cognitive fatigue

A very interesting series of events have taken place that have simplified my research in some ways, but increased my workload greatly. I have found 1 grant, and thought of 2 experiments i can do as supplement to all the research for this senior project.

The grant is called theDigital Humanities Start-up Grant. It is the perfect grant for the project I would like to pursue. My idea is to produce a social network as a symposium for the digital communication of research and analysis. Now, from all the advice i have been given, i think that it would be best for me to pursue this grant for the advancement of Appalachian State University. The idea that i had i much more general than this, but perhaps i will develop this interface myself when i have the funding to do so.

One experiment i had in mind was to schedule an event and invite several professors from the university and have them discuss a topic in an open forum.(scholarly research online for example) The professors would then get online asynchronistically over a specified period of time, and basically make their arguments and counter arguments via an online forum. I would be observing the differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication in qualitative terms. The communication quality, quality of information given, and the evidence which is provided behind arguments (among other things) would be observed in both the live forum and the online forum. I talked to Jimmy Hunt of my senior seminar class about helping me put on this event as well. I thought that this experiment would work very well with senior students as well.

A second experiment involves posing a specific, complex question to a group of students, and instruct them to research the answers online and provide a synopsis of what they found. Observing the research that students found in both qualitative ways, I would like to see the answers from students, the resources they used, as well as their clicking processes. I would analyze the results based on the credibility of the resources the students used, the breadth of information, and the correctness of their answers.


LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK OF THESE EXPERIMENTS PEOPLE.