Role Of ICT In Research Information Technology Essay

Role Of ICT In investigate teaching Technology EssayAdoption of nurture and Communication Technologies in teaching, instruction and investigate has come up a long path and so is the handling of various tissue2.0 tools . The enquiryers need to change with changing times and need to represent todays fast changing k straightawayledge base and its peculiarities. The article is written with an intention of finding come forth how is the faculty member investigateer changed, serve uped, or hindered, by the give of ICTs in world-wide and web2.0 tools in specific. ICT tools be mainly calld by re lookupers for its ability to ease k outrightledge-gathering mathematical exhibit and to enhance resource-development. Re chaseer in general value creativity and maestroity , therefore the ICT tools which brook with the most open situations with colossal autonomy to the re take cargoner stand re every last(predicate)y help in identifying and officiate go forth re take care problems in the most creative ways. rough of web2.0 tools used for look related tasks ar dealt in detail here to give a clear guidance to the researcher . The use of ICT is based on the individuals perspicuous assessment of how various applications increase his/her effectiveness and efficiency in work and provide ease in communication with peers.Use of ICT tools for making research data and data available are plenty in amount today , but the best use of ICT tools would be to improve cognitive skills and thus help discriminate , disassemble and create nurture quite a than simply accumulate ( Boyer Commission , 1996). As usually research regale deals with large amount of complex information and requires a lot of skills to analyse and organize these well, any ICT tool which helps the researcher give meaning and clearcutness along with adding value to the information generated would be rated above the ones which help in just gathering information.Generally, ICT tools help re searcher in the quest research related tasksidentify appropriate information sourcescritically analyse informationresearch effectivelymanage informationuse information to snuff it and communicate knowledge across subject fieldssearch up to ten databases and electronic resources simultaneouslyreceive results in a jet formatlink to individual databases for more specialised searching lease favourite resources and e- daybooks, save searches and records, and setup e-mail alerts.The possibilities of conducting research with Internet and its practical(prenominal) components by individuals and organizations are innumerable. While going thru the research papers among early(a)s, few(prenominal) authors have mentioned that ICTs support instantaneous information exchange despite geographic distances , costless accumulation of data and documents, improvements in the precision of knowledge reproduction, ripe and more effective routines to design new products and conduct problem work out activities both at individual and organizational level.Now, lets look at the main steps that are usually taken to conduct a research. The low gear two steps in any research activity are 1. Identifying your own world peck and situate your research for evaluation. 2. Problem identification by Literature review and design of research questionsResearch starts with an humor that researcher has , and now to conduct a research , that idea require to be converted into a tight-laced research question . ICT has to come in first stage while the researcher needs to prove the ideas with others to get better user involvement .Now lets consider some ways in which ICT tools nominate be used to find Research Topics and create bookmarks for later references. lookup Engines A swash of the blade that enhances tuition and research is the use of search engines. A search on the network tramp be very effective in providing a scope for an unknown quote or theory , in a apropos manner. The use of search engines thunder mug save precious time in research.Research indicates that about 85% of Internet users use basic search engines and search services like google to find specific information. However, it is too give that users are not satisfied with the performance of the current generation of search engines for not giving focused results by way of providing articles and notes from personal blogs and so forth along with eccentric research articles . so ordinary search engines are helpful for researching business and popular culture, but theyre not very effective for finding academic research papers or scholarly journal articles. Journal articles are available in a variety of formats, ranging from citations or brief abstracts to full text delivered electronically or in steadfastly copy. Some articles are provided free. Often, a fee is unavoidable, or access is limit in some way. Searching the invisible web resources also can be very useful.The following are some of t he useful search engines used for research activities , 1. www.ask.com -lists related searches ,2. www.base-search.net a multi-disciplinary search engine for academically relevant web , 3. Bing Microsofts search engine lists related searches , 4. Google Scholar indexes scholarly research from many a(prenominal) journals, books, papers, etc. across many disciplines ,and 5. Yahoo Search originally a electronic network directory, it now features a reliable search engine.Metasearch engines allow to query various search engines simultaneously providing a whiz list of results. These can avoid duplication and provide additional ideas . Some of the very useful and popular metasearch engines are Clusty (Vivisimo) , Dogpile , Ixquick and Mamma.com.Subject Directories allow to lop Web pages by category , and are best used when in that respect is a need to find a list of general Web sites pertaining to a topic . These are often compiled by human editors and provide annotated links poi nting to reliable Web sites. Apart from the google and Yahoo Directory these are a few others worth consideration are the open directory www.dmoz.org and www.opendoar.org/search.php .Subject-specific search engines incline to focus solely on a topic and allow to limit results and ensure that these are relevant . Many subject specific resources can be found listed by various University subroutine library departments in the Library Research Guides. The following tools represent only a sampling Pinakes A Subject Launchpad , Infomine ,Scirus , Hakia, Education World and Business.com .LoadingSocial Bookmarking is tagging a website and saving it for later. Instead of saving them to web browser, we are saving them to the web. Having started out as a way to store browser bookmarks online so that they can be utilized on different data processors and shared, mixer bookmarking has grown to such(prenominal)(prenominal) an extent that it can now be used to search the web instead of relying on traditional search engines. In fact, favorable bookmarking sites are being used as intelligent search engines. Most social bookmarking sites allow to browse through the items based on most popular, deep added, or belonging to a certain category like technology, politics, blogging, news, sports, etc. Examples of Social Bookmarking sites are Del.icio.us , Magnolia, Blinklist, esnips etc.Social News , another feature of web 2.0 is websites like Digg , Reddit and Propeller focus on social bookmarking of news-related items such as politics, sports, technology, etc. Social news sites are different from type social bookmarking sites