The best way to learn about scientific subjects

The best way of learning is when education happens all around the student but the student may not even be conscious of the learning process. Is sounds Utopian that students do not have to DO anything in order to learn. They just have to be there.

I think it is possible to teach science in a fun way without asking for too much effort. The band 'They Might Be Giants' do a great job by combining rock music with science lessons without being a smart-ass.

"They Might Be Giants is a band from New York City that was founded twenty somethin’ years back by John Linnell and John Flansburgh. Our current DVD/CD set (officially for kids but really for ourselves) is called “Here Comes Science”.

Some of my favorite videos/songs are:











P.S. Thanks to Otto who showed me this great band :)

Open Source (Free) Educational Software

As a big supporter of open source software, I was glad to find a list of several educational open source software for different topics collected by OpenDisc.

"The OpenEducationDisc focuses solely on meeting educational needs of students of all ages.  Software has been chosen to address specific IT needs across a wide range of subject areas.  The contents of the disc therefore differ from the OpenDisc and are listed below."

Office and Design

OpenOffice.org – Fully compatible office software for your school work
Dia – Make technical diagrams and flowcharts
Scribus – Create professional looking posters and magazines
GanttProject – Plan your school projects with this project management software
FreeMind – Collect your ideas with this mind mapping Software
Sumatra PDF – Read PDF files quickly and easily

Internet

Firefox – A safe, secure and fast web browser
Thunderbird – Manage your emails better than ever – Reclaim your inbox!
Pidgin – Talk to your friends whatever instant message client they use
Kompozer – Create web pages easily, without having to code

Art and Graphics

GIMP – Edit digital photos and create graphics
GIMP animation – Create animations
Inkscape – Make professional looking vector graphics
Pencil – Animate your own cartoons
Blender – 3D graphic modeling, animation, rendering and playback
Tuxpaint – Drawing program for children ages 3 to 12

Multimedia

VLC – Play music, videos and DVDs
Audacity – Record, edit and mix music
Mixxx – Mix your own music like a DJ
MuseScore – Compose your own music
Piano Booster – Teach yourself the piano
Infra Recorder – Burn your own CDs and DVDs
CamStudio – Record your actions on a computer
Really Slick Screensavers – Great looking screensavers

Science and Mathematics

Nasa Worldwind - Discover the earth and other planets
Geogebra - Learn geometry and algebra
Greenfoot – Teach yourself how to program
GraphCalc – A graphical calculator
BYOB – Learn how to program and make animations
CarMetal – Cool mathematical modelling tool
Maxima – University standard computer algebra system
Celestia – Explore the universe in three dimensions
Stellarium – A planetarium on your PC

Games

FreeCiv - Control the world through diplomacy and conquest
FreeCol – Discover the ‘New World’ and build an empire
Numpty Physics – Solve puzzles using physics
TuxTyping 2 – Learn to type like a pro
Tux of Math Command – Test your mathematical skills

Utilities

7zip – Compress and uncompress files in a wide variety of formats
Abakt - Schedule and execute backups of your data
Clamwin – Antivirus software with automatic updating
TrueCrypt – Encrypt and secure your valuable data
Workrave – Prevent and recover from Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)

Science can be fun!

Yes, indeed! Science lessons can be fun particularly with regard to great teachers who explain math, biology, chemistry, etc. in a comprehensible way. Unfortunately, this is sometimes not the case...

But there is help - students can visit the Khan Academy, which is "a not-for-profit website with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere". In their words: "We are complementing Salman's ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World."

They provide 1800+ videos of different topics, such as math, science, humanities, test prep, etc.

What are the trends in e-learning?

While I was wondering about the right topic of my master thesis, I was thinking of technologies that might have the biggest impact on e-learning in the future. That means, that I don’t want to write about Second Life or other new media that didn’t revolutionize learning in the last years. Even though the number of users is increasing, I honestly don’t see a big future of Second Life for educational purposes. I am more interested in new fields of e-learning that will change the ways of teaching and learning.

After some Internet research, I found the following trends for e-learning technology:

Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest (Carabaneanu et al.)

