Lining up these ducks is definitely not sexy research work, yet it’s often very important, as Laura mentioned last week. Ideally, this would have been done from the beginning. It was to some extent, but mostly with what was new coming in rather than taking stock also of what we already have. The same will [...]
Tag archives for data collection
Visiting Scholars
While we don’t yet have the formal guest researcher program up and running, we did have a visit from our collaborator Jarrett Geenan this week. He’s working with Sigrid Norris on multimodal discourse analysis, and he was in the U.S. for an applied linguistics conference, so he “stopped by” the Pacific Northwest on his way [...]
Entering the home stretch
I have just about nailed down a defense date. That means I have about two months to wrap all this up (or warp it, as I originally typed) into a coherent, cohesive, narrative worthy of a doctoral degree. It’s amazing to me to think it might actually be done one of these days. Of course, [...]
Good days and bad days for visitor data collection
Awhile ago, I promised to share some of my experiences in collecting data on visitors’ exhibit use as part of this blog. Now that I’ve actually been back at it for the past few weeks, I thought it might be time to actually share what I’ve found. As it is winter here in the northern [...]
Camera Housekeeping
With all the new wave exhibit work, visitor center maintenance, server changes and audio testing that has been going on in the last few months, Mark, Katie and I realized that the Milestone system that runs the cameras and stores the video data is in need of a little TLC. Next week we will be [...]
The pit of never-ending data
Happy new year everyone! After all the fun and frivolities of the holiday season, I am left with not only the feeling that I probably shouldn’t have munched all those cookies and candies, but also the grave realization that crunch time for my dissertation has commenced. I’d like to have it completed by Spring and, just like [...]
“Reverse” ground-truthing
We’ve recently been prototyping a new exhibit with standard on-the-ground methods, and now we’re going to use the cameras to do a sort of reverse ground-truthing. Over our busy Whale Watch Week between Christmas and New Year’s, Laura set up a camera on the exhibit to collect data on people using the exhibit at times [...]
What’s your recruitment style?
Last week, Dr. Rowe and I visited Portland Art Museum to help assist with a recruitment push for participants in their Conversations About Art evaluation and I noticed all of the education staff involved have very different styles of how they recruited visitors to participate in the project. Styles ranged from the apologetic (e.g. “do [...]
One Month’s Worth
How much progress have I made on my thesis in the last month? Since last I posted about my thesis, I have completed the majority of my interviews. Out of 30 I need, I have all but four completed, and three of the four remaining scheduled. Out of about 20 eyetracking sessions, I have completed [...]
Defining an audience
It seems that a convenience sample really is the only way to go for my project at this stage. I have long entertained the notion that some kind of randomization would work to my benefit in some abstract, cosmic way. The problem is, I’m developing a product for an established audience. As much as I’d [...]