Action research Avison et'al

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Action research (Avison et.al)

• To make academic research relevant, researchers
  should try out their theories with practitioners
  in real situations and real organisations

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Action research (1)

• It is a qualitatively oriented iterative process
  involving researchers and practitioners acting
  together on a particular cycle of activities
• problem diagnosis
• action intervention
• reflective learning
• Focus on what people do

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Action research (2)

• It is motivated by a quest to improve and
  understand the world by changing it and learning
  how to improve it from the effects of the changes
  made.
• Critically reflective why does the current
  action not produce the required results?.

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Action research (3)

• System analysts need to apply their craft to
  problems that are not well defined (principles,
  tools, techniques)
• System analysts have to address the fundamental
  human aspects of organisations
• research bring along a framework of concepts to
  the problem situation
• Learning (technology transfer)
• The researcher is a participant

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Problems, issues, suggestions

• Be explicit about the research method.
• action researchers must be clear about their
  framework of ideas, the method, techniques. that
  they are developing and provide rich and clear
  evidence from their reflections
• Proper documentation is important
• Explicit criteria should be defined before
  performing the research in order to later judge
  its outcomes.

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Organizational learning and communities of
practice Toward a unified view of working,
learning and innovation (Brown and Duguid)

• The ways people actually work usually differ
  fundamentally from the ways organizations
  describe that work in manuals, training programs.
  organizational charts, and job descriptions

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Introduction

• Practice is central to understanding work
• Formal descriptions of work and of learning are
  often abstracted from actual practice.
• Reliance on descriptive/espoused practice
  (canonical practice) can blind an organizations
  focus on the actual and usually valuable
  practices of its members (noncanonical
  practices). It is the actual practices that
  determine the success or failure of organizations
• The composite concept of "learning-in-working"
  best represents the fluid evolution of learning
  through practice.
• Learning is the bridge between working and
  innovating

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What is practice?

• Doing in a social context that give meaning and
  structure to what we do.
• Explicit and tacit, said/unsaid, represented
  /assumed
• What we take for granted--know-how

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Canonical versus Noncanonical practice (1)

• Actual practice versus Espoused practice
• modus operandi (during) versus opus operatum
  (after)
• while working versus after completed
• e.g a map versus the physical landscape (raod
  work, parades, signs, etc)

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Canonical versus Noncanonical practice (2)

• Workers are held responsible according to formal
  job descriptions (canonical), despite the fact
  that daily evidence points to the contrary - They
  are held accountable to the map, not to road
  conditions
• Lack in canonical approaches demands an
  alternative, non-canonical approach.
• In a non-canonical approach people tell stories
  that is wholly unavailable in a canonical approach

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Central Features of Work Practice (1)

• Narratation
• Stories act as repositories of accumulated wisdom
• develop a causal map out of their experience to
  replace the impoverished directive route that
  they have been furnished by the corporation
• allows people to keep track of the sequences of
  behavior and of their theories

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Central Features of Work Practice (2)

• Collaboration
• Insight is accumulated by telling (and exchange)
  work-related stories to each other
• Not only is the learning inseparable from
  working, but also individual learning is
  inseparable from collective learning

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Central Features of Work Practice (3)

• Social Construction
• Learning is socially constructed and distributed
• Workers construct a shared understanding out of
  bountiful conflicting and confusing data
• Such an approach is highly situated and highly
  improvisational bricolage

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Learning (1)

• Learning theorists have rejected transfer models,
  which isolate knowledge from practice, and
  developed a view of learning as social
  construction, putting knowledge back into the
  contexts in which it has meaning
• What is learned is profoundly connected to the
  conditions in which it is learned (workplace
  learning), rather than just abstract subject
  matter. The central issue in learning is becoming
  a practitioner not learning about practice

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Learning (2)

• Work practice and learning need to be understood
  not in terms of the groups that are ordained
  (e.g. "task forces" or "trainees"), but in terms
  of the communities that emerge.

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How is it possible to foster learning-in-working?
(1)

• central to the process are the recognition and
  legitimation of community practices
• attempts to strip away context should be examined
  with caution - if training is designed so that
  learners cannot observe the activity of
  practitioners, learning is inevitably
  impoverished

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How is it possible to foster learning-in-working?
(1)

• It is a significant challenge for design to
  ensure that new collaborative technologies do not
  exclude the implicit, extendible, informal
  periphery of an organization.

