Research activities and the design of computer-based support

Tuesday 11th April: 14.00-15.00
Chair: Mark van Harmelen

 

This forum is dedicated to identifying and categorizing research activities that should be supported in future computer-based research environments.

Participants will be encouraged to reflect on and communicate a high-level view of the nature of their research and their research methods. In this way, some possible by-products of participation in the forum may be that individual participants gain a useful comparative view of how research is conducted in other fields, and that this comparative view aids their own research practice.

Depending on participant interest, the group may try to tease out a subset of activities that they feel cross and underpin research activities in different domains, and which might provide base-level support in research support systems.

The forum facilitator is an interactive system designer who has broad experience in facilitating design workshops where participants (who are subject-area experts rather than computer experts) participate in designing the functionality and interactivity of computer-based systems. However, because of the forum's time constraints, consideration will be limited to a very high level view of research activities, methods, artefacts, and outputs, and of possible computer support.

Keywords: Research methods, research artefacts, research support, ICT, research environments