• Mobile technologies: In the future learning solutions and services will be integrated into mobile technologies as mobile phones, PDAs, digital pen and paper, and in the long term, mobile devices that are not yet on the market. In the long term, learning solutions and services are also likely to be integrated into electronic appliances, machines and information interfaces.
• Simulations in e-learning process : For a number of years, simulations have played an important role in the training activities of certain sectors, like the defense, aviation and aeronautical industries in several countries. They were not adopted until now on a large scale as learning tools due to some factors like the cost of development and the lack of tools for developing high-quality simulations. These days we are in a different situation and simulations are being adopted in other industries and for a broad range of skills and competence development. Technology and cost barriers are continuing to shrink, opening up the potential for wider adoption of simulation technology.
• Adaptive learning environments (ALEs) : In the recent years there is an increasingly heightened awareness of the potential benefits of adaptivity in e-learning. This is happening because the ideal of individualized learning (i.e., learning suited to the specific requirements and preferences of the individual) cannot be achieved, especially at a “massive” scale, using traditional approaches. Factors that further contribute in this direction include: the diversity in the “target” population participating in learning activities (intensified by the gradual attainment of life-long learning practices); the diversity in the access media and modalities that one can effectively utilize today in order to access, manipulate, or collaborate on, educational content or learning activities, alongside with a diversity in the context of use of such technologies. A learning environment is considered adaptive if it is capable of: monitoring the activities of its users; interpreting these on the basis of domain-specific models; inferring user requirements and preferences out of the interpreted activities, appropriately representing these in associated models; and, finally, acting upon the available knowledge on its users and the subject matter at hand, to dynamically facilitate the learning process.
• Open source e-learning tools : Most of these products have extensive developer communities and present strong arguments for considering open source applications like an alternative to commercial products. Some of the criteria that are in favor of making a decision regarding an Open Source software applications are related to cost savings, stability, performance and access to code. On the other hand, for ensuring that users in the near future as well as the longer term have access to the best available applications, these Open Source software applications should be built on open standards.
• Standards development : Standard development is meant to knit together disparate groups and interests in the distributed learning community. It is intended to coordinate emerging technologies and capabilities with commercial/public implementations.

 Dr. Amy Finn, Chief Learning Officer, Centra Software

• Blended Learning: An emerging trend in e-learning involves blended learning programs, designed to integrate e-learning with traditional training methods to increase overall effectiveness. No longer is one delivery method alone sufficient to handle enterprise-wide training needs. The construction of true blended learning programs moves learning itself into a new age.
• The disappearing Learning Management Systems (LMS): A few years ago organizations looked to LMS to solve their business problems. The LMS strategy was a reasonable one, but one that involved a corporate commitment in time, cost, resources, and energy that few organizations could afford or be successful at. Learning Management Systems were said to be able to “do it all” for the internal workings of an organization. The fact is that no one product can do it all, and it is not reasonable to assume one would be able to do so.

Gartner Group & the University of Pennsylvania

• Serious gaming: Human beings love to learn through experience. Many e-learning providers have discovered that they can use video game technology to develop fun, engaging, effective simulations. Industrial employers can train workers to handle sophisticated tasks without risking injury or production quality. Other types of teams can grow skills and learn best practices by participating in simulated quiz shows or treasure hunts. Fun e-learning programs help boost staff morale while reducing the time it takes for team members to integrate new skills and ideas.

To this list of e-learning trends, I would like to add Augmented Realities. “Augmented Reality (AR) has a distinction from what we commonly know as Virtual Reality (VR). The primary and basic distinction is that VR relies and depends upon an environment created and manipulated within the context of a virtual environment. AR allows users to manipulate and retrieve information within the real world environment. AR allows individuals (i.e. students) to experience the realness of something without harmful consequences of their actions.” But what does AR mean for education? “Through exploration AR abides by the primary tenets of constructivist learning theory. Students are able to manipulate their environment with the use of technology to derive at an understanding, while acquiring knowledge. The difference is that in AR there are not any consequences for their actions as there would be in a behaviorist learning environment.”

In my opinion, Mobile Learning and the use of open source software have the biggest potential to be the way to learn and teach in the future simply because of cost effectiveness and usability. A huge amount of students own a mobile with Internet access. That means, that they carry around a tool that offers plenty of learning possibilities wherever they are. So why not using it for education? On the other hand, open source software is not only cheaper (it’s free), it also gives student the opportunities to learn about alternative software and get engaged with computer science. I just read that some countries, e.g. Germany, are facing problems because of the lack of computer science and other graduate engineers. So why not supporting the use of open source software to improve for example programming skills?

