1. Your homework is to complete the NIH Protecting Human Research Subjects training. According to the website, the course takes approximately 3 hours to complete. (It may take some of you less time. If you have already completed the training for another class or project, you do not need to repeat the training, but you do need to submit your certificate).
   
2. At the end of the training, please PRINT your certificate and bring it to class tomorrow. (Alternatively, you can send me a PDF via email if you are able.)
3. Look ahead to the Photo Documentation project which is due on 2/26. Start thinking about it now. (The informed consent form link does not work yet but will be posted soon.)

Goal: To learn how to attend to the details of the world of everyday activities.

Directions:

1. In this project you are going to take photos of an everyday social activity. First, choose an activity. It should be something that interests you and something to which you have access. It could be something you do with your family or with your roommates or friends. It could be an activity at your workplace, or in someone else’s workplace. The people involved in the activity should be adults 18 years of age or older. You should choose an activity where you can get close to the action, one that probably has some significant cognitive aspects you can observe. If you are unsure about your choice, please consult with your Professor. You must obtain the informed consent of participants in the activity before you take photos. The procedures for obtaining informed consent are described on the informed consent page. While you are obtaining that consent, also find at least one participant in the activity who will agree to talk to you about the activity later.
2. Look ahead. This would be a good time to make contact with a community that will provide the data for the remainder of the class projects.
3. Observe the activity for a while before taking pictures. Get a sense for the nature of the activity.
4. Take pictures of the activity. Try to capture interesting aspects of the activity and the social and material environment in which it takes place. Take at least 15 shots.
5. Carefully look at your pictures and choose 2 of them that you find most interesting.
6. Carefully describe what you see in the two photos. Stick close to the data and pay attention. Look for evidence of cognitive activity. Hopefully, you will see things in the study of your photos that you did not see while observing the event live.

I assume you will use a digital camera for this assignment. The camera in your phone will even be fine, if it has sufficient resolution and a flash (if needed). If you do not have access to a digital camera, you can purchase an inexpensive disposable camera and have the film developed at, e.g., a CVS or Walgreens.

Maximum 800 words of text. Additional figures and tables (if they contribute to the description) are not included in the word count.

Due: 2/26

Note: NO INFORMED CONSENT means NO GRADE.

Download: Informed Consent Form

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted this project idea and taken some of the text for the directions.

All research using human and animal research subjects is subjected to oversight to protect the research subjects from unacceptable harms. In the case of research on human beings, a cornerstone of research ethics is the concept of informed consent. Your research subjects must consent to being a part of your study, and they must be informed about the nature of any risks involved. Human subjects research is reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the Office of Research Compliance (ORC).

The research activities in this class will be conducted under the terms of an application that Professor Brown submitted to the ORC. This application covers the Photo Documentation and Interview activities, as well as the optional Video Ethnography project. You must follow all of the instructions on the project page and on this page.

General Instructions

1. You must obtain informed consent from every person you collect data from before you collect the data. You must explain to them what you want them to do, what information your are going to collect, and what you will do with the information you collect.
2. You must keep clear records of the consent given by all participating subjects. Keep track of your consent forms. Keep a record of the total number of subjects you work with.
3. The people involved in the activity should be adults 18 years of age or older.
4. You will not interview subjects about their personal lives or other topics that may be socially sensitive.
5. You will not collect any sort of data on any illegal activity.
6. You will do whatever you can to protect the interests of the subjects.
7. If complications arise in your relationship to a subject or subjects, report the problem to your professor immediately

Informed Consent Forms

Download and print enough of the forms to take with you to do your data collection.

1. Photo Documentation Form – Make sure all of the participants in the activity that you observe and document sign a form, even if you do not actually photograph them.
2. Interview Consent Form
3. Video Project Form – Make sure the participants all sign the form before you video them. This project is optional.

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted these project ideas and taken some of the text for the directions.

Late Work / Make-up Exams

No late work or make-up exams will be allowed without consent of the professor prior to the due/exam date, except in situations where University policy requires it.

