Theme 3 Pre

Theme 3: Research and theory

Select a research journal that you believe is relevant for media technology research.

The journal I choose was “Computer & Education”, with an impact factor of 2.63 and 5-year impact factor of 3.242. This journal focuses on computing and communication technology to heighten the influence towards cognition, education and training from the instructor to the applicant in the growing open and distance learning environment.

Select a research paper that is of high quality and relevant for media technology research.

            The title of the article I interest is “Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers” by Faria Sana, Tina Weston, and Nicholas J. Cepeda. This paper discusses whether the usage of laptop during a lecture will distract the student and make their learning capability become worst comparing to the student without laptop interference.

            At first, the writer gives some hypothesis and theory that human have limited resources to attend to, process, encode and store information as their knowledge. The multitasking process will limit human to perceive the information, it means the quality and efficiency at which multiple task are processed will be compromised.

            In this journal, the writer using quantitative method to collect the data and conduct 2 experiments. The first experiment is to measure the performance of participant when using multitasking laptop while attending the course, and the second one is to measure the negative impact by distraction when someone using a laptop during a course. The gathered data are compared in each experiment and processed to get the result.

            The first result of these experiments indicate that participants’ comprehension was impaired when they performed multiple tasks during learning. Second, comprehension was impaired for participants who were seated in view of peers engaged in multitasking. These results show that multitasking impaired both simple factual learning and complex application to the same degree.

            One thing that I need to comment regarding this article is the unknown factor about the attention of the participant base on the object in the lecture. Because, if some participant do not interest on this subject, it can deviate the result.

1.    Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.

A theory is an abstract entities that aim to describe, explain and enhance understanding about the world, and in some cases the theory will provide a prediction of what will happen in the future and to give a basis for intervention and action. In the theory, the writer must answer to queries of “why”, because theory is about the connection among phenomena, a story about why act, events, structure and though occur. Furthermore, theory emphasizes the nature of causal relationships, identifying what comes first as well as  the timing of such event.

We can say that journal does not have a theory if the journal lack of consensus to describe and explain about what and why theory is may explain. Furthermore, this is part of an article that are not theory:

·         Reference, authors need to explicate which concepts and causal arguments are adopted from cited sources and how they are linked to the theory being developed or tested.

·         Data describe which empirical patterns were observed and theory explains why empirical patterns were observed or are expected to be observed.

·         Lists of Variables or Constructs, a theory must also explain why variables or constructs come about or why they are connected.

·         Diagrams or figures can be a valuable part of a research paper but also, by themselves, rarely constitute theory.

·         Hypotheses are concise statements about what is expected to occur, not why it is expected to occur.

2.    Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

I think the article will match with theory type 4 (explanation and prediction), because the author give description about why multitasking can impact student in a course and give a prediction about the decrease of student performance in learning if this problem is not considered seriously. Also in this article, the writer give 3 suggestions about how should laptop use during a lecture.

3.    Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

The benefit using theory type 4 is, the reader will get a comprehension information regarding selected topic that writer choose, because the reader will acknowledge about why this topic occur in this article and what the impact in the future will happen based by experiment in this article. The limitation on this type 4 theory is usually the scope of the topic is narrow to certain point, because the author will attempt to focus in certain area and tries to give more result to support the prediction.