E-readers and e-books for education

Firstly, I need to say that I love to read and I love technology. So isn’t an e-reader the perfect combination of both? Isn’t it the perfect compromise between the small screen of an iPhone or iPod Touch and the chunky format of a regular book? In my opinion, yes! I believe that in the future the e-reader will be as popular as the MP3-player nowadays. However, I don’t believe that books will be someday completely replaced by e-books. There will be always nostalgic people who like to listen to their vinyl records, prefer their Walkman with self-recorded audiotapes or play video games on an Atari game console. But that is not the point. I think that we need to reconsider the linear reading of textbooks and to look forward to interactive (digital) books that include video and audio files, interactive diagrams or charts, etc. E-readers or e-book devices can offer this, especially in an educational context. We must understand that students read a textbook differently from how they read novels or nonfiction books. Most students, no matter which age they are, skim through the chapters, look at the graphics, charts, diagrams and sometimes they don’t even read the pure text. So in short, students don’t read textbooks linear. That means that we definitely need to find new ways to present educational content to the students. Luckily, a few companies made an effort to change textbooks into bite-sized, illustrated, interactive pieces of media.

Examples of educational iPad applications

For example ‘Inkling’ by Matt MacInnis. This is an iPad application that allows readers to jump into any chapter, to make notes while you are reading, to share your notes with other people, to highlight text, etc. In their words: “Inkling brings the world’s best content to iPad with interactivity, social collaboration and simple ease-of-use. No more heavy, expensive textbooks to carry around campus. Inkling textbooks are more interactive, more flexible and cheaper.”. Inkling titles are indeed less expensive than the paper versions, because you are able to buy them by the chapter. Moreover, the list of titles continues to grow every semester. But the problem is that it is unclear how many books are available until now. That means, that it will still take time to have a large library of e-books to choose from. Though, it is a step to the right direction.

Another iPad application which could work as a trendsetter for other book authors is ‘The Elements’ by Theodore Gray. Gray made an interactive e-book (video) which is a real must have if you are in any way intrigued by chemistry and the way our planet and the universe is made. It is a graphically pretty table of the elements, telling you virtually all you need to know about different elements like Helium, Oxygen and others; such as those without a final name yet. Another plus is, that it directly links to Wolfram Alpha – another must for people who are interested in science. Unfortunately, this app is quite pricey for students (still cheaper than the paper version) and it takes 2 GB of the iPad storage.

The last iPad application that I can recommend is ‘3D Brain’ by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. This app shows you “how each brain region functions, what happens when it is injured, and how it is involved in mental illness. Each detailed structure comes with information on functions, disorders, brain damage, case studies, and links to modern research”. I really like the structure of this app, because it is classified into the different parts of the brain and not into different chapters, as you can find in every book. This structure is more intuitive than the normal chapter structure which is sometimes not logically. And everything for free.

 
Examples of e-readers

Until now I only gave examples for the iPad but there are more e-readers to use in education. One recently announced tablet is Kno, which is specifically designed for students.

 

Kno’s mission is to create not only hardware, but also software for students that will allow them to read textbooks, take notes and perform other tasks. In their words: “Kno, is the digital textbook of tomorrow: a transformative single and dual-screen e-reader that artfully blends the intuitive experience of the conventional textbook with a rich digital world of video, note-taking, sharing and more.”

 

The software system is expected to work not only on Kno’s tablets, but also on PCs, iPads and other devices. So they hope to do something similar than the iPad but without the distracting entertainment applications and with software that enables the student to interact with the textbook. Unfortunately, the makers of Kno haven’t said when exactly the tablet will hit the market and how much it will cost. The company plans to ship the tablet by the end of the year and the dual-screen version was expected to cost “under a $1000.” And here starts the problem with this e-reader. At first, I was kind of amazed that a company makes devices that targeted exclusively students. But which student or parent can afford an e-reader for, let’s say $800? So seriously, who pays $800 for a device on which you can only read textbooks, make notes and so on; this price even doesn’t include the costs of the textbooks? It would be even cheaper to buy a Kindle, an iPad and a textbook together ($500 iPad + $139 Kindle + $100 textbook = $739). That doesn’t sound like a student-friendly e-reader. This is just cupidity for money.

