Event

Information Studies Seminar Series: "Conceptually Framing Surprising Qualitative Research Findings." Guest speaker Dr. C. Cole

Friday, April 1, 2016 12:30to14:00
School of Information Studies, CA, 3661 Peel, Rm. 106, Montreal, CA

Join us for a McGill School of Information Studies (SIS) Seminar Series talk with guest speaker Dr. Charles Cole on conceptual frameworks for surprising research findings.

ABSTRACT

Researchers usually start research by defining the problem and designing the research strategy in consequence. But what if you have to come up with a new conceptual framework after data collection? In the case at hand, data collection occurred first, followed by  a surprising finding, which required creating a new theoretical framework. This reverse order in fact often occurs in research—e.g., in a long research project with multiple data collection events so you don’t want to repeat the same conceptual framework, surprising results arise which require a new framework. In fact, Glaser and Strauss’s grounded theory approach welcomes the surprising finding and new theory making. But it’s a double-edged sword.

In this talk, I will give an overview of grounded theory coding for this particular study, but spend most of the talk on the framework for the surprising finding: How do humans frame reality and use this frame as an interface for information seeking? I will illustrate this framing conceptual framework with slides of Vermeer and his camera obscura, Paleolithic cave paintings from the Lascaux Caves, and the mysterious columns of Göbekli Tepe.

BIO

Dr. Charles Cole is a Researcher, Affiliated Member, at the School of Information Studies, McGill University. He received his Ph.D. (Information Science) in 1994 from the University of Sheffield, his M.L.I.S. from McGill University in 1989 and his B.A. (History-Geography) from McGill University in 1978. He is also a consultant (Colemining Inc.). He has published 48 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including 18 in JASIST (Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology). He has been North American editor for the journal Information Research since 2011. With Amanda Spink, he has edited two books in information science: New directions in human information behavior (2006) and New directions in cognitive information retrieval (2005), both published by Springer. His most recent book (2012) is Information need: A theory connecting information search to knowledge formation published by Information Today Inc.

 

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