by foc victimisation on specific articles and blog posts quite an than websites. Because of this, they can be a great source of news, and they also wish the ability to participate in the discussion by leaving comments on popular news items.Evaluating and citing Web sites thither are some rowing of caution while gathering information from web 1. all t ypes of information are not available on the Web, and especially not for free. 2. unconnected traditional published sources, Web documents have not necessarily been evaluated accordingly the need to assess the quality of the documents is very crucial for a researcher.Information on the Web can originate from many different sources including individuals, organizations, governments, academic institutions and companies. It is therefore important to quickly assess the reliability of the sources found. The major points of stigmatize when evaluating a Web site are Currency , Authority , pop the question and Point of view .3. Design the study and develop your method(s)In this chassis of research there has to be active Participant Involvement. The researchers has to have proper report Design , correct Sampling and have to sort out all Statistical issues for conducting soft/Quantitative Research .In the following three ways ICT Tools can be used by researchers for soft researchAs a medium of communication ICT tools provide mesomorphic communication channels mostly text based but increasingly enhanced with moving and still images and sound, thus competing fairly with the traditional medium of interaction. Researchers can log into any of these channels and practices , either for studying the way people use computer mediated communication in ethnic linguistic context or can utilize these to interact with participants by initiating a discussion.As a network of computers -Internet , the most popular and powerful ICT tool, breaks all boundaries and makes physical distances between people disappear thus providing a platform like online communities, blogs and discussions forums to reach out to people all across the ballock for collective and collaborative research with seamless possibilities for the researcher to utilize this position particularly for collecting information.As a context of social twirl The web2.0 facilitates the researchers to witness and analy se the structure of conversation by either active or simply observing , the social structures that emerge. This gives a good taste to the researcher while gathering data and then during analysis , how talking to builds and structures social reality.Regardless of the use of any of the above s forethought poser that is used , a qualitative research can be conducted by utilizing Internet based other web2.0 tools for research on any social phenomenon at the same time a qualitative research can conducted on any of the web2.0 tools as a specific social phenomenon as well.4. Collect and collate the dataData accumulation requires Collaboration . A word of caution to the researcher is to take care of Intellectual belongings related issues in advance before victimisation Internet and web2.0 tools for data collection and storage . The qualitative research process starts with a Questionnaire / Survey Design . Survey can be created using ICT tools Web, Word motionors (WP), Spreadsheets a nd now most popular online tools like google-forms and surveymonkey.com, and can be distributed using email and discussion boards.The data collected using one or many such online tools needs a proper Database structure for storage and recovery thus tools like relational databases ( SQL Server, ORACLE etc.) open sources databases using MySQL and Access, Flatfile database using Spreadsheet, wikis, GIS Google earth, Google Maps, Flickr, Arcview/explorer) can be used.Data Analysis is a an area where a lot of works is being done and a huge collection of open source tools are available for researcher e.g. for Relationship role techniques like Herring or fish bone mind maps, raise Analysis, PMI, Venn etc. software like Inspiration, kidspiration, smart ideas, Cmap, Mindmapper, freemind would be useful and also the opensource Online tools available at www.gliffy.com/, www.mindmeister.com , www.drawanywhere.com/ . An open source statistical software computer programming language like R is found very useful by researcher. For preparing Graph using Spreadsheet, digitizer , for typical data analysis using Calc or excel, preparing Checklist (any Word Processor , Spreadsheet) and Mashing tools like intel mash up is now very common .ICT in Qualitative Data AnalysisThe pertinency of ICT based analytical tools in qualitative research is debated as it is argued, that the original meaning inherent in the data could be distorted or lost in the process of data analysis. Thus the employment of computer programs in qualitative data analysis is a practice that should be viewed with caution. Analysing qualitative clobber that is based on speech or texts derived from interviews and conversations mustiness have regard for the context and the integrated whole. Computer based systems to aid with analysis are, often based on the natural scientific view of the world that sees social phenomena as reflections of the higher level ordering of an intention social structure. The ideal data type here is one which is manipulable to quantifying and segmentation into discrete categories as this allows for numerical manipulation and analysis. Researchers who make use of these packages must remain alert to the need to preserve the integrity and context of the original material and not lose sight of this during the process of steganography and subsequent analysis.5. Reporting and disseminationThe final step in the process of any research activity is Writing up Research by Research Reporting Guidelines advised using the wordprocessors.Disseminating Research To make the research outcomes reach maximum numbers of stake holders proper planning for printing, mail and/or posting on community forums plus translation is required . Making research results accessible to various audiences through website, Research Portfolio, Newsletter, and other Community reports is now a common practice. Presenting research at Conferences/ Seminars and thus making findings known to users should b e planned. Events happening across the globe on the theme of research can be found out comfortably today through Internet.Bibliography Web pages, as with journal articles, books, encyclopedias and other material consulted while researching , need to be properly cited in a bibliography, a reference list or a list of works cited. There are a lot of Citation Style Guides online which provide more information on citation.Thus , there are some advanced(a) tools available today that support researchers in the entire research process i.e. researcher can get help to Search intelligently, assess the quality of search results, help in recording, organizing and producing information using online notecards , and also help in formatting the bibliography in MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian whichever style that is required.bibliographic information of this paperSTPHAN VINCENT-LANCRIN , What is Changing in Academic Research? Trends and Futures Scenarios , European Journal of Education, Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Pages169 202 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing LtdAitken, Wendy (2007). Use of Web in Tertiary Research and Education. Webology, 4(2), article 42. 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