Strategic Reading in Design Science: Let Root-Cause Analysis Guide Your Readings

摘要

Reading literature is important, but problematic. In Quora and other PhD forums, students moan about their frustrating reading and literature review experiences. Strategic reading might help. This term is coined to conceive of reading as a process of constructing meaning by interacting with text in a targeted way. The fact that strategic reading is purpose-driven suggests that the purpose might qualify the reading. If this purpose is Design Science Research (DSR), what would be the strategy for reading? Traditionally, students are encouraged to annotate while reading. Digital annotations are expected to be useful for supporting comprehension and interpretation. Our belief is that strategic reading can be more effective if annotation is conducted in direct relationship to a main DS activity: root-cause analysis (RCA). RCA can provide the questions whose answers should be sought in the literature. Unfortunately, this process is not supported by current tools. When reading papers, researchers might not be all aware of the issues being raised during RCA. And the other way around, when it comes to RCA, evidences found in the literature might not be promptly accessible. This paper reports on research to develop a technical solution to this problem: a plug-in for Google Chrome that provides seamless integration between the RCA platform (i.e. MindMeister) and the reading platforms (i.e. Mendeley). The aim: improving RCA awareness while reading so that annotations can be traced back to the RCA issues. First evaluations are positive as for improving reading focus and facilitating reference recoverability.