Busy with RJ application

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I'm busy busy busy at the moment, writing towards the Wednesday deadline for research applications to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ). While the 9600 character limit (i.e. just a few pages of text) can seem cushy, it might in fact be just the other way around - it is difficult to comprehensively outline a three-year long research project in just a few pages, non-withstanding the fact that you have to think through and plan a large part of the project just in order to be able to write (commit yourself to) something particular. Applications that make it through the first stage should be extended (32 000 characters) and re-submittet later. There is definitely room for improvement at RJ's webpage - how difficult should it be to find out the deadline for the second stage?

I'll get back next week (after the deadline) with a blog post that isn't about the application process, but rather about the application!

Added later: here are two blog posts about the RJ applications I wrote; "Cities of sharing" and "Networking through crises".

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Do note that I have added two academic blogs that I read to the (short) list of related blogs that I recommend (below right). The first is my colleague Jorge Zapico's blog Sustainable Internet. My only complaint is that he writes erratically (only 10 blog posts during the last 12 months). He reads my blog and I know he will see this complaint (hi Jorge!).

The second is Mathias Klang's blog Sound & Fury. I found his blog through him reading this blog (I don't know how he found his way here). Recently I especially liked his blog post about "The Seven Deadly Sins of Academia" (Falsification, Plagiarism, Sabotage, Exaggeration, Procrastination, Territoriality, Techno-Adoration).

The third blog on my short list (as of earlier) is Jörgen Skågeby's blog Gifting Technologies. The blog was very active last spring, but only a single blog post has been published since then. Jörgen, I'm sure you've written, or read, or attended, or done something interesting since then!

Do you read any (academic) blog that would be relevant in this context and that you can recommend? Please comment below!

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Bachelor's thesis season has started

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Spring is bachelor's thesis season at our department. This year I will be the advisor of one group of students (around 4 thesis projects, almost always with students working in pairs). I will also be the examiner of approximately a third of this year's crop of theses - and the number of students is huge, with more than 70 students lined up and ready to dig in.

The course starts with a series of lectures and seminars (pairing up, reading literature about writing academic reports and about methods and theories, examples of theses being discussed, sessions for generating or refining ideas, writing up thesis specifications etc.). I just finished my part which consisted of two lectures and one seminar (times five seminar groups). During the following weeks, students and thesis topics will be matched up with advisors and groups will be formed. I will get to meet "my" students (don't know who yet) for the first time around two weeks from now.

I do have to say that the students really take this course seriously and in general seem to be very well prepared this year. Most chose the partner they will work with already before the Christmas break and many have also thought some/a lot about what they will write about. Based on the students' attitudes and preparations, I definitely have a good feeling about the theses that will be produced this year.

The bachelor's thesis is (naturally) one of, or the largest project our third-year students have undertaken up until this point in their education. I assume it is the longest and most "serious" text most of them will have written up until this point in their lives. Writing an academic report doesn't come naturally, so even students who are generally good at writing haven't written anything in this specific genre - and so there is much to learn also for them. Finally, it is also most probably the one project this far where they have the largest amount of freedom (and responsibility) to choose what to do and how to plan their time. I again emphasize that it to me feels like the vast majority of students have already understood this and at this (early) point in time have already shouldered the responsibility for their projects.

This is the third time we have students who write their bachelor's thesis and the course and the students' attitude only seems to get better every year. This is what I wrote about last year's course after it ended.

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Increasing the quality of education/dig where you stand

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My school (School of Computer Science and Communication) has some extra money (500 000 SEK, long story) and decided to use it to set up a fund for pedagogical development and for supporting practical projects with the potential to increase the quality of education. An application to this fund can't be tied to a specific course, but should rather be more generally useful, i.e. of benefit to the school, to an educational program, to a specific type (class) of courses etc.

The deadline for applications was Wednesday this past week. There was a list of criteria for how the applications would be evaluated, most of it copied from a similar long-time project at Uppsala University (with applications available online for review). I handed in two applications. Already Friday I knew that not that many applications had been handed in. In fact, if all the money that all teachers applied for was added up, that sum would not exceed the money available by a huge amount (but there were a few applications where the applicant had not specified the amount of money asked for - which makes this calculation slightly more complicated). All in all, almost all applicants can get almost all the money they asked for though. Altogether this sounds very promising, but I won't unfortunately get to know if I will get any funds until sometime in March (the projects are supposed to run during the next academic year).

