Category Archives: Research

Jumping In

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I seem to have gone from walking to speed racing when it comes to projects. Not only do I have the Folklife paper I’m co-authoring for ASEE, but now I’m working on 3 more projects. Just last week I was tasked with doing new analysis on already collected data for a paper draft that’s due at the end of the month. So I’ve been slogging through file after file of the data, trying to make sense of it all so that I can get the analysis done by the end of the week. This is the first time I’ve been asked to do data analysis on data that I was not directly connected with collecting. I’ve always been very familiar with the data I was working with, as well as with the project it’s connected to. I have neither of those safety nets on this project, and it is really testing my abilities. Which is both exciting and terrifying. There is no backup plan if I am unable to get this done, so the pressure is really on. Personally I’m not a fan of pressure, I like to have things well laid out in advance with mini-milestones to keep me on track and keep the task from feeling overwhelming.

I just hope I’m able to rise to the challenge without completely freaking out.

007 Training: My new life as a spy

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If you google “record phone call” or “digital audio recorder+phone,” you may end up watching spy videos.  Thanks for the entertaining spy videos Google, but I’m just trying to do my thesis.  I’m trying to figure out how to record my phone interviews, and this won’t be done secretly.

The OSU Student Media Services desk at the library is extremely helpful, and they have a ton of equipment to check out.   They have a device that connects to the Zoom H2 digital audio recorder, and plugs into your ear.  Both me and the person on the phone will be recorded.  Unfortunately, it’s broken!  They said they will try to order another device soon, along with some other types of leads (things that plug into my phone and the recorder).

I’ve heard it’s good to have 2 recorders working, just to be safe, so  I’m also looking into apps that record calls.  I’ve seen a few for iPhones, but I have an Android.  Free Android apps include Record My Call, Call Recorder, and Auto Call Recorder.  One question… What are the privacy rules with these apps?  Will any outside party be able to access the recording?

If anyone has suggestions for recording phone interviews, PLEASE (!) let me know!  Thanks 🙂

Exhibit or research platform?

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Our climate change “exhibit” is rapidly losing its primacy as an exhibit on which we do research to instead becoming a  research platform that we set up as an exhibit. The original plan was to design an exhibit on a multitouch table around climate change and research, among other things, how users interact and what stories they choose to tell as related to their “6 Americas” identity about climate change.

After Mark attended the ASTC conference, in talking with Ideum folks and others, we’ve decided what we really need to build is a research platform on the table, with exhibit content just as the vehicle for doing that research. That means instead of designing content and asking research questions about it, we’re taking the approach of proposing the research questions, then finding content to put on that allows us to investigate those questions. The good news is that a lot of content already exists.

So, with that in mind, we’re taking the tack now of identifying the research questions we’re interested in in order to build the appropriate tools for answering those questions. For example,

-How do people respond to the table, and what kinds of tools do we need to build so that they will respond, especially by creating their own narratives about the content?

-How can we extend the museum’s reach beyond the building itself, for example, by integrating the multitouch exhibit and handheld tools? What is the shelf life of interactions in the museum?

-What are the differences between the ways groups and individuals use the table, or the differences between the horizontal interactions of the table-based exhibit vs. the more traditional “vertical” interactions provided by other exhibits (did you play Ms. Pac Man differently when it was in the table version vs. the stand-up kiosk?)

-How can we help facilitate visualization understanding through simulations on the table where visitors can build comparisons and manipulate factors in the data to create their own images and animations?

What other questions with the multitouch table should we build research tools to answer?

 

 

 

 

 

Thesising

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Writing your dissertation seems like the perfect time to learn new software, no? As Laura mentioned, she’s starting to use NVivo for her analysis, and I’m doing the same. It’s a new program for our lab, but already it looks very powerful, combining multiple types of data within the same project. For me, that’s audio, video, and transcripts of course, but I’m also finding that I will be able to link the imagery that I used probably to particular parts of the transcript. That means that I will likely be able to connect those easily in the actual dissertation write up. For me, that could prove incredibly useful as I have so many images that are virtually the same, yet subtlely different, what with the topic and level of scaffolding varying just slightly. I don’t think describing the “levels” of scaffolding in words will be quite the same. It may mean a lot of color images for my dissertation printing, though. Hm, another thing to figure out!

I’m also diving into using the new eyetracking tools, which are also powerful for that analysis, but still tricky in terms of managing licenses across computers when I’m trying to collect data in one place and analyze it in another. We’re certainly epitomizing free-choice learning in that sense, learning in an on-demand fashion to use tools that we want to learn about in order to accomplish specific tasks. One could just wish we had had real data to use these tools with before (or money to purchase them – NVivo and StudioCode, another powerful coding tool for on-the-fly video coding, are not cheap). Between that and the IRB process, I’m realizing this dissertation process is even more broadly about all the associated stuff that comes with doing research (not to mention budgeting, scheduling, grant proposing …) than it is about even the final project and particular findings themselves. I’m sure someone told me this in the beginning, but it’s one of those you don’t believe it until you see it sorts of things.

What “else” have you learned through your research process?

The pit of never-ending data

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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 Katie, I’ve hit the analysis phase of my research and am desperately trying not to fall into the pit of never-ending data. All those current and former graduate students out there, I’m sure you can relate to this – all those wonderful hours, weeks and months I have to look forward to of frantically trying to make sense of the vast pool of data I have spent the last year planning for and collecting.

 

But fear not! ’tis qualitative data sir! And seeing as I have really enjoyed working with my participants and collecting data so far, I am going to attempt to enjoy discovering the outcomes of all my hard work. To me, the beauty of working with qualitative data is developing the pictures of the answers to the questions that initiated the research in the first place. It’s a jigsaw puzzle with only knowing a rough idea of what the image might look like at the end – you slowly keep adding the pieces until that image comes clear. I’m looking forward to seeing that image.

So what do I have to analyze? Well, namely ~20 interviews with docents, ~75 docent observations, ~100 visitor surveys and 2 focus groups (which will hopefully take place in the next couple of weeks).  I will be using the  research analysis tool, Nvivo, which will aid me in cross-analyzing the different forms of data using a thematic coding approach – analyzing for reoccuring themes within each data set. What I’m particularly psyched about is getting into the video analysis of the participant observations, whereby I’m finally going to get the chance to unpack some of that docent practice I’ve been harping on about for the last two years. Here, I’ll be taking a little multimodal discourse analysis and a little activity theory to break down docent-visitor interaction and interpretative strategies observed.

Right now, the enthusiasm is high! Let’s see how long I can keep it up 🙂 It’s Kilimanjaro, but there’s no turning back now.

 

“Reverse” ground-truthing

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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 when we didn’t have an observer in place. So in this case, instead of ground-truthing the cameras, we’re sort of doing the opposite, and checking what we found with the in-person observer.

However, the camera will be on at the same time that the researcher is there, too. It almost sounds like we’ll be spying on our researcher and “checking up,” but it will be an interesting check of both our earlier observations without the camera in place, as well as a chance to observe a) people using the new exhibit without a researcher in place, b) people using it *with* a researcher observing them (and maybe noticing the observer, or possibly not), and c) whether people behave differently as well as how much we can capture with a different camera angle than the on-the-ground observer will have.

Some expectations:

The camera should have the advantage of replay which the in-person observer won’t, so we can get an idea of how much might be missed, especially detail-wise.

The camera audio might be better than a researcher standing a ways away, but as our earlier blog posts have mentioned, the audio testing is very much a work in progress.

The camera angle, especially since it’s a single, fixed camera at this point, will be worse than the flexible researcher-in-place, as it will be at a higher angle, and the visitors may block what they’re doing a good portion of the time.

 

As we go forward and check the automated collection of our system with in-place observers, rather than the other way around, these are the sorts of things we’ll be checking for, advantages and disadvantages.

What else do you all expect the camera might provide better or worse than a in-person researcher?