Theme 3

Both articles are very helpful in understanding of how the quantitative methods of research work, and, even more interesting to me, both discuss the topic of online education, which is becoming very popular and important nowadays.


 “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009) 

The main question of this paper is how a low quality of research on online learning can be improved. This introduces the mixed research in Data Analysis, which is a new, multiple method of collecting data.
The purpose of study is exploratory, as researchers are trying to bring up the new method into actual usage, and explain its elements. 
Basically, mixed research is a research strategy that combines both quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to create a more valid way to perform a research. This may result in better ways of providing online-learning, which currently has a lot of disadvantages comparing to traditional way of learning, as the authors point out. 
Speaking about qualitative analysis, it should be verified by comparative analysis with such methods as counting of the number of words, keywords, content, domain analysis, taxonomic and component analysis, social presence etc. 
There are some tools, or collecting methods, that they discuss: research questions (both quantitative and qualitative), samples etc. There are also various lists of examples of how a researcher should perform the analysis. For example, the most interesting for me are Seven stages of the data analysis process: data reduction, data display, data transformation, data correlation, data consolidation, data comparison, and data integratio.

Authors say that mixed studies on the subject are difficult to perform, nevertheless, using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis would be highly effective.

I agree that this way of research work can definitely increase the quality of research, and not only regarding the subject of online learning. In this particular case it would make the process of research highly productive. I think that this method is a good way to combine the best parts of qualitative and quantitative analysis. Still, sometimes it could be difficult to analyze both quantitative and qualitative data, and also the usage of multiple methods will make the research process longer, but its results will be more valuable.


 “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. 

The main question of this paper is the presence of emotion in online learning. 
The purpose of study is explanatory, as authors discuss if emotions influence on the process of online learning.
They use mixed methods of research: the quantitative data is collected from surveys and interviews (conference discussion transcripts), the qualitative data is taken from the questions in the survey (217 students of distance education programmes). 

The conclusion is that emotion is a prominent experience in the online environment that may be distracting, but also may support ideas, be stimulating, if managed correctly. This is teachers’ responsibility: «Consideration of the appropriate response is needed [...] Instructors can model emotional response […] and teach how to bring emotion to consciousness and make use of the emotional state in a learning situation».

Researchers still left many questions for further discussions, like what is emotions influence on organization and direct instruction, or are where some specific emotions experienced during triggering events etc. 
Nevertheless, they ended up with interesting and productive results, and, in my opinion, this goal was achieved due to the illustrative information received from the mixed methods of research.

Second Week, Reflections

Theory

This week we studied the theory on the subject of... theories. It was quite interesting to analyze what is theory and give it a proper definition. Doing this, we used the article "What Theory is Not" (Sutton, Staw), which reminded me of another work of this format, "The nature of explanation" (K. Craik) that has been written in 1943. Surprisingly for me, there were the same ideas in the both articles, that leads to the conclusion that this subject is still could be discussed, 60 years later.

The most important point for me was to remember that any science paper with references and diagrams, hypothesis and various data is not theoretical if there is no hypothesis that can be tested - it is an easy scheme to use while looking for the information for my master thesis and other work. 

Also, theory is an important philosophical term, used since times of Plato and Aristotle. It is a human tool used in order to understand and systematize our knowledge about the world. It doesn't exist by itself, as we pointed out during our group discussion.

Five types of theories can help in describing some scientific papers due to providing structured templates of parameters for every kind of theory to include. At the same time, sometimes it is impossible to choose the only one theory, or discuss its types at all, as we learned during the seminar. Personally, I consider Gregor's work as a good mind exercise. 

Practice

We discussed various theories in order to find the paper with actual theoretical concept, and have learned (and googled) a lot of theories in the end, such as Social capital theory, Game theory, Social Cognitive theory etc. It was interesting to learn how the hypothesis development works, to see the similarities in the structure of every theory, and try to think about each theory in the case of particular research, and then globally.

The editing work can also be considered as very useful. We had a difficult task: to edit a description, which was already complete. These skills sometimes can be very useful, while working on a voluminous text.

Theme 2

1) 
What is theory? 

Theory IS providing explanations with clear argumentation that can be tested. 
Theory IS abstract and general text, which answer the question Why? and provide links between ideas, events, structures or things. 
Theory’s aims are to describe, explain and predict the future developments based on revealing of the current connections between the cause and the event. 
Theory IS NOT subjective opinions, variables, diagrams, listings of references, data, hypotheses – these are not a theory, but it could be used as the kind of reasoning to support the theory. 


2)
The research paper I chose is 'Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice' from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (IF 2.172). http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue4/preece.html 

In my opinion, this paper is using theory in an excellent way, and it can be characterized as the first type of theory according Table 2 in Gregor's article: theory of Analysis.

The paper consist of the theory which provides a descriptions of the phenomena of Online Communities, used during the last decades by various researchers, so answers the question ‘what it is’.
There are also the descriptions of various current research trends, used in the field (such as Ethnography, Content and linguistic analysis, Social network analysis, History flow technique, interviews and questionnaires), with the mention that no particular theory or set of theories currently dominates research on online communities: ‘In order to study online communities, researchers have had to adapt methodologies for use online'. 

The theory does not extend beyond analysis and description, but only analyses the relationships among these research trends. There are no predictions for the future, and causal relationships among phenomena are not specified. 