Unfortunately, I'm already having second thoughts. If I apply for money for a project that will pay for, say, 80 hours of my time, I have a distinct feeling that it is very easy to promise (a lot) more in an application than what can be accomplished in the 80 hours that will be financed. That is, if I get the money I have asked for, I think I might just have created more work for myself. On the other hand, these are self-defined projects, i.e. stuff I really would like to do, and that is naturally very motivating and gratifying.

Below are (parts of the applications for) my two projects. I've shortened, edited and pasted text from the applications and beyond the title, you'll have to excuse me for not translating the running text into English (anyone truly interested can get in touch with me!).

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Supporting students' studying habits in the age of procrastination

Applicants: Daniel Pargman and Björn Hedin (CSC/Media technology)

Bakgrund: På civilingenjörsprogrammet i medieteknik finns en ”programintegrerande kurs” som är obligatorisk för alla studenter i årskurs 1-3. Sökande Daniel Pargman är ansvarig för kursen, medsökande Björn Hedin har tidigare varit ansvarig för kursen och båda har varit involverade i att utforma årets tema. För studenter i årskurserna 4-5 är det valbart att följa verksamheten i kursen och sammanlagt följer mellan 200 och 300 studenter aktiviteterna. Dessa studenter uppdelade i 36 seminariegrupper som leds av 9 lärare.

Årets (2011/2012) tema för kursen är ”prokrastinering”, det vill säga att ”uppskjuta till morgondagen, en annan dag eller en senare tidpunkt; fördröja” (Nationalencyklopedin). Resultaten från höstens aktiviteter visade med oroande tydlighet att prokrastinering är ett mycket stor problem för våra studenter, och dessa resultat ligger i linje med tidigare forskning som visar att 80-95% av studenterna prokrastinerar (Ellis & Knaus 1979). Resultaten indikerade dessutom att dessa problem har förvärrats till följd av nya tekniska landvinningar och den på detta följande ökningen/utbredningen av dataspel, nedladdningsbara TV-serier, Facebook, Twitter, andra sociala medier, smartphones etc.

Problem: Arbetet kring prokrastineringstemat har resulterat i mycket spännande och uppskattade seminarier, men, resultaten av seminariediskussionerna och de tankar och reflektioner som finns dokumenterade kommer om inga extra medel tillskjuts att med största sannolikhet att förbli där de är (dvs. utspridda och långsamt bortglömda).

Utifrån denna bakgrund är syftet med vår ansökan att äska medel för att:

1. samla in och analysera det av studenterna genererade materialet
2. matcha detta med redan gjord forskning inom området samt
3. anpassa och utveckla förslag och åtgärdsplaner för hur man kan stävja och motarbeta studenters prokrastineringstendenser till lokala förhållanden (Sverige, KTH) samt till dagens mobil- och dator-vanor.

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Better project courses

Applicants: Daniel Pargman (CSC/Media technology), Sara Lempiäinen and Fabian Wahlgren (students at CSC/Media technology)

Bakgrund: Projektkurser är intressanta och attraktiva av flera olika skäl. Projektformen förbereder studenterna inför denna i arbetslivet vanligt förekommande arbetsform. Projektkurser ger dessutom studenter möjlighet att i högre utsträckning själva välja vad de vill engagera sig i och vad de vill jobba med. Detta borde kunna leda till nöjdare studenter och bättre resultat både vad beträffar individens lärande och projektets resultat. Alltför ofta når våra projektkurser dock inte sin fulla potential. Detta projekt syftar till att ändra på detta. I denna ansökan syftar termen ”projektkurs” till kurser där man jobbar i grupper (mer än två personer) och där projektuppgiften utgör en stor del av kursens innehåll, genomförande och examination.

Problem: Projektkurser ”tas inte alltid på allvar” av studenterna – och resultaten blir därefter. Detta problem kan i sin tur delas upp i två delar:

• Problemet är studenterna: en (alltför stor) del av studenterna tar inte projektkursen och projektuppgifter på tillräckligt stort allvar.
• Projektkurser och projektuppgifter är inte formulerade/utformade på ett sådant sätt att de är värda att tas på allvar av studenterna.

