Reflection: what is computer science?

i can remember my first experience with the computer as a machine that can help me with playing very excellent games. Peeping through the air conditioned-locked black glass, i was told by my teacher that they are very delicate and they can tell them if i do some wrong thing, and so i do not do anything except what i was told to do. This experience for me when i was in grade 6 is really obvious that whatever the teacher told me was very right and i still wonder how can i make such statements to some novice people that could be more impressive as the same like that teacher had made upon me. Even when i was graduating, one question that some elder people used to asked me about my studies was “Explain is your study about?”. Its not difficult but it becomes complex when I try not to use any of the technical term to explain all the aspects that my subject computer science to those elder people with no experience with computer at all and still i was not satisfied with what i try to explain with my answer. There always used to be a discussion about what would be the criteria and how large the boundary of the computer science can be, and I always used to go explaining beyond the boundary and then at last happen to discussion ends with thoughts that there is actually no boundary for the subject.

I found out that there were some few questions that I raised in my introduction were even not found out and still need some analysis to exactly answer them. There were many other texts that were very interestingly trying to find out the answer and I think most of them are still not fully supported by all of people from the discipline.

At the beginning when I found out about the course in the department webpage, I was thinking this course to be similar to the course that might need extensive theoretical reading and lots of references to be put forward before the actual part of the course to be completed with. And that was also one of the reason my other friends were not interested in taking the course at some stage. For me, it was more than getting the credits rather than finding answer to since-childhood-question. Also the course description page was excellently giving the more about the course, and so I found out that it will be more dependent on the instructor lecture notes eventually. The first post was about the introduction for what we will be doing during the course, I was still not known to what my part will be in the course other than giving answers. I didn’t had any idea about why would the instructor asks participants answer at first for the course as a compulsory part. But as the course gradually went forward with the learning activities and the feedback analysis, I was pretty satisfied with how I was able to learn myself about the use of computer science and was able to find answers to some extend.

The most important aspect of the for me was to write about my own masters thesis and try to give its relation with various philosophical aspects of the computer science. For doing that I had to explore various past papers and try to think in deep about my topic from a different angle and how it is linked with the more morphological analysis. Till half way, it has changed more useful for the way I am thinking about the field and now the expectation have increased for me to the remaining of the course.

Reseach methods

My work for the thesis is to the study the usability of the user interface for the further analytical procedures into the field of human computer interaction. HCI is itself large and interdisciplinary area. It is emerging with several disciplines: computer science, psychology, sociology and anthropology, and industrial design[1].

The work involves multiple approaches to adhering to the methods used in the HCI. One method which I will be using has been adopted from the research methods of psychology is the Controlled Experiments. It features valuable resources of research methods to evaluate interfaces [2], styles of interaction [3], and to understand cognition in context of interaction with the systems [4]. The reason for using this method is their capability to answer the questions like: does making changes to the value of variable X have significant effect on the value of variable Y? For example, X might be an interface or interaction feature and Y might be time to complete task, number of errors or users' satisfaction from working with the interface. Since cost of designing and running a rigorous experiments is typically high and take some time, the digital platform designed for the counseling of HIV/AIDS in the context is used as a testing tools for the purpose. Another method is the use of questionnaires and interviews, which helps in need of time-to-time evaluation of systems with users in varying context [5]. Questionnaires are paper-based or sometimes or delivered online with a set of questions which all participants are asked to complete. Large number of participants are delivered here which means the large amount of data to be coded and analyzed. Completing both methods will give out the opportunity to deal with the numbers and hopefully reaching some solid, secure results like in other sciences. My work need to make sure that numerical data is not just natural variation between people but variation due to real difference between interface and effects on people. Thus finally the Statistical methods is used for this purpose. It will help me to make sense of the data and thus draw sound conclusions about the nature of the interaction between children and computers.