Conclusion

The conclusion of this blog post is, that e-readers and e-books can offer an interesting educational contribution because the interactivity of these devices can support the different learning styles of students. But as long as the price of an e-reader won’t drop, a lot of students, parents and educational institutions will hesitate to buy such devices. Technology and the knowledge about it is not a problem. It is nowadays possible to build tablets for interactive textbooks. The real struggle is to make textbooks interactive. I mean ‘rich textbooks’ not just e-books; digital books with packaged content like videos, quizzes, and other interactive content. It would be even better, if we can build a standard format like PDF or MP3 that could work on every e-reader, no matter of the brand. But this is not the case, e-readers are expensive devices that need their own software and their own book formats. And this is simply not affordable for educational institutions or students. Unfortunately!

Recommended references

Info-graphic about Apple in education

A place to ask questions about using the iPad in education

Handbook for media literacy

This blog post is for the dutch readers.

Stichting Kind Online - het Kenniscentrum Jeugd en Media heeft een handboek gepubliceerd over mediawijsheid op school. Het is een praktische gids en inspiratie voor het onderwijs.

"Scholen hebben de opdracht gekregen leerlingen mediawijs te maken. De uitvoering van deze opdracht wordt helemaal aan het onderwijs zelf gelaten. Maar hoe doe je dat? Er zijn nog geen duidelijke leerlijnen, er is weinig theorie over mediawijsheid in het onderwijs en bestaand lesmateriaal is vaak lastig te vinden. Nog afgezien van het feit dat docenten zich niet vaardig genoeg voelen om zichzelf te zien als docent mediawijsheid.

Kortom: wil het onderwijs aan de slag kunnen met de implementatie van lessen in mediawijsheid, dan zijn er concrete handvatten nodig.

Het Handboek Mediawijsheid op School biedt die concrete handvatten. Om te beginnen voor het vormen van een visie: we onderzoeken wat het betekent om mediawijs te zijn en komen uit bij de stelling dat het mediawijs maken van leerlingen deel uitmaakt van hun burgerschapsvorming."


Het boek is op de website gratis te downloaden.

The coolest way to learn the alphabet

A-Z of tiny blips & short clips by Daniele Manoli

26 short videos, one for each letter of the Alphabet.

My favorites:

A for analog

A from Daniele Manoli on Vimeo.

E is for electrifying

E from Daniele Manoli on Vimeo.

L is for luminous

L from Daniele Manoli on Vimeo.

Microblogging = Micro-education?

 Since the beginning of the Twitter hype, I was wondering what the value of Twitter is. Can we possibly learn anything from or through microblogging? Is it useful for companies to encourage lifelong learning? Or can schools and other institutions improve their education with microblogging? Until now I haven’t found an answer for these questions and until now I still refuse to read or even post Twitter messages. However, I am aware of the fact that many people strongly disagree. For example Alan A. Lew loves Twitter and presents some items related to Twitter and education. Another example is Harry G. Tuttle who believes that much can be said in few characters but he also points out that the value of a Twitter message is up to the writer. Carol Cooper-Taylor shows 50 ideas on using Twitter for education, David Parry wrote down an astonishing amount of ways to use Twitter in Academia and Megan Jones collected 25 Twitter tips for college students. So maybe I should rethink my qualms about microblogging. I will do so with a short analysis of microblogging applications in the beginning and with a scientific analysis of recent research articles in the end.

1. What is microblogging?

Twitter and other popular microblogging applications including friendfeed, Jaiku, Plurk, Yammer, Tumblr, but also the status updates embedded within sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and so on lets users share brief blasts of information – usually less than 200 characters – to friends and followers from multiple sources including websites, third-party applications or mobile devices (DeVoe, 2009). For example Twitter, has seen tremendous participation growth in the last years (DeVoe, 2009); in a 1-year span (08/2009 – 08/2010), Twitter has reached more than 28,6 million unique visitors and more than 232,9 million visits in August 2010. But how are these people using the platform? One of the first scientific studies points out that microblogging facilities can be used in three ways: information sharing, information seeking, and friendship-wide relationships (Java, Song, Finin, & Tseng, 2007).

