Today was the first full day of the ProHealth REU program. Today we were given campus tours and had lunch with Ph.D. students and professors. During lunch, I was introduced to Dr. Patrick Shih. He answered a few questions I had about Ph.D. programs offered at IU and also answered a few questions I had for the summer. After lunch, Dr. Siek took over and discussed the game plan for the rest of the week. The goals of this research program were also mentioned. Our REU site goals are: train, prepare, engage, disseminate research, and to inspire!
Assignment:
1. Reading assignments
Today we were assigned three papers to read and summarize to the best of our ability : (a) Efficient Reading of Papers in Science and Technology (b) Designing Health and Fitness Apps with Older Adults: Examining the Value of Experience-Based Co-Design (c) How Information Sharing about Care Recipients by Family Caregivers Impacts Family Communication
(a) This article was a simple read but was highly advised by Dr. Siek. This article focused on how to tackle scientific papers in the most efficient way.
(b) This article illustrated a research that examined the effects of experience-based co-design health apps for older adults. Many fitness apps are often geared towards the younger generation, however; many older people tend to also download these health apps in hopes of adopting healthier routines to incorporate into their lifestyles. Older people tend to stop using them due to a variety of reasons 1. the app does not fit their daily activities 2. the app does not track what they find is beneficial 3. the app is too complicated. This is why this research proposed an alternative approach that may keep the older audience hooked onto health apps longer. This research interviewed several people within the older generation and incorporated a Co-Design element. This proved to be extremely beneficial because this approach finally pulled data that appealed to a specific audience.
(c) The purpose of this research was geared towards improving the care of people suffering from depression. The focus of this research is to help family caregivers find the best way to care for their depressed family member. This research analyzed two versions of their technological tools: FMCT and FMCT-S. FMCT-S is the second version that integrated a tracking/sharing tool. After having the participants use FMCT-S, findings showed that the sharing feature enhanced communication within families. This helped introduce topics that may be deemed sensitive and began important conversations within families.
2. Citation Trees / Citation Manager
Ben Jelen, a 3rd year PhD student at IU introduced citation trees to us. Citation trees primarily consist of backward citations, the article, and forward citations. Citation trees are important because it helps us locate articles that the primary article cited and was cited by. Our task was to find one published article from a list of IU research professors. I chose to Dr. Patrick Shih.
One article I found that Dr. Shih published was: Understanding Student Motivation, Behaviors, and Perceptions in MOOCs.
The backward citations for this article (references Dr. Shih cited) amount to 41 citations.
The forward citations (articles that have cited Dr. Shih’s work) amount to 20.
I found this article through Google Scholar and these values for backward/forward citations through the following website: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2675217 .
The citation manager that I found useful was Mendeley. I was able to hold all the readings that were assigned today in one place as well as highlight/annotate along the way. I plan to use this for the entire duration of this summer research.