[Air-l] multitasking

[Sarah Robbins]

I have conducted one study into the multitasking phenomenon. It was
presented at a national conference and not submitted for publication but I'd
be happy to pass the paper along. I observed undergraduates at their own
computers while they completed a writing task for a core english course. I
used screen capture software to monitor what applications they used and how
often they switched between them (IM, email, Word, browsers) and then used
post interviews to categorize why they switched when they did. The findings
illustrated that students most often switched to a form of personal
communication (IM or email) to either 1) blow off steam or 2) ask a fellow
student a question. Browsers were used to look up assignments and reference
information. Not surprising at all.
It was a very small informant group (9 students) but the methodology worked
well and I hope to repeat it with a larger population at some point.
Sarah Robbins

On 10/14/06, Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>
> As this is the Association of Internet RESEARCHERS, I wonder if anyone has
> done any Research on multitasking -- to address the interesting
> conjectures that a bunch of people have.
>
> Alas, the only study I know of is our own (actually mostly Anabel's)
> observations, interviews and surveys of a high-tech orgnization:
>
> Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman. "Hyperconnected Net Work:
> Computer-Mediated Community in a High-Tech Organization." Pp. 281-333 in
> The Firm as a Collaborative Community: Reconstructing Trust in the
> Knowledge Economy, edited by Charles Heckscher and Paul Adler. New York:
> Oxford University Press, 2006.
>
> Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, "From the Computerization Movement to
> Computerization: A Case Study of a Community of Practice." Forthcoming in
> Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to
> Ubiquitous Computing, edited by Ken Kraemer and Margaret Elliott. Medford,
> NJ: Information Today, 2007.
>
> Barry Wellman
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
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-- 
Sarah "Intellagirl" Robbins
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