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Innovating

• Communities-of-practice continuously develop
  rich, fluid and noncanonical world view to bridge
  the gap between their organization's static
  canonical view and the challenge of changing
  practice
• The source of innovation lies on the interface
  between an organization and its environment. And
  the process of innovating involves actively
  constructing a conceptual framework, imposing it
  on the environment, and reflecting on their
  interaction.
• Challenge for organizations to recognise the fact
  that its existence depends on noncanonical
  practice

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Conclusion

• For working, learning, and innovating to thrive
  collectively they must be linked in theory and in
  practice - more closely, more realistically, and
  more reflectively than is generally the case.

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CSCW Four Characters in Search of a Context
(Bannon and Schmidt)

• A framework for approaching the issue of
  cooperative work and its possible computer
  support

This part of the presentation is partly based on
lecture notes in SIF8058-Samhandlingsteknologi by
Monica Divitini (thanks M..?)
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Humans work together!

• Relying on contributions from others,
• Communicating work results to others,
• Jointly taking decisions,
• Collaborating with colleagues in the work place,
• Coordinating activities with others,
• Having meetings and discussing matters,

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Using computers for cooperation

• Computers are traditionally used for supporting
  single user productivity
• Word processors, spread sheets, databases,
  drawing packages, etc
• Cheaper networking increases connectivity and
  provides new opportunities for human-human
  communication
• E-mail, news groups, chat, etc
• Connectivity is the basis for supporting
  cooperation, but much more can be provided!

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What is CSCW

• Computer-supported cooperative work is a research
  field dealing with questions like
• How can people use computers and networks to do
  cooperative work?
• What happens to human-human cooperation when the
  computer stands in the way?
• Do we know enough about human-human cooperation
  to be able to support it?
• How can we design systems to better support
  cooperation in distributed groups?

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Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

• CSCW should be conceived as an endeavor to
  understand the nature and requirements of
  cooperative work with the objective of designing
  adequate computer-based technologies.
• (Bannon Schmidt, 1989)

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What is Groupware then?

• A multi-user program that lets the members of a
  distributed group work together by
• Providing group members with communication
  facilities,
• Letting them share their files and data,
• Making them aware of each others existence.
• Groupware is the product (program) resulting from
  the research done in the CSCW field.

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Groupware versus CSCW?

• CSCW
• Focus on
• workplace activities,
• organizational impact of technology,
• co-evolution of the technology and the groups
  using it,
• Interdisciplinary Social scientists and
  technologists.
• Groupware
• Focus on
• computer systems,
• the design of the computer systems,
• Mainly a technical discipline.

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Core issues for CSCW

• Articulating cooperative work
• Sharing an information space
• Adapting the technology to the organisation, and
  vice versa

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Articulating cooperative work

• Articulation consists of all the tasks needed "to
  coordinate a particular task, including
  scheduling subtasks, recovering from errors, and
  assembling resources."
• a CSCW application should support at least two
  interacting "levels of language".
• Formal
• Informal / cultural
• Promote awareness of work and workers

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Sharing an information space

• Decision making requires access to information
  and knowledge.
• Sharing information and knowledge is important
  for distributed, indirect collaboration.
• Human beings have different work strategies,
  which affects the result of their work..
• Important to know the originator of the
  information (transparency).
• Information is dependent on the context it was
  produced in.
• How do we represent the problem context when that
  context has disappeared?
• Is information neutral?
• Conflicting organizations often produce biased
  information!

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Adapting the technology to the organisation

• considerations regarding how the system will be
  used, and how use will influence future needs
  must be adressed (social interaction and
  structure greatly influences technical design)
• Demands an adequate understanding of the
  workplace (interaction style, power and
  authority, etc)
• Studies are needed to address these questions

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Conclusion

• Changes in technology induce changes in the work
  organization and changes in this organization
  will influence how the analyst should design an
  appropriate system

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Qualitative Methods in Empirical Studies of
Software Engineering
Seaman 1999

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Focus of the paper

• Show how qualitative methods can be adapted and
  incorporated into the designs of empirical
  studies in software engineering.
• Qualitative methods force the researcher to delve
  into the complexity of the problem rather than
  abstract it away - Thus the results are richer
  and more informative.