According to classification in computing disciplines given by Glass et al. 2004 [6], my work belongs more to the subfield of Information Science and Software Engineering, with different research approaches necessary for the research utilizing a wide variety of methods. It is found that the work is following the Empirical Traditions of the given figure in the lecture notes[7] attaining the modeling and analysing the human phenomenon focusing on the childrens.

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References:

[1]: ACM SIGCHI : Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction (http://sigchi.org/cdg/cdg2.html)

[2]: McGriffin, M. and Balakrishnan, R. 2005. 'Fitts' law and expanding targets: Experimental studies and design of user interfaces.' ACM Trans. on Computer-Human Interaction 12(4): 388-422

[3]: Moyle, M and Cockburn, A. 2005. 'A flick in the right direction: a case study of gestural input.' Behaviour and Information Technology 24(4): 275-88

[4]: Li, S. Y. W., Cox. A. L., Blandford, A., Cairns, P. and Abeles, A. 2006. 'Further investigation into post-completion error: The effects of interruption position and duration.' In Proc. Of 28^th Annual meeting of the Cognition Science Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

[5]: Pace, S. 2004. 'A grounded theory of the flow experiences of web users.' International Journal of Human Computer Studies 60: 327-63.

[6]: Glass, R. L., Ramesh, V., and Vessey, I. (2004). An analysis of research in computing disciplines. Communications of the ACM, 47(6):89–94.

[7]: Tedre M., Thinking About Computing (Lecture Notes, 2009. ), unpublished,

Some thoughts: nothing can be wrong

from the falsificationism point of view, it can never be said that a theory is true, but it can only be said that it is the best theory currently available—since it has not yet been successfully falsified. Falsificationist science does not constitute of proven facts but of theories that nobody has yet been able to falsify.

it is interesting to find out that Kuhn (1996) in his book criticised this falsificationism thoery that when scientists find difference between the theories and their own experimental findings, they do not follow faflsificationism and give up their theories. But instead they try to find somehow find a way to accomodate their abnormal findings with their theories. In other words, they try to somehow put their findings to some theoretical use rather than saying their finding was false. It is somehow true in a sense that someones findings cannot be said fully false if they have done it through enough observation and analytical

[1] Kuhn, Thomas (1996 [1962]) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd edition). The University of Chicago Press: Chicago, USA.

Reseach skills: terms to know

Term to know: [2]

The term method usually refers to a means or a procedure for accomplishing something and the meaning of the term methodology is the principles and assumptions that underlie a set of methods, which is often understood loosely as a set of methods. Another term, research approach is a combination of defined set of methods and techniques chosen for a research. It is also a conceptual and theoretical framework to define language of research and how analysis are made. It is also found out that methods(techniques, procedures, or tools of inquiry) without the methodology(principles and foundations of methods) is not important.
the scientific method is just a broad set of principles, not an actual method of inquiry. The scientific method does not help with issues such as what to measure, how to measure it, or the validity and reliability of measurements.

where do computer scientists learn their research skills?
It is seen that computer scientists usually learn their research skills from: the apprentice relationship with the professor while doing PhD work (called background mentoring) and from examining writings of prior successful researcher (called patterning). [1] . This is regarded as as exemplar, which are actually sets of solutions used as models or examples. But this kind of knowledge cannot give methodological knowledge about choosing and using methods and techniques. The qualities of developed theories, techniques, or products must be determined in some established and unbiased manner.
[1]: Glass, Robert L. (1995). A structure-based critique of contemporary computing research. Journal of Systems and Software, 28(1):3–7.

[2]Tedre M., Thinking About Computing (Lecture Notes, 2009. ), unpublished,

SuraYaUkimwi: Counseling sessions and external constraints

Its good to see my participation to some extent in one of the great tools that is being developed for something that will change peoples life. The chance to work with SuraYaKumwi has brought me to another level of experience to see how it can be used as a counseling tool. Three groups (each cosisting of about 10 students) from the Councelling faculty of the Tumaini University took the help of the platform to teach and counsel about the HIV/AIDS to three different schools. Me and Markus went to those sessions to assist them in a technical issues; and more important as an observer. My main objective of being there was to see how those groups will be arranging those events with the help of the tool and what feedback will be there from the students about the platform.

