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another dumb question
by Norman Clark 15 Oct '03

15 Oct '03

I tried to find this info on the website, but I couldn't, so here goes my dumb question: will we be receiving a paper copy of the conference program when we arrive at the conference, or should I go ahead and print out the PDF if I want something I can look at without having to turn on my laptop? ;-) Thanks, Norm Clark

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.pdf program
by Jonathan Sterne 15 Oct '03

15 Oct '03

Well done, and thanks for the many responses! --J

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Blogging at AoIR
by JASON NOLAN 15 Oct '03

15 Oct '03

Blogging and Updates at AoIR 2003 As part of the AoIR conference, we (Jason Nolan, Bernie Hogan and Michelle Levesque) been asked to set up a conference blog, as a nexus to bring together all the various blog posts that conference attendees may make. The site is up now at http://edublog.com/aoir. The blog will serve a variety of functions, but the main three are: to keep you up to date on last minute conference changes and information; bring together new feeds from all the other AoIR bloggers attending the conference; and to server as a bit of a meta-blog for the over-all conference. Our list of AoIR bloggers is based on Thomas Burg's http://randgaenge.net/outlines/AOIR_blogs.html that he created based on the names solicited by Jeremy Hunsinger from AoIR list members. If you would like to be included on this list, please contact Thomas <editor(a)randgaenge.net>. Note: bloggers with RSS feeds will be automagically added to our news feed. Those without feeds will be added manually, as we can get to them. Please check the http://edublog.com/aoir regularly for updates, information, and for a sense of what's going on in the sessions you missed. There will be ibooks in the Apple Cybercafe available at the conference, and we'll have a public blog available where folks without a blog can try things out. For any information on getting the AoIR aggregation, please contact Jason, Bernie and KAT at aoir(a)edublog.com -- ------ Jason Nolan, PhD Scholar in Residence, Knowledge Media Design Institute, UofT Senior Fellow, McLuhan, Program in Culture and Technology, UofT Lecturer, School of Early Childhood Education, RyersonU --- mailto:jason@jasonnolan.net http://jasonnolan.net/

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online gamine studies
by Laurie & Bill Henry 15 Oct '03

15 Oct '03

I see James Gee as the leader in the field of on-line gaming. He presented at the Multiliteracies conference in Belgium at the end of September. He had several of his doctoral students there with him. I would suggest getting in touch with him regarding IRB issues. Laurie Henry PhD Student Literacy and Technology University of Connecticut

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AoIR 4.0 Conference registration hours
by catherine middleton 15 Oct '03

15 Oct '03

We look forward to meeting you in Toronto this week for AoIR 4.0. The conference registration desk is located in the foyer on the convention level at the Toronto Hilton Hotel. The desk will be open Wednesday, October 15th 6 pm to 9 pm Thursday, October 16th and Friday, October 17th 8 am to 5:30 pm Saturday, October 18th 8 am to 2 pm If you are in town on Wednesday, you may want to participate in the lab open house, or the preconference workshops. See http://aoir.org/2003/conference.html#lab and http://aoir.org/2003/conference.html#pre for details. The book exhibit will be open during registration hours on Wednesday evening, and is located in the Johnston Room on the convention level at the Hilton. See you soon in Toronto. Rhiannon Bury Catherine Middleton Olivia Robertson

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dumb conference question
by Jonathan Sterne 14 Oct '03

14 Oct '03

I apologize for wasting the bandwidth on this one. When I go to http://aoir.org/2003/ and click on the schedule link, I can get a list of papers by author, and I can get a schedule that lists stuff by session title. This is all thanks to the hard work of Matthew Allen and the other organizers. Hats off to them. Unfortunately, I'm lazy and want to be able to look at it like a regular conference program where you see it organized by time, with session titles AND paper authors and titles listed as well. Does such a thing exist? Am I simply missing an obvious link? Thanks. --Jonathan

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Birds of a Feather meeting-- Gaming group
by Mia Consalvo 14 Oct '03

14 Oct '03

Hi all, Just a reminder (the forum for bof seems to have wiped our info out) that those interested in getting together and talking about digital games should plan to meet Friday morning, 8 a.m. at the Governor General's Suite, Second floor of the Hilton. I know that's painfully early-- perhaps we can drink lots of coffee and plan another outing at a better time and place. Thanks! Mia -- Mia Consalvo, Ph.D. 213 RTVC School of Telecommunications 9 South College Street Ohio University Athens, OH 45701 (740) 597-1521 consalvo(a)ohio.edu

