[Air-l] Technical competence

[Andrew Wenn]

That was the point I was trying to make. If the planned research  
requires some sort of special techniques then the researcher and  
supervisor) must ensure that they are knowledgeable in that area.  
Although it is impossible to predict all the skills needed at the  
outset a fair number of them can be forseen.

We cannot educate students in every area that they are possible to come  
across in their research-our students must learn how to learn.

After all some techniques will be required at a particular period of  
time.

Elizabeth you cited Pascal programming as one of your skills but I bet  
you would be hard pressed to find any requirements for that knowledge  
now. It is the more abstract skill of programming and analysis that is  
more valuable.

Likewise I studied a fair amount of statistics in my early years but  
now I like to employ qualitative methods. It was a skill I had to learn  
as I was doing my research.

Remember, one of the things about undertaking a PhD is that the student  
is not only discovering facts about some phenomena but also learning  
how to undertake a larger research project. That is learning research  
skills.

Andrew W.

--  
email: andrewwenn at mac.com
internet: http://homepage.mac.com/andrewwenn/

On 07/06/2005, at 6:39 PM, Elizabeth Van Couvering wrote:

> But let's consider the recent issue of archiving websites -- clearly  
> we need some kind of technical competence for that.  Ditto link  
> analysis.  Ditto for reading others' papers and understanding whether  
> they've used a correct or appropriate methodology.  For example, in  
> understanding the so-called popularity of a website people should know  
> to differentiate between 'hits' and 'pages' and 'visitors' and should  
> be able to figure out whether robots have been excluded - to take a  
> random example that demands a bit of specialised knowledge. Shouldn't  
> this be the kind of thing we are considering for our students?
>
> Elizabeth
>
> On 6 Jun 2005, at 22:34, Paula wrote:
>
>> Yes, I'd agree with this - it can be useful to understand something of
>> how any particular technical medium is productive in online social
>> formations, but find it far more useful to approach social software
>> primarily from the point of view of the user. The users will always
>> manage to exceed the developers' constructs anyway.
>>
>> Conversely, I find it really interesting how social softwares
>> materialise the culture of their developers whilst users will often  
>> try
>> to use it according to the needs of a completely different culture.
>>
>> Paula
>>
>> Ledbetter, Andrew Michael wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Long-time reader, first-time poster. :-)
>>>
>>> I agree, interesting question, and an important question. I think  
>>> the (a) particular research question and (b) population under study  
>>> significantly influence the level of technical competence a  
>>> researcher would need. And we must not forget that the vast majority  
>>> of web users, e-mail users, online gamers, etc. do not know much at  
>>> all about UNIX, perl, Java, or probably even basic ideas about how  
>>> the TCP/IP protocol operates. Given this, might there be occasions  
>>> where lacking in-depth computer science knowledge might actually  
>>> help a researcher approaching the Internet from a social science  
>>> perspective, since they may be able to more easily view the  
>>> technology through the users' eyes rather than the developers' eyes?
>>>
>>> In my own research, I find that my computer science background helps  
>>> me understand the contours of how the nature of a technology  
>>> encourages and discourages certain forms of social interaction...  
>>> but I find that my social science background helps me far more in  
>>> understanding how human beings appropriate the technology in their  
>>> social interaction.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>> -------------
>>> Andrew M. Ledbetter
>>> Ph.D. student, University of Kansas
>>> Department of Communication Studies
>>> aledbett at ku.edu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>>> ---
>>>
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>
> Elizabeth Van Couvering
> PhD Student
> Department of Media & Communications
> London School of Economics and Political Science
> http://personal.lse.ac.uk/vancouve/
> e.j.van-couvering at lse.ac.uk
>
>
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