Class Attendance

While reading and writing are crucial parts of the course, the central philosophical activity is live discussion. While class will occasionally involve bits of lecture, this is merely an instrument to a more well-informed discussion. Attendance is thus considered mandatory.

Classroom expectations

You are expected to have read the assignments before class, and it would be to your benefit to also read them again after class. You are expected to bring all of the texts assigned for each day’s class, and have them available to refer to. You are expected to listen respectfully to the professor and your fellow students, and participate in class discussions and activities.

Further standard University policies can be found at http://go.utdallas.edu/syllabus-policies

These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the Professor.

Conceptual Tools

These concepts will be resources that we return to repeatedly throughout the semester. Any improvements to these definitions that you can suggest are welcome.

• Process vs. System
  • Processes are events that take place in time
  • Systems are persisting, organized, made of parts
• Artifact
  • Material object created or modified by humans in order to be incorporated into meaningful actions.
  • Material AND conceptual
• Mediation
  • A process by which some third entity alters the interaction between two other things.
• Tool
  • Artifact that mediates between an agent and some object or environment towards some goal.
• Sign
  • Artifact that mediates between person and environment or social interactions towards some interpretation or meaning.
• Activity
  • Collective undertaking with a guiding object or motive.
  • Composed of goal-directed actions and routinized instrumental operations.
  • E.g., Healthcare
• Activity System
  • Community organized by rules and norms, tools, and a division of labor engaged in an activity.
  • E.g., Physician working at a clinic.
• Actant
  • Humans and non-human tools and objects.
  • Action as interaction, mediation
• Toolforthoughts
  • Amalgam of tool and thought
  • According to Shaffer and Clinton, all tools involve thoughts and vice versa
• C^3^ Process/System
  • Cognitive-Cultural-Communicative Process/System
  • Nascent notion of my own coinage
• Ecological Validity
  • Related to external validity – generalizability across groups (populations)
  • Grounded in or reflecting real-world settings and real-life conditions.
  • Generalizability from research setting to natural setting.

Theoretical Approaches

These are the theoretical approaches to cognition-culture-communication (C^3^) that we will be discussing this semester.

The big four:

1. Situated Cognition / Learning / Action
2. (Socially) Distributed Cognition
3. Cultural(-Historical) Psychology / Activity Theory / CHAT
4. Actor-Network(-)Theory

Other related approaches

• Sociocultural/Socio-historical Psychology/Theory / Mediated Action / Mediational Means (Vygotsky/Wertsch)
• Enaction / Enactive Psychology
• Embodied Mind / Embodied Cogniton
• Extended Mind / Extended Cognition
• Ecological Psychology
• And MORE!

Methods

Cognitive Ethnography
~ Combines aspects of traditional psychological and anthropological method.
(Participatory) Action Research
~ Specifically aimed at improving and researching conditions simultaneously, organically.
~ Subjects of study are also co-researchers and agents of change.
Multi-Level Methods
~ Phylogenetic history, cultural history, ontogeny, and microgenesis.
~ Look at: Institutions, Activities, Individual Interactions
~ Methods: Evolutionary, Historical, Developmental, Ethnographic, and Experimental
Model Activity Systems
~ Design and implement an activity system that is sustainable
Actor-Network-Theory
~ Actor-Network-Theory claims to be a theoretical and methodological resource. We’ll try to understand this claim later on in the semester.

CCC Home | Week 1: Introductions

These are main features of the dominant paradigm(s) that our main readings will be critiquing and providing alternatives to.

Objects of Study / Ontological Divisions

1. Mind – Cognition (broad), Person, Agent
   1. Feeling – Emotion / Affect
   2. Thinking – Cognition / Knowledge
   3. Acting – Decision
2. Society – Groups, Culture (broad)
   1. Culture
   2. Language
   3. Institutions
3. Communication – Modes of interaction
   1. Media / Information
   2. Rhetoric – Writing / Speaking
   3. Organizations

