Course Comments

Course comments by Nicklas Holmgren

The following is an ordered list of all my comments throughout the course!

Theme 1

Nicklas Holmgren  2 november 2012 10:06 (In response, on my own blog)

I would say that it is of high quality from what I read of it. I looked at a few articles before selecting the one above - they all appeared to be high quality from what little I read of them.

Also the organizations seems well respected. As I mentioned I was familiar with the conference Siggraph since quite a few years, it is a pretty major event and well known in certain businesses. So while I don't know for a matter of fact that it deserves an IF of 3.5, the circumstances suggest it is at least produced by a well established organization.

Theme 2

Nicklas Holmgren6 november 2012 06:43 (In response, on my own blog)

I wouldn't say that it has in my case, though like in the example I have noticed the stories in the news about security concerns on Facebook from time to time.

Though I have noticed a few of my friends seem to have been affected regarding what and how they post, only because they have mentioned it to me (even specifying the news stories about privacy as sources for why they said they had changed habits).

Nicklas Holmgren9 november 2012 09:59 (On sepehramoorpour.blogspot.se)

I agree that combining the different Types of Theory is the more thorough way to do it. Thought focusing on just one part may be most relevant and less time consuming depending on the aim of a paper.

Nicklas Holmgren9 november 2012 10:05 (On DM2572.blogspot.se)

That sort of ties into the discussion that was going on at the seminar of group B this week. I remember our min-group originally raising a similar point to what Sofie did.

While you may not need theory in a scientific paper, I guess that depends on what its aim is. If the purpose is just to describe observations, or to offer a way to explain them.

The great thing is that with a report of that sort being published it opens up the possibilities of a new researcher or group maybe being able to come up with a theory about it.

Nicklas Holmgren8 november 2012 02:38 (In response, on my own blog)I believe the norms are mostly influenced by and set among closer knit groups, but should in broad strokes be pretty common across the region you are in. As far as I understand it.It may be so that if you have acquaintances that are further disconnected geographically, like if you have a few people from the US on your friends list you may more easily spot some things that indicate their norms differ somewhat.

Theme 3

Lost in space because I forgot to save the links.

Theme 4

Nicklas Holmgren30 november 2012 08:19 (In response, on my own blog)

Having conducted a qualitative survey myself, I know you are very correct. It does take an absurd amount of time depending on how many people you have that are contributing. :)

Theme 5

Nicklas Holmgren30 november 2012 08:13 (In response, on my own blog)

They provided a diagram so it was easy to see in the paper. Anyway, to make it more clear they had a large projector screen at one end of the room to where the students' desks were facing and the screen was divided into 36 grid-squares where each student had their own working space. Strictly speaking it was as if every student had their own screen - but the hardware demand was only one projector and one screen.

Nicklas Holmgren30 november 2012 08:17 (In response, on my own blog)

Good observation! They did not have a baseline where they compared their results to a second class at each location that did not take part in the experiment. Rather they only compared the results internally within each class that used the system. So they could see that the results of the classes improved with each session they had with the system, showing progress. But they could not compare to a status-quo that went on without using the prototype. That may indeed be a bit lacking, and could possibly be the focus of a follow-up experiment.

Nicklas Holmgren30 november 2012 08:21 (In response, on my own blog)

In this case no since they seemed to get all of the information they were after. From the descriptions it seems that their prototype was also very complete in its functionality.

In the text I am speaking more generally, that it may become a problem.

Nicklas Holmgren30 november 2012 08:23 (In response, on my own blog)

They did not use a reference study of the type you mention, which indeed may be a problem. I did not really consider it at the time I was reading the article, but now in hindsight that seems to be a misstep. I do think they could have learned a lot of useful things from that, regarding the validity of their idea.