Grounded Guidelines/Case Study: Psychology and Information Technology
Stated Principles of Use
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The interface to the system provided the user with a form into which they typed (or pasted) their message, adding their name and email address. Student participants did not have to log into the system, so it would be perfectly possible for students to choose to withhold their identities, although this very rarely happened. One student routinely used a nickname in his postings, but his actual identity was widely known to the participants (although not to all). The fact that there was no password protection, or other access restriction to the conference, may have proved something of an inhibition to some of the students. It was clear to the users of the system that anyone who knew the web address of the entry page could access and read their posting. In practice however, the only way to find the conference was through the web pages associated with the course, and there was no evidence that unauthorised users were present. The lecturer indicated that he had used password protected systems in the past, but that the need to recall a password constituted something of a barrier to participation with many students forgetting their passwords.
(The student was being asked if all the contributors to the electronic conference could be identified.) No, because some people went under pseudonyms - I think. I never quite figured out why that was. Well, no, I can understand why someone wouldn't want to go under their own name. But I would have thought that it might have been - it would have been more useful to me to know exactly who was saying what. I remember trying to figure out who this "Bugsy" person was. I think I would rather have known, because then I would have seen the person as a person, and said "He is interested in that" but they might have been thinking "Oh my God, all these people are going to be looking at me and thinking that's the person who said that". [Student] |