Theory Component: Instantiation, defining the concept of community 
Means of representation: Words 
Primary constructs: approaches, methodologies and techniques 
Statements of relationship: 'There is the relationship between community involvement and the use of the Internet to support the community'. 
Scope: Methodologies that have been proposed in the scholarly literature. A procedure for including new methodologies as they arise is proposed, 'as new and novel practices emerge within the online community environments'. 

3) 
As to the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory, it is obvious that theory of Analysis is based on the previous research and does not demand for any hypotheses, propositions or prescriptive statements, which makes it clean and indisputable. On the other hand, there is no new knowledge or even causal explanations: it is basically a listing, which should be already familiar for specialists.

First Week, Reflections

Theory

It was a very productive experience to have a chance to reread Russell's book and other philosophers works after a lecture on the subject of knowledge in the philosophical context.

It gave me time to read and think about the Plato's theory of Ideas and Aristotle's theory of Universals, as the only one work I could easily recall in my memory before this week, was Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'. Partly this was the reason to appreciate Bertrand Russell's views, as he mostly agrees with my favourite philosopher' ideas.

It is interesting to see the parallels between the Plato's school with his understanding of the difference between knowledge and true judgement and Russel's main concepts, such as knowledge of things and knowledge of truths,  knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.

I tried to get a better understanding of Russel's criticism of such theories as monism and monadism, which are partly based on the idea of universals, while the lecture on Tuesday reminded me of the Descartes' foundationalism, Hume's empiricism and scepticism. Still, I made a mistake trying to separate the ideas of proposition and statement of fact that appeared to be the same thing in Russel's theory, as we learned during the seminar.

It was good to get visual examples and entertaining discussions on Wednesday, talking about the source of sence-data as our cognitive activity, and different kinds of verbal impressions (and list all of them as follows: Questions, Conditions, Propositions, Performances, Believes, Imperatives).

Works of Ayer and Austin, mentioned during the seminar, were unknown to me, so now I am getting familiar with the common language philosophy.

Practice

The search for the journal and the paper was quite exciting and complicated at the same time, as I tried to understand the principle of impact factor.

It shows the relative importance of a journal within its field, and can be calculated as A/B, where A and B are:

A is the number of times the article was cited by indexed journals during the specific period of time;

B is the total number of "citable items" (articles, reviews, etc.) published by that journal during the specific period of time.  

It will help me to find the relevant high quality research material in the future, along with Google Academia and Web of Knowledge databases, and it has already helped us to find really interesting articles on the subject of media and social networks which we are going to discuss further on Blogger.

Theme 1

The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) is one of the oldest web-based Internet studies scholarly journals. It publishes work by scholars in communication, political science, sociology, media studies etc. (http://jcmc.indiana.edu/)

I chose the research article 'The fifth estate emerging through the network of networks' (2009) written by William Dutton, in: Prometheus 27 (1): 1-15.
Dutton talks about the new institutions of the Network Society: new technologies and new media lead to the appearance of new forms of democracy, such as the 'fifth estate', a network community. Dutton's discussion of the role of the Internet and related technologies is distinguished into three stages:

- Internet as ephemeral technological innovation,

- Internet as a destruction of hierarchies, or a mean of a total control,

- Internet as a network of networks, which allows different combinations to establish links between individuals and groups.

The research is based on the various theoretical, philosophical and social works (from M. Castells to T. Blair) and a historical analysis. Its aims are the proposition of Dutton's hypothesis and the intoduction of a new term, which became quite popular among social media researchers nowadays.

Bertrand Russel - The Problems of Philosophy

1)

According to Russel, 'sense-data' means the things that are immediately known in sensation as an individual personal feeling. The object cannot be identical with the sense-datum, so, the facts that we know about the subjects are our personal feelings, not the ideal universal information.

Russel introduces this notion to give a better understanding of his philosophical structure, which separates 'knowledge of things' and 'knowledge of truths'. Knowledge of things is divided on knowledge by description which needs the basis of certain 'truth' knowledge, and knowledge by acquaintance which doesn't need logical conclusions and based on the sense-data.

2)

The proposition is an obvious but abstract fact, like 'two and two are four', something we know without sensual experience. All 'a priori' knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals.

The statement of fact mean statements about particular objects/facts, not the idea of them. The belief is true when corresponds to the fact, and false if it doesn't.

Facts are something that has been experienced in acquaintance. We can have knowledge by description of things which we have never experienced, but this would be propositions.

3)

'Definite description' is any phrase of the form 'the so-and-so', which is having a certain property and we do not have knowledge of the same object by acquaintance.

The phrase of the form 'the so-and-so' (in the singular) is called an a 'definite' description. The example of this as follows: 'a man' is an ambiguous description, and 'the man with the iron mask' is a definite description, or 'a man as any person' or 'this particular man'.

4)

Russell duscusses theories of a priori knowledge which is not purely or not purely 'analytic'. He disagrees with rationalists who state 'a priori' as a mental general knowledge, and partly agrees with Plato's 'theory of ideas' as an attempt to solve this problem, but criticizes the idea of universals, even when this complex idea is a basis of many theories, such as monism (Spinoza, Bradley), monadism (Leibniz).

He points out that the universals are represented by adjectives and substantives, and there must be relations which are not dependent upon thought, but belong to the independent world which the thought apprehends but does not create.

His conclusion is that while many different thoughts of particular sense have in common their object, this object itself is different from all of them.