Andra utmaningar i projektkurser som vi har identifierat är:

• Vissa projektkurser har betyg Pass/Fail. Kraven är låga och endast en direkt undermålig arbetsinsats från studenternas sida kan rendera betyget ”fail”. Frånvaron av distinktioner (i form av betygssteg) manar inte heller alltid till ambitiösa och väl genomförda projekt.
• Inte sällan bedöms endast slutresultatet emedan den lika viktiga processen förbigås/inte tas i beaktande. Hur kan man löpande examinera projektkurser för att premiera löpande arbete och arbetsprocessen?
• Hur ska man bedöma (och betygsätta) yta, idéer, koncept och ”flashiga” presentationer i förhållande till djup, arbetsinsats, realisering och (medieteknisk) gestaltning?
• Arbetsfördelningen kan lätt bli ojämn. Någon eller några gör huvuddelen av arbetet emedan andra ”flyter med” – CSCs hederskodex till trots.
• Alla i en grupp är inte nödvändigtvis ”värda” samma betyg. (Hur) kan man sätta olika betyg på studenter som jobbat tillsammans?
• Hur kan man utforma bättre uppgifter som i större utsträckning engagerar studenterna och aktiverar deras vilja att lära sig och att göra det mest av kursen och av uppgiften?
• Vilka kunskaper och praktiska verktyg borde studenter ha om projektarbete och projekt som arbetsform för att kunna genomföra projekt och projektkurser på bästa sätt?

Förväntade effekter samt nyttor för programmet och CSC-skolan: Medsökande Sara och Fabian är studenter på medieteknikprogrammet. I detta projekt har vi valt att i första hand undersöka de fyra projektkurser som ges på civilingenjörsprogrammet i medieteknik, men vi förväntar oss att resultaten av detta projekt kommer att vara tillämpbara även i andra projektkurser som ges på CSC och annorstädes.

Vår målsättning är även att lägga en grund till att projektkurserna på medieteknikprogrammet ska samordnas bättre så det uppstår en ökad grad av samsyn, koordination och variation mellan och över dessa kurser, samt att det för studenternas del ska gå att urskilja ett sammanhang och en progression mellan projektkurserna och årskurserna.

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Giving kick-ass presentations in the age of social media

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We had a "pedagogical seminar" on this topic ("Giving kick-ass presentations...") at my department this week. I introduced the topic at the seminar, but the majority of the time (which was only 45 minutes) was spent discussing the issue of "social media + lectures/classrooms" in smaller groups. We finished the seminar by presenting the results to each other during the last 10 or so minutes.

The background to the seminar is perhaps interesting in itself:

1) I gave a course about social media this past autumn
2) One student wrote a blog post about a Fastcompany.com article called "Giving kick-ass presentations in the age of social media".
3) I sent a mail to people at my department with a link to the article in question.
4) Because of the mail, I was invited to host a pedagogical seminar on this topic.

The short article treats the new rules of giving public speeches to a wired (and demanding) audience. What do you do when your audience doesn't look at your while you talk, but rather down, at their screens? What are the implications of your audience being able to "check the facts" in realtime while you deliver your talk? What does it mean that you can have a second (remote) audience that "listens in" on your speech and that is (much) larger than the one you have in front of you? And do you have to understand Twitter as a speaker/lecturer and also "mix in tweetable quotes" in your talk/lecture?

The article was written from the point of view of public speakers at conferences and similar events, so some aspects were perhaps not directly applicable to university teachers giving lectures in courses. A speaker at an event has higher demands on being "entertaining and insightful", while the demands on delivering facts and "correct knowledge" probably are higher on a teacher. The lecture might be less exciting, but it might at the same time be OK for a teacher to be a little bit less "exciting" and more factual-oriented?).

Quite a few people turned up at the seminar. I was also a little surprised, because my guess beforehand was that teachers in general would hesitate or be more negative about the pressure that social media can exert on them to change the way they teach, than they would be positive about the possible benefits. But perhaps only teachers who had a positive attitude towards using social media in higher education showed up for the seminar?