21^st May, 2009: Ruaha Secondary School, Ipogolo,

The first session with the school was made by group of ten students. According to them, they already had two other sessions at the school last weeks using black board and paper. They were using the tools now to put the stories as a case study to different aspects the disease and the transmission.

Location: Dinning Hall, (very big space) lots of external noise from the maintenance work being going on and also students got distracted from others coming and going out of the location very frequently.

Participants: about 150 students from form 2

Group Plan: The group were taking story of Mark as a case story. Then they ask the students to look for the questions given in the reflection sections of the tool. As a next step, the story was played and students were formed in group to discuss the questions, sometimes some part of the story were also replayed if they have any confusion. At the end, one of the student from each group were asked to put forward their thoughts about those questions to all others.

Event Log:

The event started with the introduction about the group and their purpose of being there

Then with some talk about the work they need to do and introduction to the guests,

Things that were lagging:

group did not introduce anything about the platform before they start.

What was different about this session than others?

This was a good opportunity to check the platform against the huge mass of students and random external noise at the same time. This is important because as a counseling tool, this is necessary for people in concerned stage to observe at the different settings. Also the tool will eventually be used in future in such kind of environment when it is used later as a tool for counseling purpose.

How can I improve the session next time?

• Room quite big and lots of echo: we are using computers to help students councel about some serious matter; t he information that provide utility to their life. Make sure that you only have enough enough space that you need. More space will create other disturbance and small space will create difficulty with the movement and afford.

• Sound system was not enough for the whole students to pay attention to: even if the location disadvantage barrier could be overcome with better sound system

• Picture from the projector was not clear enough to the students sitting at the back: arrangement could be made to make the room dark for the session and putting the background white for clarity.

• Disturbance due to students coming in and going out very frequently: strictly making a time for the entry of the students and asking them not to leave between session.

• Heavy noise due to hammering in the nearby maintenance room: inform the administration if there are any of such disturbances.

• Students were not clear about what activity they had to do: bearing a fact about above difficulties, it would have been better if each group were assigned one person who takes care of the discussion. This was also important in the way that although the students understand what to do, they were not able to discuss with each other (possibly due to lack of group discussion skills)

What was interesting?

One interesting point to note here was that even though we had sound and good picture used with projector, external environment played a vital role in the event; also the Animation was really attracting the attention of the students and sound is enabling them to discuss with the peers.

SuraYaUkimwi: interface and cultural tests

Iringa Girls:

Observations:

• Out of 10 participant groups, 5 started the tool with the information slides.

• It was observed that some of them had a difficulty with information mode only with going back to previous page (confused with the use of X button)

• Some of the participants who were not used to with the computers were using the right click buttons on the mouse.

Feedback:

• Pictures need to be realistic, for example the university student must be wearing smart dress, must not be wearing funny cap when the person is in tie, the dress

• When a person is infected or dying, his/her health must be seen as if it is so, for example he is lean, thin, with rashes and must be seen ugly in the picture.

• It was suggested that there must be some way of indication about the start and end of the conversation would be provided. Too many information at the same time can be sometimes a bit of problem with the reader. One possible suggestion was to put text at first and then the pictures. And some more additional work needed to be done with the bubble and texts.

Suggestions:

• Improve the Swahili language in the texts. (Grammar and more suitable words)

• In the HIV/AIDS statistics, there is a mistake with the percentage of infection in Zanzibar as 0,7% (it is supposed to be 0.7%?)

• Side text (information tab) can be put horizontal at the bottom reducing the size of the logo. This will have more space for the pictures.

Cultural Aspects: another new excerpts.

Event: 4^th testing of tool SuraYaUkimwi with a secondary level school children at Iringa Girls.