2. What are the possibilities of using microblogging in educational contexts?

The possibilities offered by Twitter or other microblogging applications, represent creative additions and alternatives to a frontal lecture and are often taken as a positive change by students. A common motive of teachers to use these new kinds of web 2.0 applications is to increase the motivation of students and staff with the new resources (Hisserich &Primsch, 2010). “As a tool for students or professional colleagues to compare thoughts about a topic, Twitter can be a viable platform for metacognition, forcing users to be brief and to the point – an important skill in thinking clearly and communicating effectively”. Thus, microblogging can be seen as a simple and speedy reference system for publications, documents, blogs and Internet resources, and not only referrals but also descriptive context are included. For example, by sending relevant links, dynamic link collections can occur which can be used in courses as a digital reader (Hisserich & Primsch, 2010). As a result of Hisserisch’ and Primsch’ research, Twitter seems to be a good complement to existing means of communication in university teaching, through which the networking of students with each other, students and a lecturer or practice partner and also to network with students and experts outside the seminar context in a public science communication can be supported (2010). Therefore they collected the most important conditions and elements for the effective integration and use of Twitter in an academic context (in German: http://www.community-of-knowledge.de/beitrag/wissensmanagement-in-140-zeichen/).

Other researchers also support the theory that microblogging can be an effective learning tool. Ebner et al. (2010) see the potential of microblogging especially for informal learning and process-oriented learning. Their research showed that microblogging is used for project-oriented communication as well as for private informal communication. Ebner et al. (2010) see the relevance of informal learning as an easy exchange, in addition to formal communication, which supports social interactions in group work. In this way the opportunity for informal communication and the use of the tool according to individual needs is considered an important factor for the acceptance of microblogging in formal education (Ebner et al., 2010). They also stress out that essential to student motivation is also the (rapid) feedback of other students or teachers and the connection between formal learning in lectures and informal learning in practice (transfer of knowledge). Secondly, microblogging supports process-oriented learning by a constant information flow between students and between students and teachers. This learning process is supported because posted thoughts and ‘‘information pieces” make it possible for users to participate with others in their thinking and in addition, initially discarded thoughts can be picked up and developed by others. Thus the students’ learning and working process becomes more transparent and the teacher can intervene ad hoc and correct the direction of learning (Ebner et al., 2010). So the results of this study is that microblogging supports:

• Informal learning through informal communication,
• Support of collaboration,
• Feedback on thoughts,
• Suggestions to reflect one’s own thoughts,
• Collaboration independent of time and place,
• Direct examination of thoughts and causes of learning,
• For teachers the following factors are crucial,
• Current information on the status of learning,
• Possibility to steer the intervention in the learning process of individuals and groups,
• Possibility for immediate, direct feedback,
• Facilitation of student group work and
• Getting an impression of the learning climate (Ebner et al., 2010).

An example of a microblogging platform specially designed for education and business, is Cirip.eu. This platform was launched in March 2008 under the coordination of Carmen Holotescu. Moreover, it has many educational uses for information and knowledge management, for courses enhancement, for delivering entire online courses, for collaborative projects in universities, for communities of practice, or for eportfolios (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2010). The same authors developed and moderated during June 2008 an online course in Cirip.ro. In their opinion “microblogging, and especially Cirip.ro, proved to be an effective tool for professional development and for collaboration with students, that can change the rules of the courses and models good pedagogy responsive to student’s learning needs. Furthermore, as a social networking / microblogging platform, Cirip.ro provides valuable interactions in educational context, acting as a social factor in a course management system” (Grosseck & Holotescu, 2009).

As a conclusion I can say that microblogging provides features that could be considered as helpful for education. Though, I think that there are better ways and applications to support learning. So I totally agree with Galagan (2009), who wrote that: “micro-blogging is only one kind of social media tool with the potential to support learning. Those that offer collaborative file sharing, mindmapping, writing, and editing capabilities can support more complex collaborative learning than Twitter. But for the moment, nothing else is as immediate or growing as fast. As Milstein points out, microblogging is taking off because it fits how people work and think.” Am I a fan of Twitter or other microblogging applications now? No, still I am not convinced but I do see the point that many people try to make and I understand their approach to microblogging.

