Final thoughts

Looking back at the entire course, there are several things which I would like to point out:

1) It was breaking grounds for myself, in terms of opening up entirely new field of studies, which I did not have any idea about. It was a great learning experience, because I had to leave the comfort zone of mine and actually plunge into the material which I have not necessarily understood :))) But I guess the class discussion really helped me in grasping the major ideas of the readings. After the class I always felt that finally I had a clearer perspective of the class readings. All unlcear moments were either discussed throughly or mentioned so it provided me with enough information to construct the final concepts related to the readings.

2) The readings in generally were very diverse. Some of the them easy to follow, some very tecnical and thus challenging. But I guess it followed the logic of the class - " leave your comfort zone," "try some new ideas." So, all the reading contributed to that final goal of the course:))) I especially liked the dissertation section - it gives really good examples of how to write dissertation. I think it would be useful to have those links as well as all class reading available after the course!!!

3) Class discussion. I found it fascinating to actually meet the author of one of the books we were reading online, it was very useful and insighful. I guess it is to our great advantage to read a book, to discuss it in class and then to ask questions to its author!

4) Field methods. Dr. Rickly asked us to give our own definition of the fields method. I would probably point out that the major element in the fields method would be observation of the users and how they use a certain artifact in their own natural environment, whether it is a workplace, online, etc. While doing research we should not try to impose any of our stereotypes or pre-defined categories. Althgough, i have to admit it is one of the major challanges for any researcher. All of us have some kind of ideas before we start research. To avoid or to decrease the amount of bias, we should try to triangulate our methods!

5) Triangulation. I guess that it is one of the key ideas which i took from this class! To ensure the reliability of the results we should always try to find the way to look at the data from different perspectives, asking other people to help us, or using different methods to cross check the findings. Spinuzzi talked a lot about that.

6) My own research. The project which I completed for this class, teh results of it, will be used for teh follow up study. I will continue to look at how finanacial blogs use their blogs. IN the future study i plan to triangulate the methods. One of the ideas is to conduct interviews (online, or interview) to ask bloggers themselves about how they use thier blogs. It will be very interesting to see what they think about it and if the data from the blog posts is the same or different.

Due to the short of time I could not do it for this class, but I will use in the future project.

One of teh biggest challanges in the project was to do teh data collection. It took most of the time. But it was a good learning experience for me, especially working with a second coder and trying to explain things to him:)

7) INformation managment. I found this type of task very useful. It was the first online course for me and it was interesting to observe the class dynamic and try to lead any type of discussion :)))) So i guess if i do it second time, it would be much better.