Date: 7^th May,2009.

Session title: Testing SuraYaUkimwi to ‘A’ level students at Iringa Girls

Participants: 29 ‘A’ Level students divided into 10 groups.

Mr Loupenza informed about the popularity of the test session going on in their school and there are lots of students who want to participate and volunteer in what they called “teaching class of computer”. I was given three days (tuesday, thursday and friday) suitable for them. Tuesday I had a class on Tumaini so could not possibly make it so I inform him that I will be there on Thursday (I was leaving for a trip on Friday early morning).

On Thurday, 7^th May, I reached computer lab and was really amazed to see so many number of students at the same session as compared to previous ones. There were 29 students (3 of them were from previous sessions) all from the ‘A’ level and they were eagerly waiting for the session to start. Most of them already heard from their friends who have participated in other sessions and knew what they were supposed to do before I gave instructions. At first it was bit of difficult with finding enough space for such large number of students accommodating and the place was much crowded.

Observations:

• Starting a program was a main issue in this session of testing. Most of them were struggling with how to start the program. Some of them had a program started but even did not noticed as they were also using some other programs and our tool was not visible. It would be useful to start program in full-screen mode and also run in front of any other running windows.

• 4 out of 10 groups started with the information section and when asked didn’t knew whether it contains stories as well and felt difficult to go back (needed some additional work on how to get them back to the place they were before).

• 6 groups didn’t knew that there is an English version of the text along with Swahili. (need some highlight features to indicate this)

• 2 groups were struggling with the information; when shown how to go back, they again found difficult to go back to main menus and were trying to use “back” button rather than the “start” button

Suggestions:

• 2 other groups didnt liked the placement and shape of next and previous button told that they were struggling with them for some time until they really get the idea of their use.

• Horizon in the sky are usually white(or light blue), but not dark blue.

• One of the important issues raised was with the idea of making characters similar in all pictures. Some of the places the person was difficult to identify and same person was presented differently (eg, character Mark)

• No reaction of feeling pain (eg Mina beaten by her step mother)

• 18 participants didnt liked the idea of showing breast and other parts of women. They think it is against the culture and thus strictly not suitable for children to show in schools. There was a deep discussion about the issue and it was eventually advised that the best way to show a couple in bed is their clothes lying around in bed in floor.

• There is no culture in Tanzania for girls to go to parents for talking about the marriage with the boys family. Boys are responsible to do that, except that they have finished the university (but not at least when they are in A level).

• No one in the session were clear about how Rahema got HIV in the story.

• Finally there were lots of suggestions about the necessity of improving the language used.

How it could the session be improved?

inform in advance to the concern people about the number of participants required so that I will prepare small questionnaire enough for all of them. Because of more number of students, I was not able to cover all of the students view individually. Also if there are more number of students, most of them were not able to use the tool by themselves and could not get their own hands on the tool. It is found that sound are really making difference in the way students were reacting and giving feedback on different aspects of the tool. It was taking them more deep onto the issues that students without sound were not able to go through it and find out about those aspects.

What was this session intended to achieve?

When a work is being done by people who have never been to the culture that he/she is working on, the gap between the developer and the real user is not only the case of being expert and novice but also difference between the cultural traditions the both of them belong to. The basic idea behind this session was to study the coverage of the different cultural aspects and the student view about the material covered in the tool.

Why did I attend the session?

See particular research log (requires login) for this.