Here are some of the suggestions that our short "brainstorming session" turned up:

- How can better Q-and-A sessions be organized, does the teacher need a (student?) "helper" who filters and chooses questions? Who benefits, what are the potential drawbacks compared to raising your hand and speaking out loud in a lecture hall?

- We first need to think about the relevance (or irrelevance) of Twitter in relationship to academic knowledge and academic articles.

- Yesterday students brought a (free) newspaper to the lecture, today they have their phones. At least reading a text on their phones doesn't make a lot of nice! (This is a very pragmatic attitude.)

- We should support/educate/talk more among lecturers about how to embrace these new technologies. How can we take advantage of these devices and services so as to increase the interaction between lecturers and their audiences?

- We should also support/educate the students so as to use the devices "correctly" or responsibly (e.g. not to play games or listen to music while at a lecture).

- Some teachers have done experiments with "clickers", i.e. the lecturer poses a question and students click the right alternative (A, B, C or D). The answer (nice bars or a pie chart) appears directly and the teacher can decide whether to (for example) go on in the lecture or continue to explain a concept. The clickers (hardware) cost money, but there are nowadays also iPhone apps with the same functionality (but not everyone has an iPhone/smartphone). One teacher has experimented with low-cost alternatives in the form of color cards. Four cards with different colors, please make your choice and hold it up.

- We should explore social media functionality in our own social media-enabled system, KTH Social.

- Everything that engages and activates students is worth trying!

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CESC workshop

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I participated in a 24-hour workshop that was organized by the Center for Sustainable Communications (CESC) just as I did (and wrote about) last year. We hopped on a chartered bus and left for a conference facility where we had lunch and headed back for Stockholm a day later. There were perhaps around 40 participants and the majority were researchers from KTH. A minority of the participants represented center "partners" (representing commercial companies or other institutions such as the city of Stockholm etc.)

CESC is a "Center of Excellence" and has been awarded 10 years of funding from Vinnova, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems. Those 10 years are divided into three periods and the center is evaluated after each period. The evaluation of the second period will happen during the end of this spring, and continued financing for the third period hinges on the evaluation. The coming evaluations was a topic at the workshop, but much more emphasis was placed on generating ideas and ramping up discussions about new projects for the third period in relation to some or all of the four CESC four strategic areas; people, cities, impacts and methods and tools:

- People - people, practices and behaviors in a sustainable ICT society

- Cities - sustainable solutions for ICT in cities

- Impacts - Sustainability impacts of ICT and media

- Methods and Tools - Methods and ICT tools for sustainability assessments

It is easy for groups of people who already know each other and have similar interests (or who already work in the same project) to cluster and work together. The organizers did not want that to happen so the workshop participants were instead divided into groups more or less randomly and then worked in those same groups during all four sessions (corresponding to the four strategic areas above). This was both good and bad. Good for the reasons stated above (breaking up established groups, "forcing" people to get to know and work with other, new acquaintances). Mixing people with different backgrounds and interests on the other hand makes it difficult for groups to form coherent visions rather than "patchwork" lists (a little bit of this and a little bit of that).

I was happy with the work of my group and two of the "proposals" (suggestions/ideas) we worked on were of great interest to me:

Personal carbon emissions for better city living

- Identify top 3 (or 4 or 5) CO2/energy hogs in our daily lives

- Study examples of bonus point systems ("alternative currencies"). Create a system for collecting data about (personal) CO2 emissions (which becomes an alternative CO2 currency).

- Reward low spenders with cultural experiences.

Personal carbon emission schemes are reminiscent of rationing schemes (of for example food and fuel during war or times of crises). The addition of a market for buying and selling unused emission rights does away with the black market by economically "punishing" high spenders and "rewarding" low spenders through the exchange of money for emissions rights. This inherently makes such schemes unappealing for the rich and powerful (high spenders).

Our suggestion was to instead reward low spenders by giving away something that is relatively inexpensive to provide, but that potentially is very valuable for the person receiving it - cultural experiences. This could encompass wavering the costs for an "environmental hero" entering any public swimming pool or giving away theatre tickets or tickets to sports events (otherwise empty seats?) for free. What is ingenious about this idea is that people who refrain from vacationing in Thailand for environmental/CO2 reasons are exactly those who instead would probably very much appreciate the consumption of cultural experiences right where he/she lives.

