| Independent Research Project
aka "Book Report"
aka "Investigation and Presentation on Some Theoretical Perspective" |
|---|
objectives, deliverables March30-Description
here is the description and initial deadlines Feb4-Description
Gerhard Fischer and Hal Eden: "Design, Learning, and Collaboration" — Spring Semester 2004
Groups
Independent Research
and
Presentation in Class
Objectives
- opportunity to engage in self-directed learning in the context of a independent research exploration
- this work is more conceptual than the course project and is intended to complement the general experience of the course project?
- in other words: it can be directly related to the course project, but it does not have to be!
- you will form teams of 2-5 members each focused design, learning, collaboration. These are broad topics and you should define a focus for your investigation by finding a specific topic in your area of investigation. Themes for more specific research topics are:
- social creativity
- meta-design
- end-user development
- distributed cognition
- some ideas:
- for your information gathering process use books, articles, opinion pieces, the WWW, information on Amazon about the suggested books
- interview people (e.g., faculty members, PhD students, friends, colleagues at work, ..) about their insights and perspectives
Some Suggested References
The references below can help you to get you started — but you can also use as starting points some of the papers that we have discussed in class! Again, these are just to get you started—you should not limit yourselves to these resources.
Design
- Norman, D. A. (1993) Things That Make Us Smart, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA.
- Dourish, P. (2001) Where the Action Is — The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Learning
- Bruner, J. (1996) The Culture of Education, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.) (2001) How People Learn — Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.
Collaboration
- Bennis, W. & Biederman, P. W. (1997) Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, Perseus Books, Cambridge, MA.
- Salomon, G. (Ed.) (1993) Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Design/Learning/Collaboration
- Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000) The Social Life of Information, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.
- Florida, R. (2002) The Rise of the Creative Class and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Basic Books, New York, NY.
Remark from Gerhard: if groups want to take a look at these books: I have them and you can borrow them for some time
Assessment
- your contribution to this major aspect of the course will be assessed as follows:
- your work material submitted, including
- your "mastering" of the theme chosen by you
- your originality (i.e., just copying phrases from different sources will not do)
- your presentation in class
- your work will be evaluated as a team effort — so hopefully all team members will act as "good contributors" to the collaborative effort!
Timetable:
- Monday, Feb 9, 1:00pm: post in the Swiki your initial idea
- Wed, Feb 11, 1:00pm post in the Swiki
- your (initial) team
- your refined ideas
- Kitty Turner: My idea for an independent research project is the design of user interfaces.
- Nilo Tsung : I am interested in learning how to design a computional environment with which end-users can conduct their work in a more intuitive way without worrying too much about technical details. Therefore, they can concentrate on what they are really good at. In short, it is about designing for end-user development.
- Andrew Skalet : I am interested in how computers can support software development teams, to facilitate the shared understanding of complex software systems. This is in some ways a learning on demand problem, but it is within the context of collaboration in small(ish) skilled teams, and the evolutionary design of complex artificial systems. More broadly, I am interested in learning on demand, and human design of complex systems. Of the suggested books, I found the design books, organizational genius under the collaboration books, and the combined D/L/C books the most interesting.
Individual Research Ideas:
Team Research Proposals (2/11/04)
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