SuraYaUkimwi: difficulty starting and feedbacks

Ruaha Secondary School (20th April)

On Wednesday 15th April me and Markus visited the secondary school, located in Ipogolo 5 km from Iringa and met with the Principal, Mwageni (Student Counselor) and Grace (IT-lab responsible) and Silas(IT staff). Principle welcomed us and said we were allowed to conduct test sessions at the Computer Lab. Mwageni promised to organize a group of 10 students. We said any students could join only preference was not to be first year(grade) students. Grace suggested Mondays or Tuesdays for the test sessions. We decided to have first session Monday 20th. Today at lunch time I called Mwageni and no group was yet organized but he promised to organize a group. When we arrived at 15:30 half of the group organized had to be excused due to other obligations at the school. We briefly met with the five students and asked if they could find five more students to join. Grace and Silas in the beginning raised concerns that they would like to leave at already at 4 and someone needed to be present and also lock the lab after we were done with our work. Grace made an exception for this time but told that there will be a problem for coming sessions. I suggested that any of the volunteers at the school could stay and lock but Grace did not seem to like that solution. Marcus is thinking maybe we can ask how much she would charge for extra time for next sessions??

Finally at appr. 16:00 students had got organized and we started with 9 students that soon had expanded to 12 (5boys and 7girls) all in form four(Grade-4). We introduced ourselves and explained our objectives and that we are in need of the students’ feedback on the material that we have prepared. 12 Cd's had been prepared with the material, of which one was given to Mwageni, one to Grace the remaining 10 was distributed to the students. We began by asking students to find a computer and trying to open the material by themselves. To our surprise only one computer had a functional CD-player. We then tried placing material on server so that it could be accessed from other computers and eventually two more computers could view the material. With the use of My and Markus’s laptop we had a total of 5 computers for them where 3 of them had sound.

All the technical problems made it difficult to get a good idea of how easy they found the material to use but it was observed that all the groups got a hang on how to navigate the stories and extra material quite easy without the need of asking for assistance. When questioning them about the user friendliness they all claimed that it was easy to use and user friendly interface. I made several attempts to get feedback on what might not have been so intuitive but they all answered it was easy and no problems.

On the material itself there was several comments:

1. Limitations in additional material, the risk of transmission while in accident where you might get someone’s blood on your wounds. The importance not only about education as pointed out that different education needed for different ages as some things could be harmful knowledge for younger students

2. Why not making use of video and making material available on more accessible VHS video format as few students have access to computers, students also welcomed printed materials. The VHS option they suggested were for the one who might not have access to computers.

3. Some found cartoons to static and said it is a bit boring

4. Requested more and better animations and to make people walking properly and to make mouth move while they speak, to make them look more alive.

5. Speech bubbles not synchronized enough but students found them important and wanted to see more speech bubbles in the material. They also pointed out the importance for deaf people. (Or when no sound)

6. In Kisamvu story there is apparently some problem with voices telling something about the mothers asking her husband to inform relatives while already in funeral, which was found a bit strange

7. Concerns about breasts showing which was not considered appropriate by some

8. The use of Swahili and English was considered very good but they also wanted to have English voice available for foreign students and to follow school principles of the use of English

9. The stories were found very practical and look relevant and easy to relate to by the students they did not find material foreign or out of context

10. Sounds were considered excellent and they enjoyed that there was also some singing.

11. Some of the students did not like the idea of cartoons because they think they are not small enough to watch cartoon characters and would have been better if the real people were involved in making the stories.

12. There were also some comments about the presented stories being very summarized, and things were happening too fast.

13. Some of them suggested that the story should go automatic, ie stories coming one after another without doing anything.

14. The suggestions were made to synchronize the sound with picture.

15. There is a necessity to improve the pictures.

16. Most of the picture did not had the feeling in what the actions were being done. For example, in Mina's Story, she was being beaten but there were no expressions of being in pain.

17. More story for other causes(other than sexual intercourse) of the HIV disease were found necessary.

18. Most of the story presented a risk factor focused on males and there was a necessity to provide suggestions to avoid the contamination.

19. There was a bit of discussion about the speech bubbles. Some of them thought that there should be a lot of speech bubbles with all the things said in dialog while some of them thinks they were too many of them already.

20. At last, they were asked “If you are given this material and asked to provide education to the other students about HIV/AIDS, do you think you can do that? Why?”. Most of them were very positive that they can definitely go easily with them and the reason was that most of the stories were very simple and practical to say that these could happen easily to them as well.