Much more was said about this proposal, including how to make the scheme "social" (without compromising the integrity of participants), e.g. competing against average, or introducing intangible rewards that would add prestige to lifestyles that decrease CO2 emissions. I have previously written up some ideas in my master's thesis proposal about creating a CO2 currency (written in Swedish).

The second proposal that I find exciting has much to do with the master's thesis proposal that I and my colleague Jorge wrote during the autumn, "Green distance work in Sweden". It is an "anti-city" proposal (in relation to the CESC strategic area of "cities"). How does/can ICT allow people to settle and work from the countryside and outside of the larger cities? We would be especially interested in people who do this because of personal convictions and a "green agenda" (lowering their CO2 emissions, growing some of their own food etc. but still relying on ICT as an enabler of a modern "Green wave 2.0" lifestyle.

After writing up and handing over our notes, I have no idea how these and other proposals will be utilized. I guess (hope) I will find out during the spring.

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Para-social interaction

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I've been fascinated by para-social interaction and para-social relationships ever since I heard about the terms 10 or perhaps 15 years ago. They are the kinds of perceived relationships we have with celebrities even though we only know them from TV - and they don't know us at all.

Ten years ago, when my wife was new to Sweden, we got onto the subway one morning and she stepped in and walked right up to our former prime minister, Ingvar Carlsson. She, not knowing who he was, didn't think twice about standing right next to him. I was a little bit more hesitant, but of course followed her and stood beside her (and him). When she started to talk about totally prosaic things like what we would eat for dinner or that we forgot to take out the trash, I felt very uncomfortable. It felt like when the former prime minster listens to your conversation, you should talk about more statesmanlike topics; politics or perhaps at least academic topics.

My problem was that I couldn't find any way to get out of the situation. I wanted to tell her to shut up, but how could I? Even more interesting was that I felt an urge to enlighten her as to who we were standing beside, but how could I? On the one hand, I wanted to, well, present her to Ingvar; "Tessy, this is Ingvar Carlsson, our former prime minster". And then what? "Ingvar, this is my wife, Tessy"? I realized how ridiculous that would be since he not only did not know her, but he of course didn't know me either. My relationship to Ingvar was not a "real" relationship, but a para-social relationship - a one-way relationship mediated by mass media. I had seen and heard him many times (on TV, radio and in newspapers) and it viscerally felt like I "knew" him. Which I obviously didn't.

Based on this event, my interest in the topic and a discussion at one of the seminars in my recently-finished social media course, I have formulated two thesis proposals that both touch upon how social media changes our relationships to other people. Mass media changed our relationships to other people decades ago, and some perceptive social scientists noticed, analyzed and wrote about it. With the shift from mass to social media, our behaviors are once again changing. My students notice this and I want them to explore and document how, and analyzed and explain why. I will hopefully get hold of some students to do this already this spring (bachelor's and master's thesis season). The first thesis proposal is called "Para-Social Facebook relationships" and the second is called "Impact of social media on social behavior".

I have also formulated a third (unrelated) thesis proposal, "E-sports/professional computer gaming" and will formulate a bunch of more proposals during the next couple of weeks (before thesis season starts).

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Social Media Technology 2011 line-up

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This is a list of the 2011 line-up of our 8 guest lectures in the course DM2578 Social Media Technologies:

- Jonas Bosson, hacker and former KTH computer science student. "Building a social service for charities and webshops".

- Jorge Zapico, Ph.D. student at KTH Center for Sustainable Communication (CESC), "Sustainable Internet: Social media in a sustainable future".

- Pernilla Josefsson, Ph.D. student at KTH Media Technology, "E-learning"

- Henrik Åhman, Ph.D. student at KTH, Human-Computer Interaction group, "A war on totality: Social media form a postmodern perspective"

- Gustaf Lundström, student at KTH M.Sc. student in Media Management, "Social Media: A shortcut to democracy?"

- Wu Qi, journalist for the Southern People Weekly, China, "Passive Governor: Censorship in Chinese online forums"

- Therese Reuterswärd, Former KTH Media Technology student and Online Market Manager at Scandic Hotels, "Relationship marketing through social media"

- David Kjelkerud, Former KTH Media Technology student and co-founder or Readmill, "How we built Readmill"  

Beyond these guests, I also gave six lectures in the course (one each week, most often based/structured around the course literature), namely:

- "Introduction"

- "The networked information economy"

- "Network theory"

- "Media convergence and participatory culture"

- "Critique"

- "Journalism and sustainability"

Here is the previous, Social Media Technologies 2010 line-up.

