[Air-l] Re: chatrooms/ Air-l digest, Vol 1 #491

[Nina Wakeford]

Does anyone use IRC for student classroom exercises - eg practicals 
of virtual participant observation? If so, I'd be interested in what 
kinds of exercises you set students.

At MSc level, this is an example of a current exercise which I set, 
but I'm wondering whether to be more explicit about use of particular 
clients, sites etc.

(1) Select a topic of sociological interest and investigate the UK 
online resources about this topic (You can refer back to Hine's study 
for an example). This might include web pages, email discussion 
lists, chat spaces, usenet newsgroups, etc. Outline how you might 
collect data and analyse this topic using ONE of the online sources 
which you have found (ie either a chat space OR a discussion list OR 
a set of web pages).
Bear in mind the following potentially significant issues:
a. The sources of the data (eg who hosts the site, or organises the 
mailing list) and the effect on the kind of data which can be 
collected
b. Ethical problems in data collection or analysis
c. How your study compares to the studies in the assigned reading list
d. Any methodological issues which arise which are specific to your topic\

(The 'Hine' book is Christine Hine's excellent book 'Virtual Ethnography')

In general, students seemed to enjoy the exercise, although some 
found it hard to limit themselves to UK resources on more marginal 
topics.

Nina Wakeford
INCITE, University of Surrey
www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/incite

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