References:

DeVoe, K.M. (2009). Bursts of information: Microblogging. The Reference Librarian, 50(2009), 212–214. DOI: 10.1080/02763870902762086.

Ebner, M., Lienhardt, C., Rohs, M., & Meyer, I. (2010). Microblogs in higher education – A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning? Computers & Education, 55(2010), 92–100. DOI:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.12.006.

Galagan, P. (2009). Twitter As a Learning Tool. Really.

Grosseck, G. & Holotescu, C. (2009). Using microblogging to deliver online courses. Case-study: Cirip.ro. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1(2009), 495–501. DOI:10.1016/j.sbspro.2009.01.090.

Grosseck, G. & Holotescu, C. (2010). Microblogging multimedia-based teaching methods best practices with Cirip.eu. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2010), 2151–2155. DOI:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.03.297.

Hisserich, J. & Primsch, J. (2010). Wissensmanagement in 140 Zeichen.

Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T., & Tseng, B. (2007). Why we twitter: Understanding micro-blogging usage and communities. Paper presented at the proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 workshop on web mining and social network analysis.

 Recommended references:

Conner, M. (2009). Twitter 101: Are You Tweeting?

Ferriter, M. (2010). Why Teachers Should Try Twitter.

Grosseck, G. (2009). To use or not to use web 2.0 in higher education? Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1(2009), 478–482.

1 of 1.129.725 German Wikipedia articles

 Since Monday the 27th September I am a new Wikipedia author and I must admit that I like it. I can’t name reasons why I didn’t try it before but now I know that I don’t want to stop contributing to Wikipedia anymore. So you will very likely read more articles in the future which were written or changed by me. I just hope that my wave of enthusiasm won’t end to early – which happened to all social network websites like Facebook or Studi VZ and ended with the deletion of my profile…

My first plan was to write an article about my hometown Magdeburg for the Dutch Wikipedia. Living in this city for almost 19 years, means that I can call myself an expert on this subject. I recognized on the Dutch Wikipedia that there was an article missing about the art museum where my mother works. So I thought writing an article about this museum would be an easy job. But due to my imperfections of the Dutch language I decided wisely to contribute to the German Wikipedia instead. The result of this decision was an article about the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam. I didn’t write about this botanical garden because I am very interested in flowers. Not at all! I just wrote about it because it was one of the few missing article about Amsterdam in the German Wikipedia. And being a new ‘Amsterdammer’, I felt the duty to complete the subject and teach the German readers something about my favorite city. So I started researching about the Hortus Botanicus and luckily found some suitable information on the Hortus Botanicus website and on the Dutch Wikipedia. I wrote a short article and I was planning to take photos of the garden to add it to my article. To my surprise, someone did this one day later. People even started to improve the article day by day by changing the design and adding some facts. To be honest, I was really astonished and amazed how quickly people added things to ‘my’ article. Why astonished? Simply because of the huge amount of articles in the German Wikipedia. The German Wikipedia is the second biggest one with 1.129.725 articles (03-10-2010, 12:00:37) and this amount is still increasing. So in conclusion I can say that my first Wikipedia experience was without any problems and inspiring – inspiring for others to share their knowledge and inspiring for me to continue writing Wikipedia articles.

The Internet – a ’seductive data set’ accessed at the touch of a button

 The rapid expansion of internet uptake throughout the world created a potential for new social experiences, and thus offers researchers new environments for their social enquiry (Beddows, 2008). Kaye and Johnson predicted already in 1999 that the World Wide Web and other new electronic technologies might soon become prime survey vehicles due to convenient, verifiable, low-cost delivery and return systems as well as easy access and feedback mechanisms. Indeed, nowadays more and more researchers use the Internet for their research. The Internet became especially interesting for social science researchers because of two main capabilities. The first category has to do with the ability to search and retrieve data from large data stores (Jones, 1999). The Internet and constructs like the World Wide Web offer quickly a huge amount of data that can be used for data analysis. The second category is the interactive communication capability of the Internet. E-mail, chat rooms, etc. are all forms of text-based communication with variations in time, distance, and audience (Jones, 1999). In effect, the Internet provides the research community with the chance to interface with respondents in ways which may overcome some of the barriers imposed by conventional research approaches (Illingworth, 2001).

