Grades and comments.txt

What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter?
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Hinne: 3 / 5

Most important keywords: user-centredness, social context,
socio-technical systems. Yes, one could say that they are
all there but what worries me is the length and under-structuration
of the summary meaning that the distinction between crucial
and not-that-crucial is incomplete at best (e.g. all the paragraphs
beginning from productivity paradox to technological determinism
could have been united under a single statement). Had you re-edited
your summary and written it into a more concise list of statements
with brief comments I would not have hesitated to award maximum points.


Find a Social informatics problem analyse it with SI tools
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Hinne: 3 / 5

Quite good overall effort although it misses the point to the extent
that the questions are not really interrelated. You could have taken
only the first point and fleshed it out into a more nuanced research
framework because the puzzle itself is really good and practical.
I do have an issue with an expression 'contextual inquiry' because
that can mean anything - expert survey, participant observation, focus
group, ethnography, discourse analysis... THe choices are endless here.
The structure itself leaves something to be desired in that the points
are separated but under each heading the specific research questions,
methods and hypotheses are not.


Analyse the socio-technical system of a project
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Hinne: 5 / 5

Main expectations: many different categories with lots of relevant
examples of each, clear structure providing an easy overview of the
system, if possible, visualization. In this regard mostly well done.
However, I would have liked to see more about (potentially conflicting)
user expectations, organizational routines and habits etc. For example,
if ÕIS forces the student to give feedback the script that auto-completes
the survey illustrates conflicting user preferences.


Academic Research Paper on HCI
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Hinne: 4 / 5

Main expectations: clear and brief summary of key ideas, good structure,
importance of the article has been justified. You have indeed managed to
provide an overview of the findings. What I did not see here was answer
to the question why the article was necessary in the first place? How
did it contribute to the existing knowledge pool? What were its wider
implications (if any)? As to your remark about the summary there are
couple of answers that come to mind: 1) as any summary involves a
selection of ideas it already includes your opinion of what is important
- there is no such thing as value-free choice (or that's what some
philosophers would claim); 2) it depends on the definition of summary;
3) we can retain the summary part as narrowly defined but still include
the reflection requirement in the assignment - so there, you can now
call it 'summary-and-opinion'; 4) the assignment was written by the
lecturer - I mark my own edits (if any) accordingly ;)


Presentation on HCI
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Hinne: 4 / 5

-


Visualise the domestication process
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Hinne: 5 / 5

Main expectations: one clear and easy-to-read visualization of the
key idea(s) of the article with brief accompanying remarks about
the content. Yes, good. It is commendable that you tried to make
the model more accessible because the initial one does its best
to keep you from grasping the general idea. P.S. It is evident that
the academic background makes all the difference. Where I come
from - sociology and media studies - this would be considered an
easy bedtime read. Bad news is that from your point of view even
worse articles will follow :P


Analysis of domestication process
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Hinne: 4 / 5

Main expectations: detailed but systematic description of enhancing
and obstructing factors, potential general lessons on the basis of
your own experience, drawing connections with prior knowledge.
Interesting topic! The description is a bit shallow at places -
would have liked to see even more details about the gradual
unfolding of the overall process - but sufficient. Generalization
in the end is also commendable. Could have drawn connections with
the theoretical framework though.


Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Power Inequalities
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Hinne: 0 / 5

Main expectation: two clear, logically consistent and reasonably
detailed examples (e.g. more general claim is coupled with a specific
instance) from both sides. In that regard I am sorry to say that you
have misunderstood the topic. What I would have expected is a discussion
of two specific instances (or one instance viewed from both sides)
discussing the possibility of ICT to make a difference. As I fail
to notice a re-submission box in this case please just re-submit it on my e-mail.
 
P.S. Agreed. I'm not too fond of Moodle as a whole myself...


ICT in different layers of society
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Hinne: 1 / 5

Main expectations: one research topic + five different analysis
focuses, one correpsonding to each layer. Well, you have certainly
seemed to understand the text because the summary contains relevant
pieces of information. However, save for quite a scarce
reference to e-mail otherwise I see no actual application. What I
was expecting was a choice of a certain topic (e.g. hackers) and the
following indication of five different ways to analyse this topic
depending on a certain level (e.g. hacker psychology (individual),
impact of 'hacker culture' on the ethos of internet usage (global) etc.).
So I would suggest some re-writing along these lines.

P.S. The article might be cool but I kid you not, it' still a
relatively easy reading compared to.. erm, some postmodernist writing which
often crosses the border of comprehensibility for virtually everyone.
How did they get published? Beats me...


Questions to Castells
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Hinne: 3 / 5

1) Good luck with terminological quarreling. Been there myself. A word
of warning: in sociology this tends to lead to endless re-reading, say
Marx for example, trying to understand what he did or did not mean or
could have meant in the light of latter sociological knowledge. I would
point out that yes, Castells's formal definition of a network is very wide
but his actual characterization is much more specific. And yes, he has
been criticized for downplaying the role of network-internal struggles
to define the meanings and purposes of the networks. It is good that you
noticed it when reading the text for the first time but you could have made
the question a bit clearer - by the way, what are the 'capitalist ideals'?
 
2) Well, Castells seems to think so. And usually when we think about
hierarchy-network distinction then the latter should have no single centre
by definition. But yes, the trouble is that Castells's theory can be applied
to societies of the past as historians and anthropologists have actually already
done (LaBianca & Scham, "Connectivity in Antiquity", 2006). About the wording -
it is a closed question (yes/no) answer. When trying to raise discussion formulations
like this are usually avoided (enables to get away with very little).
 
3) Critics would say that it is not necessarily wrong but incomplete. As such
it overstates the importance of some factors (IT, knowledge) and underplays some
other ones (e.g. in information society theories there is rarely any mention of
demographic or ecological problems). Sociology is full of alternatives. Just to
name a few: risk society (Beck), late modernity (Giddens), end of history (Fukuyama),
world-systems theory (Wallerstein)...


Information society dependence on technologies
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Hinne: 0 / 5

-- not submitted --


Reflections on the course
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Hinne: ? / 5