Associated Disciplines

1. Sciences of the Mind
   • Psychology, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience
   • Philosophy – of Mind, Epistemology
   • Artificial Intelligence, Education
2. Sciences of Society
   • Sociology, Anthropology, Linguistics
   • Economics, Political Science
   • Philosophy – Ethics, Political
   • Humanities: History, Literature, Art
3. Sciences of Communication
   • Communication Studies, Media Studies
   • Network Theory, Information Theory, Telecommunications
   • Rhetoric & Comp, Journalism

Theories and assumptions

1. Computationalism – Cognition as information processing, formal.
2. Reductionism – Society to Mind, Mind to Life, Life to Chemicals, Chemicals to Atoms…
3. Functionalism – Mind and society as complex, structure system whose parts are understood in terms of how they function within and are shaped by those structures.
   • System as stable whole. Body and organs.
   • A type of reductionism
4. Mind is deep, culture is superficial – e.g., Chomsky.
5. Communication as thought-downloading.
6. Learning as passive, receptive.
7. Cartesianism – The mind is separate from the body, world. It is independent of culture. Our own mind is what we know best, because we have direct access to it, unlike the world.

CCC Home | Week 1: Introductions

Here are a list of tips on your writing assignments, such as this week’s Cognitive Diary activity:

1. Your job is to produce a document that makes it easy for us to see that you did the reading, thought about the issues, and did some real research.
2. Make specific connections to the readings, e.g., in defining concept, applying theoretical ideas, making comparisons to someone’s work, or in applying methods defined or used by someone else. Always cite the author – use Chicago/Turabian author-date format.
3. When you make a claim, especially one that isn’t obvious or commonly known, back it up with evidence that supports or illustrates it. Evidence in this class can include both ethnographic observation, images, interview transcripts, etc. as well as references to evidence in articles and books by other authors.
4. Work on making your paper concise, communicating as much information as needed in the space allotted.
5. Please proofread your papers. If possible, get someone else to read your paper and help you edit it.

Many of the points in my general Term Paper Guidelines and Helpful Hints are applicable for all writing assignments.

Due in class 1/22

The goal of this project is two-fold. First, you will learn to think about the nature of cognitive tasks in everyday life and how they can be analyzed. Be sure to make use of the ideas from the main readings.

Directions:

1. Keep a “cognitive diary” for an entire day. Whenever you engage in some kind of cognitive task – i.e., something that requires you to think, plan, remember, or problem-solve – try to notice it and make a record of it (jot it down, dictate to tape recorder, etc.). You are not required to turn in the diary itself, but you are required to do one.
2. Choose an everyday cognitive activity from your diary to describe in detail. Choose carefully. Keep it small and simple. It may be part of your job, or part of a recreational activity, or part of your everyday routine. It should be something that you would have done even if you were not taking this class. Do not attempt to describe a personal relationship, or a private activity, or your reasoning about it. Do not attempt to design an “experiment.” Don’t worry about how representative the activity is.
3. Describe the cognitive activity as carefully as you can. Begin by describing only those things that can be seen “from the outside,” i.e., could be captured on video or described by an observer. What is “cognitive” about the activity, based on the description of “cognitive” from the readings? Some of the questions you might be able to answer include the following: What function does the cognitive activity perform? How does the activity take advantage of or interact with structure in the environment? Is the activity a common routine, and if so, in what ways? Look for cognitive shortcuts – ways of making a complicated computation into a simple one. Minimize or avoid first-personal descriptions of “what is going through my mind” or “what was going on in my head.” Such things are not available to cognitive researchers, and you may know much less about them than you think!

Turn in a typed description that includes the following:

The Activity: What is the activity being described?

Description: Careful and detailed description of the activity.

Maximum 800 words of text. Additional figures, sketches, images and so on, e.g. structure that was used in the environment, are not included in the page count.

Your job is to produce a document that makes it easy for us to see that you did the reading, thought about the issues, and did some real research. Work on making it concise. Please proofread your papers.

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted this project idea and taken some of the text for the directions.

Read

• Edwin Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild, Chapter 9
• Edwin Hutchins, “Imagining the Cognitive Life of Things”

Methods Discussion: Cognitive Ethnography II

• Read: Robert F. Williams, “Using Cognitive Ethnography to Study Instruction”
• Activity: Start Interview Project

CCC Home | Next Week