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Vol.30 No.1, January 1998
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The Doctoral Colloquium event at the 5th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW'97) brought together an international array of doctoral students and researchers with a range of interests in CSCW. Yvonne Rogers of the University of Sussex (UK) organised the event; Lucy Suchman from Xerox PARC (USA), Richard Bentley from Xerox Research Centre Europe, (UK) and Steve Benford from University of Nottingham (UK) rounded out the senior panel.
In the tradition of Doctoral Colloquia, this full day event was an opportunity for students to present work-in-progress to peers and senior researchers, field questions about the framing and execution of one's research, explore current concerns about the research, and receive advice and guidance from the participants. Additionally, the benefits of this cooperative effort extended beyond the formal feedback each student received. Because the Doctoral Colloquium was a pre-conference event, students found that they had the opportunity to talk with members of the senior panel throughout the remainder of the conference, elaborating on the initial feedback in more detail.
Another important outcome of the Doctoral Colloquium was that students had an opportunity to form new connections with their peers from around the world, discovering common research interests, and creating the foundation for professional relationships outside their universities.
In this report, we review each student's work, as organised by the day's topical discussion sections. The doctoral students' presentations were followed by a round-table discussion on a range of issues, addressing concerns about formulating research questions, performing research, writing and presenting the research, and life after the PhD.
Lucy Suchman, chair
Monika Buscher, of Lancaster University (UK), presented Designing Technologies: An Ethnography of Changing Practices of Seeing in Professional Aesthetic Design. Monika's ethnographic study is in the domain of landscape architectural design. The emphasis of the project is on "seeing" -- in part described as the visualisation of "future" objects. "Seeing" is considered an embodied action, visual perception supported by gesture to design-specific artefacts. Her work takes a bricolage approach for the integration of new technologies in aesthetic design.
Elizabeth Guy, from Brighton University (UK) presented Research Paradigms, Professional Practices: Developing Computer Support for Cooperative Work. Liz is taking an organisational perspective on the role of in-house groupware developers in a non-governmental organisation, investigating how they design, implement and support information technology within their organisation. Her research project follows the design and implementation of groupware in an organisation that is changing practices from a centralised orientation to a globally distributed team approach.
Leysia Palen from University of California, Irvine (USA) presented Groupware Calendars in the Sociotemporal Ordering of the Workplace. Leysia is performing an ethnographic study of a large organisation where use of a groupware calendaring system is extensive. In describing the dual and sometimes simultaneous function of calendar artefacts as personal and shared objects, she situates calendars in the "sociotemporal order" of the workplace, claiming that calendar artefacts represent and manipulate "time," a valued commodity imbued with socially-constructed meaning.
Richard Bentley, chair
Due to unfortunate circumstances Oscar M. Gonzalez from University of Valladolid (Spain) was unable to attend the colloquium. His project was presented in absentia by the session chair. Oscar's research is on the design and experimental evaluation of a pen-based Computer Supported Co-operative Learning system for synchronous cooperative work and process analysis. At this stage, Oscar has performed an analysis of the developed system, and has addressed issues of real-time constraints on wireless communication.
Rameshsharma Ramloll from Lancaster University (UK) presented A Multimodal Interface for a Common Information Space. His aim is to find ways to make observable concurrently ongoing activities within a common information space. He views representation and event notification as being, fundamentally, interaction mediation problems.
Moustapha Zouinar from GRIC-ARAMIIHS (France) presented Cooperation and Shared Context. The project's main aim is to develop a model to reason about information that can be shared by a set of agents in a work environment. To this end, the concept of "mutually manifestness" of information spaces has been used in Moustapha's case study of an air traffic control room. A set of rules have been defined as part of his model.
Steve Benford, chair
Alan Morris from Sussex University (UK) presented Selecting Objects for Inclusion in Design. Alan is studying how architects and specifiers select "objects" for inclusion in their designs. The project addresses the development of design and the use of shape grammars to specify the concrete objects.
