I am a graduate student in English at Oregon State University, and I am researching how research blogs, or knowledge logs, work in the academic setting, that is, how they affect research, affect scholarly writing, and affect community.
According to their website, the Human and Computer Vision Laboratory at Iowa State University
investigates how the human visual system receives, selects and processes information in real-world and virtual environments. Our research integrates knowledge from the fields of Psychology, Human Computer Interaction and Computer Science. We use this knowledge to innovate intelligent human computer interfaces and biologically inspired technologies.
The HCVL holds a blog that is password protected. As of yet, I am not certain exactly how this blog works, but I am forwarding this post on to my friend Alex Nelson who works on the project (and blogs on the project as well) and ask him to forward it on to his co-researchers. Welcome, HCVL’ers (is that the correct term?)! I am going to ask a series of questions, and if Alex and his co-researchers could answer them in the comments area, I would be totally stoked.
If you could answer any or all of these questions, I’d greatly appreciate it:
1. What do you generally write about in blog posts?
2. To what degree do you view your research blog as a community?
3. How has using the blog in research been beneficial?
4. What drawbacks do you see to using the blog in this way?
5. Your blog is password protected. What reasons do you have for this?
6. To what degree (compared to others) do you use the research blog, and why?
7. Any other thoughts or comments on the process?
If you feel more comfortable emailing your responses to me, please do so at sisypheantask at gmail dot com. Thank you!
1. My posts usually serve as a log of what I’ve accomplished over the course of the day. I commonly discuss whatever difficulties I’m having with the stuff I’m working on and brainstorm possible solutions. I’ll also use it to make to-do lists and organize my day.
2. I’m not entirely clear on what this is asking. My blog is largely personal as it’s related to my research (we are all working on different research projects). There are times when someone might be asking me about a software difficulty that I’d had in the past and then I can often refer them to my blog for the solution. I suppose that the blogs themselves don’t form much of a “community” just because they tend to focus on the owner’s research. The community happens face-to-face in the lab and less so online.
3. It’s been beneficial because I’m able to go back and see what kind of progress I’ve made. Additionally, we use a lot of the same house-developed software in the lab, so when I’m working on something I can go look at the blogs of whomever else is using the software and see what they’re doing with it and what problems they’ve had with it. The largest benefit (I think) is that it’s really easy for our boss to keep tabs on our progress by glancing over the blogs on a weekly basis.
4. Well, the biggest drawback is that my blog is very oriented towards my assistantship. It’s follows a problem/brainstorm/solution/progress format and I don’t do much discussion about whatever else is going on in my professional career.
5. The password protection is actually new as of this semester. I’m not entirely sure what the motivation for it was. I just came in one day and found that the website needed a password. Our blogs (and the entire website) is an open wiki. I can go in and edit any page i want, including my colleague’s blogs. Rumor has it that a few months back someone messed around with one or more of the web pages and our boss felt that the easiest solution was to have everyone login when the were going to view/edit the site.
6. I try to use my blog every day. I think that every else does as well to varying degrees of success. I suppose that the reason I do it is because that’s how often I was asked to update it (by my boss). If it were up to me I would be inclined to go with fewer updates just because I don’t always feel like I’ve made enough progress in a day to warrant updating the thing.
7. I’ve found it useful overall, though it can be disheartening to look back over the course of months and not see that I hadn’t made as much progress as I’d hoped. The process of blogging is rediculously easy just because we use a wiki and that makes formatting and editing really simple.
I hope that you find this useful. If there’s anything else you’d like to know or if you want me to clarify anything please don’t hesitate to ask.
1. I write about what I did that day if I think it had value, as well as write about problems and things to do in the future.
2. Not much, I sometimes check out other people’s in the lab to see what they are working on or if there might be a solution to a problem I have, but in general we all just talk face to face.
3. It helps to write down ideas that you end up forgetting later, and it helps my organize ideas and things.
4. For my own purposes, the blog works fine. Few others can read it though.
5. My understanding is that there was malicious editing.
6. I don’t really know how others use it.
7. Pretty simple process that can have a lot of value.
1. My blog posts are usually pretty short. When I remember to write in it, I just quickly summarize whatever progress I’ve made that day so the next time I know where I was when I left off. I sometimes make to-do lists so I remember what I still need to do. Also, I keep track of my hours I’ve worked at the beginning of each post, so I can fill out my timesheet later.
2. It’s a community pretty much just because we’re all in the same lab together and if we want we could see what everyone else was up to. This is probably the best way to see what people have been working on without asking the person, since we don’t discuss individual projects at our group meetings.
3. My blog is used to help my memory more than anything else. 🙂 Recording my progress, useful commands, things to remember, etc. Also though, I use it to read what the graduate student I work with has been doing on our project, when I am unable to talk to her about it in person. She keeps her blog better updated than mine so I can see what she’s gotten done that day so I can know what I need to do.
4. Other people may not get as much out of my blog since there isn’t a whole lot of information. Most of it is very specific to my project and only I would understand it.
5. As Alex and KC said, I believe that someone had modified it. I don’t mind the password protection, the only disadvantage is that people not part of our lab can’t read our blogs.
6. It seems like I use it less than some of the grad students, but more than some other people, who don’t seem to update theirs for weeks or months at a time.
7. I think the blogs are very beneficial to our lab. It’s a good means of accountability as well, so our boss can keep track of our progress if he wants to.