reviewing articles as a tool for learning

8/14/2019 Reviewing Articles as a Tool for Learning

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AI & Soc (1998) 12 :34 6-3509 1 9 9 8 Sp ring e r- Ver lag Lo n d o n L imi ted ~0~ | ~ S O C l I I I ' r ~

Open Forum

R e v i e w i n g A r t i c l e s a s a T o o l f o r L e a r n i n gPertti JarvinenDepartm ent of Com puter Science, U niversity of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

1 . I n t r o d u c t i o n

Any research does not start from scratch but is always based on earlier research.Hence junior scientists must know the earlier research on their problem domain andrelate their contribution to the earlier studies. Reviewing earlier research can takeplace in at least two different ways: Yin (1984: 20) emphasises that junior scientistsusually review earlier literature to determine the a n s w e r s about what is known on atopic; in contrast, senior researchers review previous research to develop sharperand more insightful q u e s t i o n s out of a topic. Mason et al. (1997) in their recentarticle emphasised that all research must begin with a question or a cluster of co-ordinated questions, which serve to focus all subsequent inquiry.Articles from the literature can be used in many ways for guiding junior scientists.The purpose of this paper is to present our ideas and experiences on usage of articlesfor guiding doctoral students.

Our approach can be called a case study where the tacit knowledge of the advisoris made explicit (Nonaka, 1994). It will take place by self-reflecting our principlesand reasons for selecting and use particular articles to be read at our doctoral seminar.We shall underline more process-oriented aspects than product-oriented ones.

Most of our doctoral students are working in private and public enterprises andhence studying only part-time. They finished their graduate studies about 10 yearsago. This means that they have more relevant practical experience but fewer contactswith scientific literature than full-time doctoral students.

Our seminar is a half-day meeting once per month. The three to four articlesdistributed at the end of the previous meeting (one month ago) are then summarisedand evaluated. As a teacher I have also prepared a three- to eight-page long review


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Reviewing Articles as a Tool for Learning 347on each article. All reviews concerning a certain article are distributed amongparticipants at the meeting and then discussed. One of the student reviewers is thenselected to polish her review for publication. The polished reviews are publishedyearly as a report (Jarvinen and Makela, 1992; Jarvinen, 1993, 1998; see the list ofarticles at ht tp: / /www.u ta . f i / -p j / ) . A student will receive credits first by preparingher review and then also by polishing the final version.

2 . S o m e P o s it iv e A s p e c t s in t h e R e v i e w i n g P r o c e s sWe shall now sharpen our description and analysis by presenting more concretequestions. They are structured according to the life cycle of the review, from itsbeginning to exploiting it in the printed form:

Why are particular articles selected to be read?1. Which aspects are emphasi sed in instructions to write a review of the article?2. To which aspects in the article can a teacher pay attention?3. How can the article be used as a learning environment (Achtenhagen et al.,

1993; Simons, 1993) at the seminar meeting?4. How can polishing of the review support learning?5. How can doctora l students use the review reports?Some answers to these questions are presented below.

In the following, different criteria and arguments for question 1 - selecting ofarticles to be read - are presented:1.1 The novel ty of articles is emphasi sed in selection. This is important, because it

is needless to study such problems and to publish results that are already known.On the other hand, a researcher must always know the forefront of research.

1.2 Survey articles are much appreciated, because they present current knowledgeabout a certain domain in a condensed form. The scheme used by the author(s)can play a central role as a framework in future research.

1.3 If there is one leading (yearly) conference on a certain domain, two or threeof the best articles from the conference proceedings are selected, because theyshow the direction of the main stream in research.The classical or 'must' articles are selected, because they represent milestonesin the progress of research, and they have much been cited.The articles of the leading national researchers are also read, because they arepotential reviewers for dissertations (foreign reviewers are of course preferred).Publications written by colleagues in the same department are selected too. Onewants all the awareness of the department to be fully exploited. (It has been annoy-ing to hear from a visitor that my colleague and I must discuss our efforts more.)

1.7 Articles written by international 'sta rs' vis iting in our national doctoral seminarare also selected. (In information systems science we have since 1985 had thenational doctoral programme, with six to eight seminars per year. An attempt ismade to procure the best possible researchers in the world as lecturers at thoseseminars.) To support (i) learning and understanding the lectures and (ii) formal

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348 P. Jarvinenand informal discussions with visitors, my students and I have tried to readtheir recent papers beforehand.