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AoIR Toronto: Qualrus workshop
by Rhiannon Bury 14 Oct '03

14 Oct '03

Jeremy Shtern has asked that I forward this announcement to the list. Note that Jeremy did not give me the exact starting times. Contact him directly at the address at the bottom of the message. Qualrus Qualitative Analysis Software I Wed. Oct 15 (morning) [pay what you can]. Organizer: Ed Brent, Professor of Sociology Missouri Univeristy, IdeaWorks. The morning portion of this workshop will give an overview of the qualitative analysis program, Qualrus, followed by hands-on demonstrations of key features, with a special emphasis on applications to Internet research. Example applications to be discussed include the analysis of open-ended responses in Internet surveys, the use of Qualrus to parse input for interactive natural language web interfaces, and strategies for automating or semi-automating the coding of text with scripts. Qualrus is easy to use because it was designed with the advice of internationally respected qualitative researcher, Howard Becker, relying on the concepts and methods from the qualitative literature and with careful attention to making the interface similar to familiar programs. It is more powerful because it uses intelligent computational strategies to do more for the researcher at each of the three major stages of qualitative research: coding, analysis, and application. Qualrus provides a wide range of tools to support diverse coding styles in addition to the customary coding of successive segments one at a time. Qualrus' categorizing tool (based on Howard Becker's preferred coding method) lets researchers sort segments into stacks and then apply codes to the entire stack simultaneously-supporting diverse research styles and emphasizing emerging concepts. A graphical interface displays standard and user-defined relations among codes in a semantic network. That network is then used to facilitate reasoning by the program. Qualrus also uses intelligent computational strategies to identify patterns in data, suggest codes to users, and learn from user responses, providing more intelligent help as the coding progresses. Researchers can code independently, with computer-assistance, or even apply codes automatically, at their own discretion-in some cases achieving dramatic gains in coding speed and accuracy. The automatic comparison of codes assigned by coders with those recommended by the program provides an ongoing measure of coding consistency throughout the project. Qualrus offers a range of tools specifically designed for the common tasks of qualitative research. Concept formation and the emergence of categories from the data are facilitated by the categorizing tool, while other tools help researchers identify codes that are good candidates for generalization or refinement. Still other tools compute commonly used summary statistics, perform Boolean searches, and test hypotheses. These diverse tools are designed to support many different styles of research. Multimedia support is included for text, rich text, and a wide variety of video, audio, and graphics formats. Results can be saved to HTML reports, and data can be both imported and exported to spreadsheets and statistical programs. Qualrus' powerful scripting language permits users to adapt the program to their own research style and to a wide range of practical applications. The versatility of this scripting language is illustrated by two specialized applications of Qualrus to non-traditional qualitative analysis tasks of grading essays for an introductory college-level course, and conducting a literature review. Qualrus Qualitative Analysis Software II Wed. Oct 15 (afternoon) [pay what you can] Organizer: Ed Brent, Professor of Sociology Missouri Univeristy, IdeaWorks With the byDesign eLab and eCommons/agora and McLuhan global research network: Dr Liss Jeffrey, with Jeremy Shtern, Univerity of Montreal, Christie Hurrell, York Ryerson Communication and Culture, Elic Chan, Sociology, University of Toronto. The afternoon portion of this workshop will extend and explore the functions and application of Qualrus with respect to a recent national e-governance consultation. Analysts from the Foreign Policy Dialogue/ Dialogue Politique Etrangere ( www.foreign-policy-dialogue.ca ) will present a case study on the uses of Qualrus for an online consultation.=20 This Dialogue is worth examination for at least four primary reasons: Linkage between government and civil society. The electronic side of the Dialogue was developed and hosted through a partnership between a civil society network (led by the byDesign eLab) and the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development (CCFPD) at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Internatinal Trade (DFAIT). Innovation with new media in digital democracy. No national government had ever before invited its citizens to take part in the shaping of foreign policy online, normally considered the exclusive preserve of a small elite. The Foreign Affairs Minister, backed by the Prime Minister's Office, was instrumental in this process. Historical coincidence with major world events. The Iraq situation became a focal issue in the foreign policy concerns of most citizens, dominating media, public and government agendas, with significant impacts on the response to the invitation to shape longer range policies online. Ecology of information and communications media channels. The Foreign Policy Dialogue featured multiple tracks (including Minister's Town Halls, responses by regular mail, MP consultations, Expert round tables, a Youth forum, the Foreign Affairs Parliamentary subcommittee ) thus permitting some understanding of the contemporary practices of citizen and government policy dialogue, and the potential and actual uses of an ecology of channels of democratic discourse. This half of the workshop will report on the uses of these methods, notably the incorporation of Qualrus in the data analysis and reporting process. If eConsultation is to make a difference to democracy, then it is necessary to answer the question: How can policy relevant advice be extracted from the Internet-mediated communication of the public in a large scale consultation? In the course of this online consultation, thousands of Canadian citizens electronically provided their input into the process of foreign affairs policy formation through e-mails, answers to questions posed by the Minister, and discussion forums. To meet the challenge of analysis, the Foreign policy dialogue civil society partnership team used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. This workshop will report on the uses of these methods, notably the incorporation of Qualrus in the data analysis and reporting process. This seminar is about research, NOT just about technology. Morning and Daylong Qualrus workshops are taking place at: 40 St George Street, Bahen Building, University of Toronto, Bell University Labs BA 7256=20 (Just north of College Street on St George). Directions: walk down from St George subway station or walk along College Street to St george and turn north. Researchers are welcome, especially graduate students. For further information please contact Jeremy Shtern: jeremy(a)ecommons.net

