I haven’t posted one post each day (nor did I last year) but I have posted 14 posts so far this month. By the end of November I will have 30 posts for the month and while I hope to do one a day for the next 16 days I might not.
I’m happy to be participating, even if it’s by my own rules, because the challenge and goal is not lost on me. I never make time to post here, I’m always “too busy.” I have a backlog of post ideas and NaBloPoMo is forcing me to make time for them. I’m actually half way through my list, the second half will likely carry me through the month 
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Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 14, 2007
With much encouragement for my pre-practicum professor to decide what area of design anthropology I’d like to go into, I’ve declared that I will be entering into the tech industry. My focus in school has been design anthropology for the last year (or so), and I will be taking this knowledge with me in hopes of being able to inform website, web applications, and perhaps software designs through user-centered research.
The decision to go into the tech industry is probably not shocking to many people that know me. I’m making the move because the industry is not completely unfamiliar to me, I tend to like tech geeks (I know that’s stereo-typing, but I’ve found it to be true), I have a knack for picking up tech (especially web) knowledge quickly, and I have a genuine interest in technology.
We’ll see how the move goes for me. I’m looking forward to it and I have to admit that it’s comforting to have a destination in sight. I’m currently looking for an elective to fill and hope to find a web design type course. I’ve spoken to other design anthropologists in the tech field and it appears that you do not have to have “tech knowledge,” but it seems like it would make research easier.
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Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 14, 2007
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
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Anthropology, favorite, Life, NaBloPoMo, Organizations/Conferences, Practicing, Research | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 13, 2007
I’m a big fan of del.icio.us and while I don’t use it as actively as I used to, it’s still one of my favorite sites. Well, a couple of years ago I wrote a post about “Mavens Hanging out on Del.icio.us“, when I went to del.icio.us the post myself, I found that someone had beaten me to it (by the way, I remember that because it was one of the most flattering things to me- someone else read it and bookmarked it!). I added the person to my network, Danafu, he reciprocated that, and throughout the years we’ve received many links from each other.
While I was at EPIC, someone came up to me and introduced himself as “Danafu.” Sure enough, it was Danafu from my del.icio.us network! We had never met face-to-face before, and I didn’t even know he would be at the conference. We had lunch together, and much like I’d expect given our shared interest in links, we had a very good conversation and had many similar interests. Hi Dana!!
It really was a neat coincidence!
I noticed that someone else in my del.icio.us network added “met her at EPIC” in the notes field of one of their bookmarks (a company’s website “about us” page). I didn’t meet him at EPIC, but it’s neat that he was there too!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Blogging, EPIC, Life, NaBloPoMo, Organizations/Conferences | 2 Comments »
Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 13, 2007
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
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Anthropology, favorite, Life, NaBloPoMo, Practicing | 1 Comment »
Posted by Jen Cardew Kersey on November 10, 2007
Ah, the post for November 9th is a couple of hours late because I spent yesterday sleeping and being miserable on the couch We celebrated my birthday just a tad too much and something I ate didn’t agree with me either.
So I’m 25 now. I’m not weird about my age- if someone asks me how old I am, I tell them, and I never dread a birthday or anything of the like. I do know women around my age that are like that, and that’s fine- it’s just not my style. The only reservation I had about turning 25 was that I’m still in school. I always thought that I’d be out of school and in a career by 25 (who knows why I picked that age?!). Upon thinking about it, I realized I was holding myself to standards that I ignorantly set when I was a teenager, and I let it go.
This year’s birthday was particularly fun for me because I got so many birthday wishes from so many people! I’m active on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace and I got 10 or so messages on each on Thursday! It was so fun to login and see messages from people, some of the people I know mainly from the networks (read not f2f) and others I’ve known since elementary school. It helps that Myspace and Facebook announce your friends’ birthdays.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Life, NaBloPoMo | 1 Comment »