Our i n s t ruc t ions f o r wr i t i ng a review (question 2) propose that the article to be readshould first be summarised and then evaluated. The reviewing process has someimplicit and explicit reasons for use too.2.1 The summary could be later utilised in writing one ' s own article. A good practice

in referring can at the same moment be exercised (Sutton and Staw 1995: 373).2.2 The content of the article could be related to one 's own research topic and

experiences (Kolb, 1984).2.3 The article can also be compared with other articles.2.4 A doctoral student can identify a research approach used in the article.2.5 A student can also describe how she would apply the theoretical frameworkand/or the results found in the article to her own topic. Part-time students also

often explain how they immediately exploited new knowledge received throughreading the article.

To my mind, the t eacher can in her own review pay attention to many aspects sheconsiders to be important. For example:3.1 She can discuss a writing style used in the article. It is possible to show that the

articles describing a survey research using a questionnaire usually have a similarstructure, and many articles have a similar structure in their introduction anddiscussion sections. She can also show how meta-text in the article serves toorganise the propositional content of the text (Mauranen, 1993).

3.2 The teacher can present the article in a historical perspective by showing theprogress of research on the topic.

3.3 She can also initiate discussion about alternative research settings or approaches.3.4 The teacher can also characterise the journal in which the article was published,

i.e. whether the relevance or the rigour of research is stressed (Mason, 1988).3.5 Not every selected article is the best one possible. The teacher can use that

article as a warning example.During discussion at the s em i n a r m ee t in g different views can emerge:4.1 Students can exercise their argumenta tion capabilities in defending their

deviating view.4.2 Different interpretations o f a certain term, construct, method or model can

be discussed, and hence the terminology will be clarified. This kind of seminarorganisation supports a dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge and hence(group/organisational) learning (Huber, 1991; Nonaka, 1994).

4.3 Students with extensive practical experience can relate the message of the articleto their own affairs, and also raise issues on the topic that are more relevant forcurrent practice than those taken in the article.

During preparation of the polished review the student may still have some learning sessions:5.1 She must relate different views written in other reviews and presented during

the discussion in the seminar meeting to each other.


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Reviewing Articles as a Tool for Learning 3495.2 She can reinterpret some message of the article and apply single or double loop

learning (Argyris, 1977, 1991).The published reviews in a report serve certain purposes:6.1 The review report allows the new student more easily and more quickly to

achieve almost the same level as other participants in the seminar.6.2 The review report also helps the new student to select particular articles for

more careful reading.6.3 Review reports partially function as an organisational memory of our seminar

(cf. Hargadon and Sutton, 1997).

Our conceptual analysis shows that the reviewing of articles can be used in manyways to support a doctoral student's learning some necessary skills in research workand her performance in some study tasks.

3 . S o m e O t h e r Im p l ic a t io n s o f th e R e v i e w i n g P r o c e s sThere are also many side effects of reviewing articles. Students are working indifferent industries, and hence their research problems vary and various researchapproaches are needed. To this end, articles concerning research methods are reviewedat the seminar. This familiarity of research issues encouraged the teacher with hiscolleague to write a textbook of research approaches (Jarvinen, 1999). It contains anew classification of a research methods (http://www.uta.fi/-pj/bookl.html).

The teacher has used the file of his reviews (in Finnish) as teaching material andgiven them to students preparing their masters theses. In addition, a file of shortsummaries of the articles in English has been created. This summary file has beenused for information retrieval in the course of various studies. Both Finnish andEnglish files are also supporting the teacher's memory.

The reviewing of articles seems to have many advantages, but it does not, how-ever, solve all the problems of how to train a novice researcher or junior scientist tobecome an expert. Billet (1996) proposed a pathway of tasks from novice to expert,and it may be suitable for a full-time junior researcher working in a research groupunder a senior scientist in a particular (natural science) laboratory. However, todevelop the pathway, i.e. a set of gradually demanding subtasks of research work,for a part-time doctoral student working in a company, seems to be very difficult.Another of Billet's ideas, to provide access to process and product, i.e. researchprocess and results, can be nicely realised in reviewing articles.

We have presented above the teacher's view on usage of articles at the doctoralseminar. We know that our students may have interesting and differing views.

We paid attention above to many very important characteristics o f scientific research.By structuring the review process we have created many learning and evaluationepisodes for our doctoral students. To our mind, our results are applicable and gen-eralisable to any science or discipline, because our topic (information systems) didnot have any particular influence on our reasoning presented above.


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3 5 0 P . J a r v i n e n

R e f e r e n c e s

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Correspo ndence an d o f fpr in t reques ts to : Pe r t ti J a r v in e n , D e p a r t m e n t o f Co m p u t e r Sc i e n c e , U n i v e r s i t y o fTam pere , PO Box 607 , FIN-33101 Tam pere , F in land . Emai l : p j @cs .u ta . fi

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