The advantages of Internet research over lab research with the undergraduate ‘subject pool’ are as follows: “On the Web one can achieve large samples, making statistical tests very powerful and model fitting very clean. With clean data the “signal” of systematic deviations can be easily distinguished from “noise.” Second, Web studies permit generalization from college students to a wider variety of participants. Third, one can recruit specialized types of participants via the WWW that would be quite rare to find among students.” (Birnbaum, 2004). In conclusion we can say that because of the Internet’s exponential growth, its impact on traditional means of communication, its dynamic nature, and its potential for reaching large and diverse segments of the population, it has gained interest from academia and industry researchers. However, along with the benefits of this new technology come new experiences and lessons to be learned and shared by researchers (Kaye & Johnson, 1999).
So thinking about the advantages of online research, we should also consider the several potential problems and disadvantages of studies conducted via the Internet. For example in lab research it is (almost) not possible for a participant to serve twice in an experiment and thus reduce the effective degrees of freedom. However, in Internet research, the possibility of multiple submissions has received considerable attention (Birnbaum, 2004). The following table will summarize possible methods that prevent the problem of multiple submission (Birnbaum, 2004):

Method – Tactic

• Instructions – Tell people to participate only once
• Remove incentives – Rewards not available for those who participate more than once
• Replace incentive – Provide alternative site for repeated play
• Use identifiers – Common gateway interface (CGI) script allows only one submission; option: replace previous data or refusal to accept new
• Use identifiers – Filter data to remove repeats
• Use Internet protocol (IP), email address – Check for repeated IP addresses
• Passwords – Allow participation by password only
• Cookies – Check cookie for previous participation
• CGI scripts – CGI checks for referring page and other features
• Log file analysis – Can detect patterns of requests
• Subsample follow up – Contact participants to verify ID
• Check for identical data records – Filter identical or nearly identical records

Another threat to internal validity of a between-subjects experiment occurs when there are dropouts, i.e. people who begin a study and quit before completing it (Birnbaum, 2004). Internet research shows unfortunately larger dropout rates than lab studies. The reason for this problem is that other people are present in the lab, so a person needs to explain why he/she wants to leave early. In contrast to Internet research, participants can easily click a button to quit the study without the possible social pressure or embarrassment in a lab (Birnbaum, 2004). Unluckily, there is no method to prevent dropouts in Internet research.

Besides these two disadvantages, there are even more problems that come along with social media. These problems are: security, privacy, intellectual property and credibility. I won’t discuss these problems in detail because there has been a lot of debates about the blurring of public and private experience (Beddows, 2008) and other issues. However, I want to point out that only a few researchers actually have tested empirically the quality of data collected on the Internet. Gosling et al. (2004) evaluated six main preconceptions that have been raised as likely limitations of Internet questionnaires. In the following table you can see the six preconceptions and the actual findings from the comparative analyzes of traditional and Internet methods (Gosling et al., 2004).

Preconception – Finding

1. Internet samples are not demographically diverse – Mixed. Internet samples are more diverse than traditional samples in many domains (e.g., gender), though they are not completely representative of the population.
2. Internet samples are maladjusted, socially isolated, or depressed – Myth. Internet users do not differ from nonusers on markers of adjustment and depression.
3. Internet data do not generalize across presentation formats – Myth. Internet findings replicated across two presentation formats of the Big Five Inventory.
4. Internet participants are unmotivated – Myth. Internet methods provide means for motivating participants (e.g., feedback).
5. Internet data are compromised by anonymity of participants – Fact. However, Internet researchers can take steps to eliminate repeat responders.
6. Internet-based findings differ from those obtained with other methods – Myth? Evidence so far suggests that Internet-based findings are consistent with findings based on traditional methods (e.g., on self-esteem, personality), but more data are needed.