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Cheers to Steve Jones!
by bakera＠ohiou.edu 13 Oct '03

13 Oct '03

Hello, everyone-- I would like to thank Steve for leading our organization from before it's first conference in 2000 to now. For that, I and all of us in AoIR, I am sure, are grateful. As we are days away from IR 4.0, I wanted to seize the day in appreciaton of Steve Jones on behalf of people who cannot be with us f2f in Toronto, and also for those who will attend the meeting. Kudos also to Nancy in her transition to President. Wotta team. best, andrea baker

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Re: [Air-l] IRB permissions for online gaming studies?
by Dmitri Williams 13 Oct '03

13 Oct '03

Michele, I am just finishing up a dissertation that involved both participant observation and survey waves for those kind of online gamers, and I can add a little on the IRB process. In a nutshell, it was a right pain, but doable. As you know, the crux of the matter was whether or not I would be exposing subjects to potentially harmful or socially objectionable materials without parental consent. There is no honest way to avoid either, especially since the research involves finding out if the stuff is harmful in the first place. Compounding the problem was the inability to easily verify the age of the subjects if the study is all online. I did in fact mail my subjects stimulus materials, but since there was no in-person contact even via snail mail, there was no true way to be sure the subjects were of age or had indeed secured consent. Still, probably the biggest obstacle was the IRB's own unfamiliarity with the medium and the genre. They really did not understand what an MMRPG was, and I had to brief them on it. What I think sold them was telling them that the game is not in fact dominated by 13-year olds, and is instead largely adult-populated. After telling them that and agreeing to their language for a consent statement, they let me go ahead. True to form, my final sample turned out to be only about 4% under 18 years old. The only other thing I had to promise was to self-identify when doing the participant observation part. That element might be skirted honestly by having a readily available profile with researcher disclosure and a link to a supporting web page. After all, it messes up the flow of the work to constantly remind other players that one is a grad student examining them: Hey, let's go attack that creature, and by the way, I'm a grad student collecting data on you . . . Cheers, Dmitri > Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 10:55:48 -0600 > From: Michele Jackson <Michele.Jackson(a)colorado.edu> > Reply-To: air-l(a)aoir.org > To: air-l(a)aoir.org > Cc: Li Nan <Nan.Li-1(a)colorado.edu> > Subject: [Air-l] IRB permissions for online gaming studies? > > Hello - I have a student conducting a thesis on the communicative > behavior > in online games (one will be a U.S. game such as Everquest and another > will > be a Chinese game). She would like to conduct participant > observation. We > are having difficulties with our IRB (Committee that approves research > on > Human Subjects), primarily because players may be children. Research > that > involves children requires parental consent. Another problem is that > the IRB > at my university does not have experience with this type of research, > and so > they don't have models to draw on (or to guide us). > > I am interested in hearing from anyone who has been able to gain > approval > for this type of research - your help is much appreciated - > > mj > > Michele H. Jackson, PhD > Dept of Communication University of Colorado > Boulder, CO 80309-0270 > 303-492-8139 jackson(a)colorado.edu > http://comm.colorado.edu/mjackson > > > > _______________________________________________ > Air-l mailing list > Air-l(a)aoir.org > http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l > **************** Dmitri Williams Ph.D. Candidate University of Michigan Department of Communication Studies dcwillia(a)umich.edu http://www.umich.edu/~dcwillia

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