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Gripe session vs course evaluation

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I'm not very fond of course evaluations. Or rather, I like to get feedback from the students, but I dislike the fact that I have to summarize these evaluations and write a report (a "course analysis"). That report should (for example) state what the students though about different aspects of the course and what changes have been made in the course since the last time it was given etc. yada yada. During those few occasions when I actually have summarized students' course evaluations, I have not received any feedback and I thus don't see the point of it all. To summarize; I don't think anyone reads what I write. And if they do, I don't get any feedback. And if I do, I don't get any help to discuss and think about new ways of changing or improving the course in question - because that would of course cost money (someone else's time) instead of "just" incurring costs in terms of my time (and work satisfaction). It really is every man for himself; as a university teacher you are free to improve (change) your courses as much (or as little) as you want, but the demands are low and the institutional support for improving the quality of the courses is even lower.

Not writing course analyses is a small act of disobedience on my part. I would actually love to write them if I got something out of it (like constructive feedback from a "qualified" or least interested discussion partner), but since I don't, I often won't. From this year though, I've decided to actually write something that could maybe be regarded as a course analysis of kinds here, on this blog. These coming blog posts will probably not be very interesting for the casual reader of this blog. They will be interesting for the students who have or will take the course, for me (to return to next year) and perhaps for someone in my organization.

For the same reasons that I dislike to summarize students' feedback, students hate to fill out course evaluations. If I ask them to do it on the web, many don't no matter how many times I remind them. And why should they? I can understand that it is hard to motivate yourself when you don't get any feedback, don't see the results and don't know if your opinions have an impact, make a difference or if they evan are acknowledged in the first place, i.e. the same reasons why I myself dislike to produce course analyses.

For those reasons, I decided to exchange the course evaluation for a "gripe session" in my social media course (most recent blog post here) that ended this past week. My experiences of gripe sessions come from science fiction conventions; an informal meeting at the end of the event where organizers get the opportunity to hear both praise and complaints from attendants. Some of those in the audience might attend the gripe session because they are next in line to organize the next convention and thus have an interest in not repeating mistakes that might have been made.

Transferring this feedback format to a university setting, I disseminate a single page with just three questions and asked the students to take a few minutes to think about them and fill them out ("what were the three best things in the course?", "what were the three worst things?", and "what could be improved?"). Posing these questions is also a way to get students to start thinking about the course. I wrote down a number of different categories on the blackboard that students might have opinions about (lectures, seminars, administration, examination etc.). Then students then had the opportunity to raise opinions (both praise and complaints) about different aspects of the course. We unfortunately had only 30 minutes for the whole gripe session and while it was enough time to take down their opinions and also provide short answers, it wasn't really enough time for in-depth discussions about any of the issues. Note-to-self: make sure to have at least 45 minutes for the gripe session next time around

The format has many advantages compared to traditional course evaluations and I specifically see two large advantages:

1) Students know for sure that their opinions are heard and they can even get (short) answers and perhaps also explanations about why things were the way they were right then-and-there from me.

2) Both me and the students get to hear what other students thought, and we will together get a better understanding of what both individual students and what the class as a whole thought about (different aspects of) the course

For any course, some students will like it better and others will like it less. Having a discussion is a great way to "neutralize" (?) outliers. When a student expresses an opinion that is contradicted by another student, I am to some extent relieved of having to defend or explain specific decisions - since the students themselves are of different opinions about that/those issues. The whole event will also give students an idea of if their opinion is shared by others or not.

Since this more specifically concerned a course about social media, I also managed to justify the gripe session format in terms of social media terminology. Ordinary course evaluations are "one-way", based on a "hub-and-spoke" architecture where the center (the teacher) controls all communication. Such exercises turn students into passive "course evaluators" (c.f. consumers, viewers, readers, listeners). A gripe session instead has the potential to turn students into active "discussants" (c.f. producers, participants, storytellers, players). A gripe session makes a one-way conversation social by opening up the a course evaluation so that everyone can participate in the process of evaluating the course.

