My PhD Blog

Today (1st of July) I am exactly half way through my three year PhD scholarship. That means it is time to really concentrate on me and my PhD project. It also means that I must learn the crucial gift of being able to say no.

Up until now, I feel like I have been much preoccupied with pleasing other people (e.g. students, journalists, colleagues, course participants, professionals, librarians or others who are interested in my research area) and although I like communicating my research results, giving interviews and public talks or being called on as an “expert” in different contexts, I must stop accepting all the invites to exciting activities and start being a bit more selfish in order to get my dissertation done in time.

Of course, it helps that I have now fulfilled all my teaching obligation here at the university. As a PhD student at The Department of Communication at Aalborg University I have to teach 600 hours during my three years of employment. At the end of this semester, I have fulfilled this obligation. Although I enjoy teaching and supervising students, not having to do that for the next year and a half will probably (hopefully) help me to concentrate more on my project and my interesting data.

Let the writing begin!
(And let’s hope I don’t suffer from P.Q.S.… )

My colleague and friend Anders Albrechtslund will be defending his PhD dissertation next Monday. The dissertation is called “In the Eyes of the Beholder: Introducing participation and ethics to surveillance“ and is a collection of seven published papers.

Anders writes about his dissertation:

The main focus of the dissertation is to understand surveillance, and participation and ethics have been ways to grasp the concept. I introduce the concept “participatory surveillance” to emphasize aspects of surveillance practices which are not adequately expressed in the current surveillance studies literature… [...] This way of grasping surveillance might be in stark contrast to the everyday understanding of something unpleasant and unwanted, which terrifies and controls its passive victims, a description we know so well from depictions in books, films and TV series. However, when certain everyday social relations are studied, e.g. online social networking, these practices can be described as active, positive engagements with surveillance. Consequently, there seems to be more to surveillance than meets the eye.

Especially, I find Anders’ paper on “Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance” interesting. Here, the practice of online social networking is conceptualised in relation to the social and playful aspects of surveillance.

I wish Anders the best of luck with the defence and look forward to attending the event.

Another colleague of mine, Marianne Georgsen from e-Learning Lab, is defending her PhD thesis this week. This will take place Wednesday at the Department of Education, Learning and Philosophy.

Here is a short description of the thesis (in Danish):

Afhandlingen handler om kommunikationens rolle i samarbejdsprocessen, med særlig vægt
på kommunikationens betingelser, når samarbejdet medieres af IKT. Der sættes fokus på
betingelserne for den videomedierede interaktion og på identifikation af de ressourcer,
brugerne tager i anvendelse for at kunne samarbejde i virtuelle omgivelser.

Read the whole summery or see the invitation.

Good luck to Marianne

My good friend and colleague Anne-Mette Albrechtslund just got a PhD scholarship from the Danish Research Council. Anne-Mette is interested in user-creativity in computer games and she will start her project in February. Congrats to Anne-Mette (who will then continue to be part of our research centre at e-Learning Lab).

Thomas’ PhD defence on Friday was a nice experience and I think it went really well. It started out with a short introduction by supervisor Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld whereupon Thomas gave his 45 minute presentation explaining the patchworking metaphor as a way of understanding learning. After that the members of the assessment committee each had some time to ask critical questions such as “What is learning?”, “What is the difference between ‘learning’ and ‘doing’?”, “How close is patchworking to technology?”, “Is patchworking general to all group work processes?” and “Can individual learning also be viewed as patchworking?”.

I know that some people in the audience thought that the questions were rather hard and critical, but Thomas managed to keep a cool head during the whole defence and he answered all the questions in a reflective and intelligent manner.

Therefore - not surprisingly - the assessment committee gave him a really nice evaluation afterwards urging him to develop his concepts into a theory and a book. All in all, it was a really good day which ended with a nice dinner and a party at out home for supervisors, assessment committee, family and friends.

My “colleague”, both at work and at home, Thomas Ryberg from e-Learning Lab is defending his PhD thesis this Friday. This will take place at 1.00 pm in room 1.104 (the auditorium) at Kroghstraede 3, Department of Communication, Aalborg University.

Supervisors are Professor Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld and independent researcher Etienne Wenger. The assessment committee consists of:

• Pirkko Raudaskoski, Associate Professor, Aalborg University (DK)
• Dr. Christopher Jones, The Open University (UK)
• Professor Barbara Wasson, University of Bergen (No)

Here is the abstract for the thesis:

“Something old, something new
Something borrowed, something blue”

The old saying and wedding tradition cited above captures well the essence of metaphorically understanding learning as a process of patchworking. The metaphor of patchworking highlights how learning processes can be seen as processes of stitching and weaving together different ‘patches and pieces’ into something new. The patches and pieces may not all be new, but can be old borrowed and of a widely different fabric; yet in their combination they form a new patchwork.

During 8-10th of August 2005 six teams of young ‘power users’ worked intensively on addressing different open-ended learning challenges. This took place within a larger event and symposium arranged as part of the ‘Power Users of Technology Project’ – a research project formed around the hypothesis that young power users of technology might be learning, working and solving problems in new and innovative ways due to their intensified use of technology; and that we can gain valuable insights about the future design of education by studying young people and their use of technology in relation to learning and problem solving processes.

On basis of a close empirical examination of the Danish team of Power Users and their work on a self-chosen learning challenge this thesis argues how we can theoretically understand, analyse and methodologically approach learning processes through the metaphorical lens of ‘patchworking’. Furthermore, the thesis critically discusses the relations between youth, learning and technology and what valuable insight, for the future design of education, we might gain from studying young ‘power users of technology’.

See more here.

This week I have been participating in an interesting PhD course at Aalborg University entitled “Acting with Technology - Research Methods on Context and Change“. The course is mainly focusing on methodology and providing methods, tools and techniques for research on people acting with technology in various settings.

The course is divided into two parts. The first part consisted of sessions with local researchers Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Ellen Christiansen and Pirkko Raudaskoski focusing on e.g. problem based learning, user-driven innovation, action research, activity theory, ethnomethodology, Nexus Analysis and other related fields. I really enjoyed this first part of the course which both inspired me and assured me that I am on the right track in using Nexus Analysis as an overall methodology or research framework in my PhD project.

The second part of the course will take place in November and will be lead by professor and anthropologist Bonnie Nardi. I am sure that this part of the PhD course will be interesting too and I am looking forward to have Nardi commenting on my methodology and research design - especially the part where I plan to apply a multi-sited ethnographical approach.

By the way, here are five nice questions to consider in any PhD or research project:

• What is the problem (practical, societal, political, personal motivation, and scientific)?
• Who has the problem (different actors)?
• When did the problem come into existence (historical facts and historical development)?
• Why did the problem come into existence (causes and trends)?
• How can the problem be solved (methodology/design based research)?

From Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld’s slides.

My good colleague (and fiancée, I might add) Thomas Ryberg, just handed in his PhD thesis today. The thesis, which is almost 500 pages long, is called ‘Patchworking as a metaphor for learning - Understanding youth, learning and technology’ and amis at describing how the learning process of eight young ‘Power Users of Technology‘ can be understood. Read more about his project here.

I am tremendously proud of Thomas who I think did an amazing job (I hope I will be able to produce something which is just half as good when my turn is up).

Congrats to Thomas (the smartest man I know :-))

Insightful notes from David Gauntlett on how to survive your PhD Read them here.