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What are Qualititative Methods

• Data in the form of words and pictures
• Data is richer and carries more information, but
  is harder to analyze than quantative data
• Can be either objective or subjective
• Methods designed to elicit perceptions feelings
  and opinions
• Loosely grouped into data collection and data
  analysis methods

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Data collecting methods

• Data collection
• Participant observation
• Interviewing
• Coding
• glue between qualitative and quantitative methods
• Data analysis
• Generating theory
• Constant comparison Method
• Cross-Case analysis
• Confirmation of theory.

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Participant observation (1)

• Collecting data by observing the subject.
• Different techniques
• Think aloud protocols
• Logging keystrokes (often used in
  usability-studies)
• Communication between systems developers (e.g
  meetings)
• Subjects/informants get affected
• Behave unobtrusively, and do not disrupt
• Keep notes confidential

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Participant observation (2)

• Data gathering
• Field notes (transcripts and comments)
• Audio, video
• Forms - when special kind of information is being
  collected.
• Often relevant when combining qualitative and
  quantitative methods
• Makes it easy to code into quantitative variables
• To ensure validity and consistency, Rater
  agreement exercises could be used
• Comparison of data from two independent observers
  (using the same form, and given the same set of
  criterias)

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Interview (1)

• To reveal historical data, opinions and
  impressions, identification of terminology, etc
• Could be used in combination with observations
  (to help clarify things)
• Several types
• Unstructured (open ended)
• semi-structured (mixture of open-ended and
  specific questions)
• Structured (specific questions)

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Interview (2)

• Data gathering tools
• Field notes (like observational data)
• Interview guide (in open ended interviews)
• help in organizing the interview
• Using audiotape is recommended

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Combining qualitative and quantitative methods

• Extract values for quantitative variables from
  qualitative data ? Coding
• Examples
• Number of participants in a meeting
• Length of a meeting
• Code complexity
• Etc
• Be careful when coding information that is
  subjective in nature

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Generating theory

• Extract from a set of field notes a statement or
  proposition/hypothesis that is supported in
  multiple ways by the data.
• Often referred to as grounded theory methods
  because the theories, or propositions, are
  grounded in the data

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Constant comparison method (1)

• Method
• Attaching labels (codes) to text in the field
  notes.
• Grouping into patterns according to labels
• Writing field memo articulating propositions or
  observations synthesized from the labelled data.

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Constant comparison method (2)

• iterative process
• after every round of coding and analysis, there
  is more data collection to be done which provides
  an opportunity to check any propositions that
  have been formed.
• Ensures representativeness later in the study
  because we are able to choose cases according to
  the course of the study

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Cross-Case analysis

• Looking at the data in many different ways
• For example
• cases can be partitioned into two groups based on
  some attribute (e.g. number of people involved,
  type of product, etc.), and then examined to see
  what similarities hold within each group, and
  what differences exist between the two groups.
• compare pairs of cases to determine variations
  and similarities.
• divide the data based on data source (interviews,
  observations, etc.).

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Confirmation of theory (1)

• Strengthening or confirming a proposition after
  it has been generated from the data.
• Hypothesis cannot be proven, it can only be
  supported or refuted, and this is true using
  either quantitative or qualitative evidence, or
  both.

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Confirmation of theory (2)

• Qualitative methods have the advantage of
  providing more explanatory information, and help
  in refining a proposition to better fit the data.
• Important to ensure validity of the qualitatively
  methods used to generate a proposition

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Confirmation of theory Ensuring validity (1)

• Ensuring representativeness later in the study
  because we are able to choose cases according to
  the course of the study
• Research effects
• Presence of researcher affects subjects behavior
• Researchers lose their objectivity by involving
  themselves

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Confirmation of theory Ensuring validity (2)

• Triangulation
• gather different types of evidence to support a
  proposition (e.g using different sources, using
  different methods, analyz the data using
  different methods, etc)
• Anomalies in the data
• Extreme cases that are eliminated in statistical
  analysis, but treated as friends in qualitative
  analysis because they play an important role in
  shaping a proposition.

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Confirmation of theory Ensuring validity (2)

• Negative case analysis
• Searching for evidence that might contradict a
  generated proposition, revise the proposition to
  cover the negative evidence, re-checking the new
  proposition against existing and newly collected
  data, and then continuing the search for
  contradictory evidence.
• Replication
• preserve the conditions set forth in the theory
  being tested.
• Member checking
• Getting feedback from the subjects