Posts made in August, 2019

There are so many things to take in to consideration when dealing with copyright: your audience, the amount of the original work you wish to use, your intended use and so many other things. One lesson learned is that you should never assume that just because someone shared something with you that it means you have their permission to use it, even if you cite it properly. You should always clearly ask permission to use any work [unless you are 100% sure permission is not needed as in the case of work done by someone who died 70 or more years ago (in some areas it is 50 years after the end of the year in which the author died) ]. Melanie Wrobel did a great job explaining the many aspects of copyright law and I will put this  knowledge to use moving forward.

Reference

Wrobel, M. (2016). A Guide to Copyright [Audio recording]. Retrieved from https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/page/view.php?id=347413

I found Dr. Veletsianos’ advice quite valuable. He warned against narrowing our research too much on specific technology. He used the example of FaceBook (FB), stating that when FB eventually fades away, the research would become irrelevant. He suggested instead on focusing more broadly on technology in general where FB could be one example. He specifically suggested the topic of Diversity of Thought and how technology could be used to expand the number of opinions beyond that of only the students in the room. This advice will help me to think more broadly when choosing a research topic in the future.

In one of his most recent podcasts he discussed the use of Twitter and mentioned that many it was “researcher friendly” due to the fact that more user data is available; for example, the date of tweet and the location where the user was when they tweeted. He also warned that this could cause bias when choosing a platform and that we, as new researchers, should keep things like that in mind when we read articles and when conducting our own research.

I appreciate being reminded to always read research articles (and any other kind of research) with a critical eye. At first I found myself accepting every word in every article as 100% ‘correct’ but I need to remember to think beyond the words and critically analyze the source of all the information and any possible bias present.

Reference:

Veletsianos, G. (2019) Answering Questions on Research [Audio recording] Retrieved from https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/page/view.php?id=347414