After about an hour of going through material we had approximately a 15 min discussion about the material

SuraYaUkimwi: Iringa Girls and information sections

Second Session with the Iringa Girls:

Participants: 13 students from 'O' level distributed across the 9 computers.

Observations: Students who don't have much knowledge about the computers started with the information section and got stuck with how to get back. Most of them thought it only contained information.

Questions Raised:

• Does AIDS always get infected into person when they have wounds in the sexual parts?(in ABC)

Suggestions:

• When a doctor is telling about a person getting infected, they did not give any counsellings or advice and the boy don't have any feeling of being surprised in the speech.

• There are only condoms used by males. It would be good to have some stories that shows the use of female contraceptives.

• In Meena story, the story says that she went to the village to her relatives, but then it shows that she is dancing in disco the next moment and with modern dress (and dancing with boys). We don't have any villages in Tanzania with such discos in villages.

• People getting sick but not shown (except in one stories)

• Use of real person rather than cartoon (but clarified with the fact that they are not suitable for Internet versions)

• In questions for reflection, there is a mistake like:

  • unawe zakuhr : unaweza kuhu

  • ungefanga je : ungefanyaje

Design Considerations: Minimizing the chances of confounding variables

Confounding variables are the one which are varied between experiments and which affects the measured values of dependent variable. While testing an interface with the different people, there might be case that we could ask participants to enter different messages for different interfaces. This has effect on how long it takes to enter a message, regardless of the interface. This message length is the confounding variable. Others might be complexity of entering certain text compared to other words. The simplest solution is to make sure that same message is entered on all interfaces. Thus, even if the message takes different times, over the whole experiment, the effect of different messages would be evenly spread out across all interfaces. This is called counter balancing.

The aim is to vary independent variable in a known manner, to measure dependent variable(s) and to minimize the effect of confounds on outcome of study

How was this performed during the tests session?

To reduce the confounding between the different feedbacks, a series of questions were prepared. Although the questions were random, appropriate questionnaire was not difficult due to factors like:

• Time allocation constraints for students during the test sessions: usually we only had a chance to test the platform on a short time period, as the testing was usually conducted after school hours, which usually lasts for 2-2.5 hours per sessions on average. Most of these times students spend their time in activities like being comfortable with the platform, learning about the information given in the information box, enjoying the stories provided and discussing with the peers about it.

• Language barrier: Some of the participants from the lower form were not very comfortable with the English. Due to this reason, most of them just use simple way of communication to say that everything is good and they don’t have anything to say. Also due to the observer basic skills in Swahili, participants’ feedbacks were based on some other students’ interpretations (which again depend on their English deviation). This might loose out the possibility of the participants real comment and evaluation from feedback.

• Writing over was difficult part rather than comfortable talking: As it was a known that students appear in the test session after their classes in the schools, and they have just been out of possible stressful classes throughout the day, it was not sensible to ask them to fill up the questionnaire. Although to give out a simple evaluation, a simple fillout-form was prepared and handed over to students during one of the sessions. It was observed that most of them had a feeling of an official writing and felt difficult to write as most of them thought it would be recorded and given off to the teachers for their evaluation. Even after consenting that it is not the case and the feedback will not affect any of the educational activities, they emphasized on oral feedback to the questionnaire. Possible cause were being tired after a school day, being afraid of the writing being recorded, thoughts about their language(grammar) not being quality enough.

Design Considerations: Which method should I use?

Which method should I use?

One way to think about which method I should use can be made by answering following questions (refer to as ‘PRET A Reporter’ framework)

• Purpose of the evaluation: what are the goals of testing, or the detailed questions to be answered in the study? (this will find need and requirement that method was developed to address)

• Resources and constraints: what resources are available for conducting the study and conversely what constraints must the study work within? this will address the challenges that might come during testing

• Ethics: what ethical considerations need to be addresses? In method testing, the main ethical concerns are likely to relate to privacy of participants information.

