Dr. Max L. Wilson

Lecture Schedule

* - If you're smart you'll notice that the tables i showed in class are not listed in full in the pdf - WRITE STUFF DOWN

Assignments

The aim of the courseworks is practical - a lot of weight is given to a lot of effort in terms of work. 50% for each coursework - both will take several weeks of work.

Assignment 1 - Lab Study

Deadline: 15th Dec 2011 9th Jan 2011 27th Jan 2012 - 11am

Aim: Replicate the study of collaborative information seeking by Shah et al, from SIGIR 2011.

Downloads:

• Download the paper
• Study Resources

Groups:
Group 1: Mark James, Julie Webster, MOHAMMED IBRAHIM, Akshay Aggarwal
    - please do 6 individuals, 3 pairs on same pc, 2 pairs of co-located, and 2 pairs remote.
Group 2: Steve Rowberry, Elvis Lesha, Seijun Wong, Liam Betsworth
    - please do 4 individuals, 2 pairs on same pc, 3 pairs of co-located, and 3 pairs remote.

In groups, therefore, you should a) plan the study for the first deadline, below, b) perform the study according to your allocations above (you decide how to do them as a group), and c) figure out how to analyse the data as a group. Performing the study is group work.

Alone, you should write up a report based upon the data, how you perceived the study as relating to the original in terms of structure, findings etc. The submission is your own work.

Deadlines:

1. Nov 10th 2011: Final plans emailed to Max/Participation soon begins
2. Nov 18th 2011: Pilot study done - proposed changes to Max
3. Nov 23rd 2011: Begin participants
4. Dec 5th 2011: Participants All Finished
5. Jan 9th 2012: Coursework Due

To Submit: 8 page ACM format conference paper report via blackboard.

The report should include some of the major elements of a conference paper (intro, related work, system, method, results, discussion, conclusions), however, you should only summarise what you know about related work, while not plagerising the paper, and focus more space on describing how your method is different to the original, if at all, what you had to adjust or estimate, what you found that was different to the original study and why.

Assignment 2 - Qualitative Field Study (50%) - Due: 26th March 2012 - 11am

Continuing on the theme of Assignment 1, you are, in Assignment 2, to perform a series of interviews on collaborative search. Assignment was a very technical and objective lab study, where this assignment will focus on qualitative methodologies that will provide more insights into the experiences people have had, as opposed to the behaviour they exhibited in logs. You will individually perform a series of interviews, transcribe and code the data, ready to perform a group in class analysis. You will then individually write a report on that analysis.

You should:

• Download the following semi-structured interview pack
• Interview 4 people - interviews should last around an hour.
• Record the interviews to mp3 for reference - you may also wish to take notes.
• Transcribe the interviews while still fresh in your memory according to the schedule below
• Take part in in-class practicals.
• Write a report by the final deadline given below.

Learning aims. The learning aims for this assignment are as follows:

• You get experience performing interviews
• You learn lessons about the success/failure of performing interviews
• You learn about getting people to open up and explain and discuss things
• You learn and practice a qualitative analysis method
• You get experience writing up a qualitative results section

Deadlines

1. 7th Feb 2012 - Begin interviews
2. 26th Feb 2012 - Finished interviews and have transcribed at least 1 interview according to the guidelines below
3. 27th Feb 2012 - Bring at least one transcribed interview to class
4. 11th March 2012 - Submit code definitions and fully coded transcripts to blackboard
5. 12th March 2012 - Bring your code definitions to class.
6. 26th March 2012 5pm - submit 8-10 page ACM-format report to blackboard

Transcripts

It is important for qualitative analysis to convert the interviews into details transcripts of the interview. You should listen to the interviews and convert them into a text document in the following format.

Interviewer: Id like to ask you a question about collaborative search, is this ok?
Participant: Yes that's fine.
Interviewer: Thanks. Let me first ask if you've ever collabroatively searched with anyone before
...

To Hand in: Code definitions and coded transcripts (11th March)

1. A single zip file of the following items, submitted to blackboard.
2. A table defining where each row containts a) a code, b) a definition, and c) an example from the transcripst
3. Copies of your coded transcriptions.
4. Original mp3 files of the interviews.

To Hand in: Report (26th March 2012)

1. 8-10 page ACM format - as per CHI instructions (e.g. see point 4) - but not anonymous.
2. All the typical sections including references (you will need to include that in the work you do for this coursework).
3. You should try and find an example qualitative paper to see what would be expected
4. Try to maintain a professional past tense scientific paper style as with other CHI papers
5. Your results should include the results of the class analysis of the coded diary entries on the 12th March
6. Submitted via blackboard

Structure of Report. The report should be like a conference paper. The report should have: an introduction, related work, study (protocol, participants, etc), results, discussion, and conclusions sections, as well as title abstract and references etc. Your discussion/conclusions should make specific comments on the lessons learned from performing interviews and qualitative analysis.

Marking will be based on both the quality of your report and quality of coding skills. Your coded transcripts, as submitted on before the class analysis, will be evaluated for how insightful/useful the codes you picked are. This will contribute around 15%. The ACM paper will be marked on: related work, description of method, presentation of results, quality of writing and choice of references. The quality of the interviews from the recordings/transcripts, will also contribute around 15%.