Dipping my toes in the water or diving in head first?

I have been working on reading through the many articles for my literary review and as I am reading a couple of dissertations I find myself wondering, how do we differentiate between a class project and a dissertation? What I am working on seems almost monumental and at the same level of work as some of the dissertations and papers I am reading. Am I taking too macro a look at this or am I just over judging the work? I would assume a class paper should just be dipping my toes in the water of a topic to get a cursory look at a problem and a dissertation would be trying to take more of a granular view of things. At this point I am having a hard time differentiating the two and placing myself on that trajectory.

I have broken my research up into a couple of categories: facebook, sense of community, millennials and online communities. I think each of these categories will help give me a good handle on the existing research and a good starting point for me to take my research. I have found some valuable thoughts and ideas in what I have been reading and am looking forward to applying this to my research. The current reading has also lead me to find additional articles that I want to explore. At what point do I call it quits and feel comfortable moving forward? Or do you every feel comfortable and just have to draw the line at some point. I guess this is my cry for assistance and guidance as I feel like I am diving head first into a pool that I am not sure I am ready to swim in.

Apology to the class

This has been two very tough months for me. I feel like I have gone from one major catastrophe to another since I returned home from this years workshop. Most recently though I have lost one of the most influential and important people in my life, my grandmother. Since I was a baby she took my sisters and I for the summer so that we could experience life on a farm and allow my parents to have a break in the summer. Because of this recurring contact and many fond memories learning how to cook, garden, sew, quilt, be a good neighbor, friend and all around good person I was very close to her.

I had the privilege of spending the last wonderful five weeks of her life with her during her hospital stay. My grandfather chose to place her in the hospital close to my home because the care she would receive was better and so that I could assist him with her care. He drove sixty miles every day and stayed for several hours during the morning or afternoon and I visited her during lunch hours and then a late night visit every evening for several hours. As her condition roller-coastered daily a number of these visits were filled with various events like quietly watching a television program together, reminiscing about the good old days, fixing her hair or just holding the bucket and wiping her face as she got sick for the hundredth time. On July 8th the effects of rheumatoid arthritis took its final toll on her tiny frail body that put up such a strong and valiant fight since she was in her late thirties and first diagnosed.

Needless to say my school work along with everything else has suffered during this time and I need to apologize to all of you for not contributing my fair share of the load. I hope to spend an immense amount of time catching up over the next few weeks. My paper will hopefully quickly regain it's focus and I will regain mine in the end. Thank you for reading through what is well more than you probably ever wanted or needed to know about my situation but I felt putting it on virtual paper was very therapeutic for me.

Case Studies

What's good/bad about case studies when technology is concerned?

Case studies can often feel one sided and more slanted if the researcher is not entirely careful. They provide a valuable tool though. The tool of story telling. If case studies are completed rigorously they can provide a more satisfying and persuasive account of the researchers story. I believe that the use of technology really assists the rigor of the story. Due to the nature of technology and its ability to track events and facts better than a human might be able to it provides an increased level of credibility to the researcher than otherwise might have existed.

After reading Sun's case studies in her dissertation I am certain that the use of technology assisted her in formulating a complete story of her participants use. Without the use of technology she would not have been able to track the particular details of use as accurately as she had. She also would not have had a dissertation since it was about technology nor would it have been as interesting. The use of technology also allowed her to contact and include an international study participant to whom she might have not otherwise had contact.

Justification

Given that some electronic environments won't be seen as "professional", how do we justify studying them?

This is a really tough question to ponder. On one hand the inexpensive nature of the Internet leads to a number of sites cropping up all over the place that may look professional and offer information that is not necessarily correct. These sites are often indiscernible from legitimate ones. On the other hand though a number of self-help, forum tip/info sharing sites have managed to create a self-regulating unique community that can be very beneficial to those that find it and study it. In either camp I find the creativity, social nature and use of technology intriguing and well worth exploring to help drive us further as a society.

Problems in the Internet World

What are the biggest Problems associated with studying online environments?

One of the biggest things that make the Internet and online environments so attractive to us is also one of the same things that make it so difficult to study, modularity (the ability to change and morph). A page that you can be looking at one second could be completely different in the next. Several things allow this to happen and based on what you are trying to study could taint or affect the study.

The entire design can be easily changed through CSS. I have a 10,000 some odd page Web site that I control for the university that I can now change in a matter of hours or less given lead time. This ability for change could affect someone who is working on a study of visual style and representation of web pages or certain styles.

Blogs and forums can be easily edited at anytime to modify post that may have previously existed. If you were studying a flame war on a specific topic on a forum you can return in a matter of hours and find the entire conversation or portions of it have disappeared.

Site like the wayback machine can be helpful for archiving specific periods of time for web site but they will not capture everything and do not crawl the sites at specific intervals or events. The nature of the Web tends to change faster than the intervals that these types of services can archive.

A number of other problems exist with online environment study like the inability to contact every test subject due to their scattered nature but these things are also what make it exciting and interesting to invest time in.