News from secretary and teacher
ice-breaker assignment
Here is your introductory assignment: it's to be done before you arrive with the aim of getting you to make contact with each other, work together and begin to think about the course material. It's not assessed.
You will make a short presentation (7-10 minutes with a few slides) in groups where you will compare a positivist style article with an interpretive one. To simplify things and give us a common reference point the positivist article is always the same:
VENKATESH, V., MORRIS, M. G., DAVIS, G. B. & DAVIS, F. D. (2003) User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view. MIS Quarterly, 425-478.
The groups and the interpretive articles assigned for comparison are here (session 2). You should give a very short outline of your interpretive article for those that have not read it, but concentrate on the major differences in research style. The articles have different themes, but this is not what we are interested in. We are interested in differences in research method, data collection, data analysis, theory generation, research approaches and styles. These things can be summarized under the headings ontology and epistemology - if you feel you need to know more look at:
ORLIKOWSKI, W. J. & BAROUDI, J. J. (1991) Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions. Information Systems Research, 2, 1-28.
However I have already labelled the articles as positivist or interpretivist - so we need to understand how these different philosophical positions manifest themselves in the texts you study.
You will find your group members' email addresses here and I leave you to self organize using email and video chat. The four presentations are scheduled in the session timetable - but how you get there is up to you. This is an introductory exercise so you should not use more than three hours on it.
You will make a short presentation (7-10 minutes with a few slides) in groups where you will compare a positivist style article with an interpretive one. To simplify things and give us a common reference point the positivist article is always the same:
VENKATESH, V., MORRIS, M. G., DAVIS, G. B. & DAVIS, F. D. (2003) User acceptance of information technology: Toward a unified view. MIS Quarterly, 425-478.
The groups and the interpretive articles assigned for comparison are here (session 2). You should give a very short outline of your interpretive article for those that have not read it, but concentrate on the major differences in research style. The articles have different themes, but this is not what we are interested in. We are interested in differences in research method, data collection, data analysis, theory generation, research approaches and styles. These things can be summarized under the headings ontology and epistemology - if you feel you need to know more look at:
ORLIKOWSKI, W. J. & BAROUDI, J. J. (1991) Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions. Information Systems Research, 2, 1-28.
However I have already labelled the articles as positivist or interpretivist - so we need to understand how these different philosophical positions manifest themselves in the texts you study.
You will find your group members' email addresses here and I leave you to self organize using email and video chat. The four presentations are scheduled in the session timetable - but how you get there is up to you. This is an introductory exercise so you should not use more than three hours on it.