Studying studying academic life as the subject of commercial research

Alan Dix

Talis, Birmingham, UK
HCI Centre, University of Birmingham, UK

Paper presented as part of CHI Remix track, CHI'17 May 06-11, 2017, Denver, CO, USA

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This paper offers a personal view on the interplay between the multiple roles of academic and commercial researcher and classroom teacher.   A series of vignettes expose a variety of lessons.  Some of the vignettes are about the way that being an educator of humancomputer interaction has informed my practice as an academic researcher about HCI.  Some are about the different ethical expectations when using educational practice as part of commercial research as opposed to academic research.  We also see how the inside knowledge of being a practitioner researcher offers unique insights into rich data and how product orientation can expose gaps in research, surprisingly not so different from the way that teaching students does: with neither developers nor students can you hide fuzzy thinking behind long words!  While there are conflicts that need to be carefully managed, both academic and commercial research have powerful synergies with educational practice.

Keywords: educational technology, research ethics, learning analytics, academic life.

 

Studying studying – academic life as the subject of commercial research from Alan Dix

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http://www.hcibook.com/alan/papers/chi2017-remix-studying/

Alan Dix 10/1/2017