Zsolt Haag from Glasgow Caledonian University (UK) gave a talk entitled Communication and Coordination in Virtual Software Corporations. Zsolt presented findings in supporting software engineers working in Virtual Software Corporations. Following an industrial survey, the key issues for tightly coupled mode and loosely coupled mode of communication and co-ordination have been identified. A prototype mechanism based on deontic logic, a variant of modal logic, and a formalisation of commitments is being developed.
Steffen Herskind from Risø National Laboratories (Denmark) presented Computer Support for Temporal Aspects of Coordination of Cooperative Work. Steffan is performing a field study of a transportation organisation, including trans-European truck driving. Investigating the distributed aspects of co-ordination inherent in cargo delivery, he is considering what role the temporal aspects of cooperative work in a highly scheduled environment play. The findings are modelled in Ariadne notation to construct computational co-ordination mechanisms.
Yvonne Rogers, chair
The discussion session concluding the event was intended to address concerns doctoral students face every day.
We began with the question that haunts every doctoral student: "What am I doing?" The panel discussed the importance of anchoring one's work in the existing body of research. Additionally, in the case of student work that is subsumed by a larger team project, the panel emphasised that the student should work at bounding his or her original research, as a means of delimiting their individual contributions. As a way of framing and locating one's work in a body of research, the panel recommended to frequently consider the target audience of the research.
Another haunting question -- "When do I stop?" -- received the rhetorical answer "How long is a piece of string?" in return! We dealt with this question by discussing what we felt the achievement of the PhD signified. It is a process of learning how to ask well-formulated and -scoped questions and demonstrating competence for initiating and completing original research ("prove that you can do it"), rather than one of "moving mountains." Writing is yet another required step for the completion of the Doctorate; several strategies were shared by the panel for tackling the ominous task of dissertation writing. One member of the panel suggested that a possibility is to draft the structure of the thesis as a succession of chapters early on. Each chapter can be encapsulated as separate journal papers; this can serve the dual purpose of making chapter writing a more manageable task, and help the student make strides toward publishing.
"How do I make sense of it?" Here again the importance of bounding a topic was stressed, as well as situating the work in existing research and being clear about the contribution. It was mentioned that some projects were successful in starting with what is often perceived as a mundane artefact and then elaborating on the complexity of the issues underlying it. The panel also strongly advised that a system-based dissertation should include an evaluation (even if informal) of the system.
The final question "Is there life after (or during) a PhD?" received as a response a discussion of the future intentions and concerns of the participating students. The panel also shared their very interesting experiences, revealing that career trajectories are not nearly as rational as they appear from the outside looking in! It was concluded that the period after a doctoral project is a difficult transition, in some instances requiring a period of time for identifying what exactly one wants to do professionally. In the opinion of one panel member, no matter what one's choices -- whether continuing research work, taking up teaching or going into industry -- a finished doctoral project has to be published as a journal article or conference paper before the student "gets out from the system.ó This view was generally accepted as the minimally desired outcome for a doctoral dissertation.
The contributions of the panel were helpful in bringing new views and possible approaches to the students' research. The discussion helped reassure students that hard work will often be met with the satisfaction of conducting good research.
On behalf of the student participants, we thank Yvonne Rogers for chairing the Colloquium; Lucy Suchman, Richard Bentley, and Steve Benford for serving on the panel; the ECSCW conference organizers; and the ECSCW Foundation for providing financial support for an enjoyable and helpful event.
Zsolt Haag is a doctoral student in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at Glasgow Caledonian University, UK. His research interest are CSCW, software engineering and virtual corporations.
Leysia Palen is in her final dissertation year as a doctoral student at University of California, Irvine, USA. Her dissertation work examines situated use of electronic calendars and other calendar artefacts in the workplace.
Zsolt Haag
Dept. Computing & Information Systems, Glasgow Caledonian University
70 Cowcaddens Road
Glasgow G4 0BA, Scotland, UK
Telephone: +44 141 331 3550
Fax: +44 141 331 3277
Email: z.haag@gcal.ac.uk
Leysia Palen
Information & Computer Science
University of California
Irvine, CA 92697 USA
Email: palen@ics.uci.edu
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Vol.30 No.1, January 1998 |
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