During a course, I like to be able to post administrative messages to a blog and have students leave comments on the blog if they have any questions. Every course participant can see both the question and the answer and sometimes students can even answer the questions of other students faster than I do. It sure beats having questions mailed to me privately and it offloads my incoming email. Course evaluations (paper or web form) are like e-mail - private communication between each student and the teacher. A gripe session is like commenting on the blog - a discussion out in the open that everyone can listen in to.

I haven't had time to look at the actual course evaluations yet (that's the topic for another blog post), but I very much thought the gripe session was productive and successful and will for sure use that format again in other courses. A "problem" might be that the gripe session format will yield less hard information ("on paper") than a traditional course evaluation. I wonder if that will get an "ok" by "higher-ups" who perhaps expect me to analyze and sum up lots of written information (that I haven't collected) into a report? A gripe session in combination with writing up a text and publishing it on the blog will on the other hand be a lot better than what I handed in last year (i.e. nothing).

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Future of Media 2011 line-up

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This is the line-up of the no less than 19 great guest lectures in my course DM2571 "Future of Media". The course has a new theme every year and the 2011 theme was "The Future of Radio / Radio of the Future":

- Nina Wormbs, associate professor at the Division of History of Science and Technology, KTH, "Radio history - cultural importance and technological dependence"

- Adam Davidson, International business and economics correspondent, radio host and producer on the public radio network NPR, "The past and the future of public radio in the US"

- Kerstin Brunnberg, CEO for Swedish Radio (SR) from 2007-2009, "Shift happens still radio prevails!"

Charlie Gullström & Ori Merom, KTH School of Archtecture, "On design thinking and sketching as memory etching"

- Henrik Olinder, Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och beredskap (MSB), "Kriskommunikation och när radion blir informationsbärare" [Crisis communication and when radio becomes an information carrier]

- Roger Wallis, professor emeritus at Media Technology, KTH, "The development of radio - past, present and future"

- Daniel Johansson, CEO of TrendMaze, "When everyone becomes a radio channel"

- Gunnar Bolin, kulturkorrespondent vid Sveriges Radio (SR), "Att bevaka all världens kultur" [To cover the whole world's culture]

- Michael Forsman, Ph.D. Media- and communication studies, Södertörn University, Stockholm, "With a local flavor? On "localness" and competition in Swedish radio of today and of tomorrow"

- Kerstin Morast, Head of licensing division, The Swedish Broadcasting Authority [Myndigheten för radio och TV], "Broadcasted radio - towards digitalization?"

- Nino Cirone, Director, Broadcast Research Ltd, "10 things you should know about audiences"

- Dr. Claire Wardle, Digital consultant (BBC College of Journalism), "Moving beyond broadcasting: Digital technologies and collaborative radio"

- Nancy Updike, Producer and reporter at the radio show "This American Life", "Radio is better than other media and I can prove it"

- Anna Swartling, Usability architect at Scania CV AB, "Project TEAM work"

- Simon Redican, Managing Director and Radio Advertising Bureau and Mark Barber, Planning Director at Radio Advertising Bureau, "Media and the mood of the nation"

- Lars Jonsson, Technical strategist at Swedish Radio (SR), "Digital radio - future trends"

- Fredrik Stiernstedt, Ph.D. candidate in Media and Communication Studies at Södertörn University, "The 'future of radio' as a discourse in radio production"

- Valerie Geller, President, Geller Media International Broadcast Consultants/Training, "Becoming a more powerful communicator"

No less than eleven different project groups presented their visions of the future in the form of a larger (200+ persons) public presentation on Friday December 9, 2011 (see the online documentation here and the book (pd file) here - each project group contributed with one chapter).

During the autumn 2011, I wrote a number of texts on this blog that related to the course:

- The future of radio / Radio of the future

- I met NPR Planet Money!

- What is radio?

- Radio of the future futures

- Bridging the student - teacher gap

- Architecture vs Media Technology smackdown

Here is the previous, Future of Media 2010 line-up - The Future of Music / Music of the Future.

