After
this week I have learned about what theory is and what theory is not.
Or at least I have tried to learn, since it is not a very easy topic. I
think this weeks seminar was the best one so far since we really
discussed what other seminar groups have discussed about theory and what
we all wanted to describe theory as on the wiki page “what is theory?”.
I have learned that there are different types of theories (I-V
according to Gregor). I also like the wiki page “theory” since it gives
good examples of different theories. Maybe it should have been a good
idea to create wiki pages during the first and second seminar as well,
for like the topics “knowledge” and/or “sense data”.
We
have started with our group project and we had our first actual meeting
today. We have chosen to do our group project about the topic “surveys
as a method in media technology research”. Our main formulation of
question for this topic is why you chose surveys as a method and when it
is useful as a method. The reasons for this are many. The first one is
that we all will probably use some kind of survey for our master’s
theses. And then it would be good to know if a surveys really is a good
method and when there are other, more suitable methods. Another reason
for choosing this topic is that we have all seen a lot of, more or less,
badly created surveys from people, especially during the spring term
when many people are creating surveys for their bachelor theses. So by
focusing on how to create a good survey we will all benefit from it for
our upcoming master’s theses and it is good to know in general, for
other upcoming projects as well.
I agree that it could have been useful to actually define all the new concepts and terms on the course wiki! Especially "knowledge" would have been interesting to have a specific definition of. However, it might have taken a long time to formulate the definition, since it is such a debated topic and many philosophers have spent numerous years on defining the word in many different ways! :)
SvaraRaderaIt is good to hear that you enjoyed the wiki exercise. I am very impressed by our resulting text. It is good to know that 62 people were part of creating the text.
SvaraRaderaIt is good that you have chosen your topic for the project. I think you are the first group that did this. I think this is a very good topic and your group and other students that read your report will surely find it valuable.