2020: Master’s thesis Abstract

Informatics Course, Graduate School of Engineering, Kochi University of Technology

An Eﬀective Planning and Reporting System in Academic ResearchLabs
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1Fitra Rahmamuliani【 Human-Engaged Computing Laboratory 】

Introduction

Planning and Reporting are common practices inresearch collaboration for achieving eﬀective communication among research team members. These practices are performed in diﬀerent forms (e.g., verbally or
text-based), in various time frequencies (e.g., weekly ormonthly), and tools such as emails, document sharing
tools and other team collaboration tools (e.g., Slack).
Reporting activities in the workplaces of knowledge workers were evaluated by recent studies [1, 2].
However, the working conditions and the types of tasks
are diﬀerent from research stakeholders (e.g., students,mentors, supervisor) that have high autonomy andﬂexibility to ﬁnd time to set their own schedule. Welldesigned reporting and planning tools are needed sothat mentors and students can perform their researchand reporting activities eﬃciently and fulﬁll their respective responsibilities. Therefore, we ask: (RQ1)
what are the strategies that individuals in researchteams use for planning and reporting? (RQ2) how
might diﬀerent stakeholders (mentors and students)
experience planning and reporting tools diﬀerently?
(RQ3) what are the expectations, requirements, andpain points of these stakeholders? (RQ4) how can we
improve current planning and reporting system to better support collaboration? To address these questions,
we did two studies: (1) understanding users by investigating the planning and reporting practices for early
career researchers and students using a lab reporting
system; (2) developing the initial stage of reportingand planning tools.

2Study 1 - Experiment for Understanding Users

We recruited 12 participants (half females, meanage = 26.9, range = 23 − 35) among 26 lab membersof a laboratory. All participants were proactively using a web-based blog system for planning and reporting practices ([Figure 1a, Figure 2a]). Participants
included ﬁve project mentors (mean age = 30.9) andseven students (mean age = 24.1) and have used theblog for periods of from one month to three years; mentors had more experience than students (mean experience: mentors = 22 months, students = 14 months).
After obtaining information about the experimental(a) Previous blog interface(b) Initial stage blog interface

Figure 1: Preview of the latest report
procedure, participants signed a consent form and participated in an interview session with an average duration of 50 minutes. We collected information about theparticipants’ previous planning and reporting strategies and tools they use, including their pros and cons.
We also investigated their preference regarding the frequency of use, format, content, and the social aspectsof their practices. All interviews were audio-recorded
for further evaluation by transcribing verbatim andusing the codebook thematic analysis to analyze theinterview content.

3Study 1 - Findings

Our results show most of the participants motivated to write their blogs by having weekly meetings.
Blog writing was perceived by half of the participants
as a proper tool to communicate their progress andplan with the head of the lab, project supervisors, ormentors. Another beneﬁt of blog writing is that students could receive feedback and advice from supervisors or mentors that can encourage them to correct
their mistakes and to be more eﬀective. Blog writing
is useful in organizing meetings, supervising students
remotely, and using diﬀerent usability features such as
seeing the previous blog, reading everyone’s blog on
one page, and having templates for writing the blog.
We also investigated the barriers to planning andreporting practices due to internal and external factors. Internal factors are related to a lack of intrinsic motivation or individual skills due to having fewer
things to report, hard to predict the duration of a taskand lack the necessary skills to compose their reports.
On the other hand, external factors are uncontrollable

2020: Master’s thesis Abstract(a) Previous blog interface

Informatics Course, Graduate School of Engineering, Kochi University of Technology(b) Initial stage blog interface

Figure 2: Input the planning and reporting entries

Figure 3: Initial stage blog interface - Activity Formbelow the list

Weekly report; (2) Projects and Admin; (3) Leaderboard. Each of the pages has a left navigation bar
consist of the previous pages link, user’s experience
points, levels, and contacts. Every week, a reﬂection
pop up will show for their progress this week and they
can see the written reