14 research outputs found
Seeing ethnographically: teaching ethnography as part of CSCW
While ethnography is an established part of CSCW research, teaching and
learning ethnography presents unique and distinct challenges. This paper discusses a
study of fieldwork and analysis amongst a group of students learning ethnography as part
of a CSCW & design course. Studying the studentsā practices we explore fieldwork as a
learning experience, both learning about fieldsites as well as learning the practices of
ethnography. During their fieldwork and analysis the students used a wiki to collaborate,
sharing their field and analytic notes. From this we draw lessons for how ethnography
can be taught as a collaborative analytic process and discuss extensions to the wiki to
better support its use for collaborating around fieldnotes. In closing we reflect upon the
role of learning ethnography as a practical hands on ā rather than theoretical ā pursuit
The Uses of Stance in Media Production: Embodied Sociolinguistics and Beyond
While many conversation analysts, and scholars in related fields, have used video-recordings to study interaction, this study is one of a small but growing number that investigates video-recordings of the joint activities of media professionals working with, and on, video. It examines practices of media production that are, in their involvement with the visual and verbal qualities of video, both beyond talk and deeply shaped by talk. The article draws upon video recordings of the making of a feature-length documentary. In particular, it analyses a complex course of action where an editing team are reviewing their interview of the subject of the documentary, their footage is being intercut with existing reality TV footage of that same interviewee. The central contributions that the article makes are, firstly, to the sociolinguistics of mediatisation, through the identification of the workplace concerns of the members of the editing team, secondly showing how editing is accomplished, moment-by-moment, through the use of particular forms of embodied action and, finally, how the media themselves feature in the ordering of action. While this is professional work it sheds light on the video-mediated practices in contemporary culture, especially those found in social media where video makers carefully consider their editing of the perspective toward themselves and others
The work of critique in architectural education
The research reported here is an investigation of instruction and assessment in
architectural education. The focus is on the practice of critique, an educational
activity in which instructors and professional architects give students feedback
on their finished projects. Taking an ethnomethodologically informed approach,
the interests of the thesis revolve around questions of how critique is done as an
occasioned instructional practice. The empirical material consists of video recordings
of critique sessions at a Swedish school of architecture. The core of the thesis
consists of four empirical studies. Study 1 deals with issues of professional vision
and the ways in which the graphical surface of the presentation is seen. Study 2
addresses the significance of intentions in the setting. The study examines how the
relation between studentsā stated intentions and the presented designs is treated
by participants. Study 3 deals with the use of precedents and references, analyzing
how critics respond to studentsā ways of handling intertextual aspects of architectural
design. Study 4 focuses on the material and spatial set-up of critiqueāthe
differing affordances of digital slideshows and posters for presentation and discussion.
Critique is found to be a site where architectural proposals are treated
for the purposes of instruction as provisional and improvable, and where their
significances are detailed in exhibitions of architectural reasoning and judgment.
Such exhibiting involves identifying and elaborating on problems and qualities,
and articulating values that are visible in the envisaged buildings and their graphical
representations. These interpretations may be juxtaposed with the expressed
intentions of students, as these appear in verbal presentations or in textual accounts.
Their interrelations are inspected and discrepancies are noted and discussed. On
the basis of the analyses in the thesis, the function of critique is argued to centre
on the juxtaposition of student-produced objects with professional competences
for seeing, articulating, assessing, and contextualizing these objects. In organizing
the educational program around cycles of production and critique, architecture
is provided with a powerful means through which design competences, and the
assessment practices that lie at their core, can be made massively present within,
and constitutive of, the developmental processes through which students acquire
the intellectual, aesthetic, and discursive repertoires necessary for competent architectural
work
Experimental Philosophy, Ethnomethodology, and Intentional Action : A Textual Analysis of the Knobe Effect
In "Intentional action and side-effects in ordinary languageā (2003), Joshua Knobe reported an asymmetry in test subjectsā responses to a question about intentionality: subjects are more likely to judge that a side effect of an agentās intended action is intentional if they think the side effect is morally bad than if they think it is morally good. This result has been taken to suggest that the concept of intentionality is an inherently moral concept. In this paper, we draw attention to the fact that Knobeās original interpretation of the results is based on an abstract rendering of the central scenario (the Chairman scenario) that is significantly different from the vignettes presented to the survey participants. In particular, the experimental vignettes involve temporal and social dimensions; they portray sequences of social actions involving an agent and an interlocutor, rather than a lone agent making a momentary decision in light of certain attitudes. Through textual analyses of a set of vignettes used to study the Knobe effect, drawing on ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive psychology, we show that there are many differences between the experimental conditions besides the moral valence of the side effect. In light of our textual analyses, we discuss vignette methodology in experimental philosophy and suggest an alternative interpretation of Knobeās original experimental results. We also argue that experimental philosophy could benefit from considering research on naturally occurring social interaction as an alternative source of empirical findings for discussions of folk-psychological concepts
Requests and know-how questions : Initiating instruction in workplace interaction
While it is recognized that instruction between co-workers is a central component of everyday workplace interaction and learning, this study investigates the ways in which such instructional events are practically initiated in interaction. We analyse recordings of everyday work at a radio station, where journalists prepare and broadcast local news. In our data, a distinction can be made between two interactional contexts from which instructional interactions emerge:searches, where one party is looking for a suitable helper; andestablished interactions, where the initiation of instruction is prefigured by immediate prior interaction. A further finding is that these two contexts are associated with two different ways of initiating instruction.Direct requestsare used in established interactions. In searches, we instead find questions regarding the other person's procedural knowledge - what we termknow-how questions. We finally discuss the ways in which instructional configurations are assembled without reference to institutionally defined instructor/instructed roles
The sequential analysis of instruction
The present chapter takes an interest in instructions and the ways in which sequential analysis under the auspices of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis can contribute to their explication. This interest is explored in four contexts: textual instructions on how to crochet, instructions in textile workshops, feedback in academic supervision, and seminars in dental education. Initially, some general features of instructions are discussed in relation to the textual instructions ā the irremediable incompleteness of instructions, how the sense of instructions is found in attempts to follow them, and the ties between instructions and assessment. The remaining three cases are used to highlight some differences with regards to the organization of instructions ā how instructions are formulated, how instructions are responded to, the access teachers have to student understanding, what the relevant materializations of competence are, and the temporal organization in which these instructions are embedded. The temporal-material organization of a given setting is something with which both participants and analysts have to contend. How teachers and students do that ā how they for instance orient to and manage the essential absence of relevant displays of understanding as a condition of their work ā is what that the sequential analysis of instruction sets out to explicate
Integrating students' mobile technology in higher education
This paper suggests that integration of students' own everyday technology in educational activities is a promising theme for development of mobile learning. As students bring technology, which they already use for their everyday communication, information management and networking, educators have the possibility to explore this networked distributed platform for pedagogical purposes. We report on a study where mobile phones and Wikis were involved in higher education. However, this paper does not suggest using Wikis or mobile phones in particular. It suggests looking into the mobile and ubiquitously available technologies that the students already have and are familiar with, and integrating these into the activities in higher education