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,