• Techniques for gathering data must be identified, such as controlled experimentation, questionnaire(design, length, structure, wording, types and scales), interviews (structure, style, settings, and recording) and focus groups (break into groups and facilitate discussion) and eye tracking

• Analysis techniques must be selected such as GOMS [2], KLM [3],

• Reporting of findings.

Many of the tests of methods that have been conducted are comparative

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[2] John, B. E. and Kieras, D.E 1996a, ’The GOMS family of user interface analysis technique: comparison and contrast.’ ACM Transaction on Computer-Human Interaction 3(4): 321-55

[3] Kieras, D.E 2001, ‘Using the keystroke-level model of estimate execution times.’ Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan

Design Considerations: Dependent and Independent Variables

Designing an experiment is another very important aspect to think about before jumping right away into the possible available ones. As most of the aspects of HCI design is not based on quantitative evaluation but rather concise qualitative variables that represent corresponding measurement parameters.

One possible technique can be the use of dependent and independent variables. During the experiment one can change and see the effect of these variables on the result found out. The variable is intentionally varied is referred to as independent variable and that which is measured is dependent variable. In HCI, these changes might be to interaction design, interface features, participant knowledge and so on. [1] The value of dependent variable depends on value of independent variable. There might be multiple dependent variable (e.g. time to complete the task, error rate etc) within one experiment, but there should normally be only one independent variable (this is applicable to only for simple experiments).

The failure to prove the null hypothesis provides evidence that there is a casual relationship between independent and dependent variable.

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[1] Card, S., Moran, T. and Newell, A. 1983: The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Begining of journey with ethical consideration

Now when i have some clear idea about the work that i will be doing for the next couple of months with my left time before getting graduated, I will be keeping this blog for my research based experience and findings based on the different evaluation.

It is always hard for me (and most of the others) to decide what exactly am going to do and specially complicated to understand what exactly what i want to do. For me one good place to start solving being in the situation is to convince myself to do something that is at least closely related to my perception about the work to be done. During this period, this will help me to regenerate the thoughts about what are the possibilities I have and my the skills that I lack during this period of my self assessment. Evaluating myself was another problem I face when experimenting with consent to settle somewhere so that I can start my real work. It might hit a point some time at the time-line that could actually help me to identify the actual goal or maybe other aspects of these topics.

To start with, the first thing that goes into my mind is my conscientiousness or responsibility in the direction of others. To make it clear, the word ‘others’ here mean anyone else except me (or sometimes even me)

Question: What are the different element of ethical considerations that I need to keep in mind when doing any part of my work that might relate to other?

There are different ways to learn about this matter, 3 elements presented by Brandford Et. all (2008) [1] can be potted as:

• Vulnerable Participants: vulnerable participants are very young, old aged people and infirm (sick) ones that might not be aware of what exactly is going on with the work they were involved in.

  • Sometimes student feel oblidged to participate

  • who feel unable to refuse to participate

  • might feel upset or threatened by some aspects of study

How to address this? making it clear that the system in question is being assessed but not them

• Informed consent: means that person agrees to take part knowing what they re into. It is important to ensure that all participants know the purpose of the study and what will be done with the data being collected during the study.

  • Data should be made anonymous (eg. use codes instead of names)

  • individual privacy and confidentiality must be respected

How to address this? Short information sheet can be prepared as permission form where participant point out that they are aware of what is expected and participating willingly and are free to leave at any time without any specified reason.

• Privacy, confidentiality and maintaining trust:

  • offer participants to talk about the experimentation after they have finished

  • this will make participants feel valued and can be a source of informal feedback leading to better experiment design next time or new ideas

[1] Blandford A. Adams, A. Attfield, S Buchman …. (2008), ‘PRET A reporter: Evaluating digital libraries along and in context’, Information Processing and Management