In conclusion Gosling et al. (2004) stress that “Internet samples are certainly not representative or even random samples of the general population, but neither are traditional samples in psychology. In short, the data collected from Internet methods are not as flawed as is commonly believed”.
After showing the dis-/advantages, I would like to present a few techniques and recommendations for the use of the Internet as a research tool. The easiest way to get started with Internet research is probably to make a survey or experiment using one of the free programs to create the webpage (Birnbaum, 2004). Examples of these programs are: SurveyMonkey, SurveyWiz, FactorWiz, Free Online Surveys, QuestionPro, SurveyPirate. To build a useful survey or experiment, you should keep these recommendations in mind following Kaye and Johnson (1999):

Web Survey Design Considerations:

• The survey should be as short as possible for quick completion and to minimize excessive scrolling.
• Simple designs with sparse use of graphics save downloading time.
• Drop-down boxes save space and clutter by avoiding repeating responses.
• Instructions should be clearly stated.
• Responding to questions should be easy and intuitive.
• Pretests should be conducted to measure length of time and ease of completion.
• A check of the survey using different browsers will uncover any browser-based design flaws.

Sampling:

• To increase representativeness, define samples as subsets of Web users based on specific characteristics.
• Solicit respondents by linking the survey from key online sites and by posting announcements to discussion-type groups that are likely to be used by the targeted population. Or, select a sampling frame from e-mail addresses posted on key Usenet newsgroups, listservs, and chat forums. E-mail the selected sample a request to complete the questionnaire along with an identification number and password required for accessing the Web-based survey.
• The World Wide Web is truly worldwide, and individuals from any country can complete a questionnaire. Thus, clearly state the intended audience of respondents in the survey’s introduction.

Publicity:

• Devise a method to systematically publicize the survey daily through various means. In other words, do not spam a few discussion groups while ignoring others. To reduce bias, create awareness from a wide variety of Internet outlets.
• List the survey with as many of the major search engines as possible. Web sites such as ‘Submit It’ facilitate this process by sending listings to many search engines with just one entry. After listing the survey, try locating it by using different search strategies and terms.
• When sending announcements about the survey, write the entire URL in the message. In Usenet newsgroup postings and in some e-mail transmissions, the URL becomes a clickable link.
• Take care not to get flamed. Do not oversell the survey; just announce it.
• Follow up confirmations of survey links to gauge how long the URL is posted and whether it is visible on the page. Remember that if it is difficult for the researchers to find the survey’s URL, then others probably will overlook it as well.
• Asking respondents how they found out about the survey is an excellent way in which to gauge the most effective sites and discussion outlets.
• Placing banner advertisements on selected sites might increase the number of completions.
• Offer incentives for completing the survey. The incentives can be as simple as promising the respondents the results or as alluring as GVU’s lottery system (which rewards winning respondents with cash). The types of incentives offered clearly depend on the researchers’ budgets.
• A combination of financial incentives, online and traditional advertising, and public relations and marketing efforts might be needed.

Data collection and responses:

• Ask for respondents’ e-mail addresses to check for duplication. If the e-mail addresses are not given, then keep track of the senders’ Internet protocol addresses.
• Surveys should be easy to return with just the click of a mouse button. A thank you or other type of verification page should come up on the sender’s screen on returning the survey so that the respondent is not left wondering whether the survey was indeed transmitted.
• When the survey returns as an e-mail message, it should be designed so that it returns with each question listed on one line followed by its response and a corresponding numerical value. This makes it easy for researchers to eye the data and facilitates coding the surveys and entering them into a statistical software program.

References:

Beddows, E. (2008). The methodological issues associated with Internet-based research. International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society, 6(2), 124-139.

Birnbaum, M.H., (2004). Human research and data collection via the Internet. Annual Review of Psychology, 2004(55), 803–832. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141601.

Gosling, S.D., Vazire, S., Srivastava, S., & John, O.P. (2004). Should we trust web-based studies?
A comparative analysis of six preconceptions about Internet questionnaires. American Psychologist, 59(2), 93-104. DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.59.2.93.

Illingworth, N. (2001). The Internet matters: Exploring the use of the Internet as a research tool. Sociological Research Online, 6(2), http://www.socresonline.org.uk/6/2/illingworth.html.
Jones, S. (1999). Doing Internet research: Critical issues and methods for examining the Net. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publications.

Kaye, B.K. & Johnson, T.J. (1999). Research methodology: Taming the cyber frontier : Techniques for improving online surveys. Social Science Computer Review, 1999(17), 323-337. DOI: 10.1177/089443939901700307