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Books I've read lately

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"Books I've read recently" is a recurring topic and here is the previous blog post (same topic, different books). I actually read most of the books below during the early autumn, but I like to gather some books together in these blog posts and for some reason it took a couple of months (again!) to read the last 25 pages of one of the books below. Also, I've had so many other topics to write about lately and writing up a blog post about these books have taken a backseat compared to other topics. All four books below are books that I bought before the summer and that I read primarily in order to prepare for this year's edition of my course on social media (which actually ends this week).

Clay Shirky's new book is called "Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age" (2010). I read his previous book, "Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations" a few years ago. Both book are easy reads, engaging, full of fun or interesting anecdotes and examples. Both feel less "academic" and are written with larger audiences in mind. This is both a pro and a con. Pro because they are fun to read and full of examples and insights. Con because the books are more story-driven and less driven by some grand underlying structure or idea(s) that are easy to discern and peg down. It's a little of this and a little of that, fun to read but difficult to synthesize. Perhaps the lack of overall structure comes from Clay writing insightful shorter texts at his blog and then putting them together into a book every few years? The "cognitive surplus" that Clay refers to is the leisure time we nowadays have when we "only" work 40 hours per week, and the activities we choose to spend it on; from (only/mostly) watching television to now also spending a sliver of it on collaborative online projects (Wikipedia etc.). What if, Clay asks, we would spend just 1% of the time we (as a society) watch television on Wikipedia-like projects for the betterment of communities and societies?

In contrast to Clay's rosy dreams of the potential of using social media for the betterment of humanity's lot, Evgeny Morozov warns us about a darker vision of the future of the Internet and social media. My copy of his book is called "The net delusion: How not to liberate the world" (2011), but I notice that the subtitle now has been changed to "The dark side of Internet freedom". Evgeny reminds us that Internet and social media can be used not just for emancipatory purposes ("Twitter revolutions" or "Facebook revolutions"), but that it can also be used as effective tools for surveillance and oppression by dictators and authoritarian regimes. In fact, he dislikes the very term "Facebook revolution" as it hypes an American company/tool rather than the real flesh-and-blood Egyptians who risked their lives on the streets of Kairo. In order to further democracy and freedom in the world, so much more is needed in terms of policy an patient support to dissenters and democracy movements than just releasing suits of social media tools that can be used both for good and for bad. Although Evgeny's message is interesting and important, I found him not be the best wordsmith and felt that reading his book was a little like taking medicine; the reading experience wasn't very pleasurable because of his slightly "wooden" writing style, but it's a good book to have read.

Jaron Lanier's "You are not a gadget: A manifesto" (2010) is a book-long rant about everything that is wrong about the Internet (or the direction that the Internet is heading in). What makes the book poignant is that Jaron is a member of the techno elite, having been one of the first persons to explore and commercialize Virtual Reality (VR) technology in the 80's and 90's. But Jaron has also been an avid and longtime musician who also upholds more "spiritual" values and who with his manifesto mercilessly critique some of (the opinions of) his techno elite friends/acquaintances. I found Jaron's book to be a little uneven; some passages are not that easy to understand (having not had long conversations with Jaron, and not being as technically literate as he is) and other parts are rant-ish and sounding like someone who has gout or a bad tooth and who "likes" to complain about both this and that. Still, some passages are brilliant and thoughtful in this book based on Jaron's opinions (I personally prefer research results before opinions, or opinions that are based on research results).

...and that is why I liked Sherry Turkle's new book a lot. In "Alone Together: Why we expect more of technology and less of each other" (2011), she confirms several of Jaron's opinions, but this time around based on her research and on numerous interviews. The book consists of two (very) separate parts; the first half of the book concerns our relationship with robots (robot toys as well as more advanced experimental systems) and our thoughts and dreams about future use of and future human-robot relationships. The second part describes our (incessant) use (and in her opinion, not seldom mis-use) of mobile/social media technologies such as texting (SMS messages), mail, Facebook etc. Where Turkle has been very non-judgemental in her earlier books, this time around she is clearly worried about where we are heading in this hyper-connected world of ours. I could imagine using this book (the second half) as course literature (when the inexpensive paperback edition is available) as there are soo many topics and soo much to discuss with students in these chapter. I very much recommend this book and believe it is pretty much unique in terms of the questions discussed and the perspectives presented.

March 2013. Here's someone who has obviously read Turkle's book and made a YouTube video of the possibly negative consequences of using social media too much.

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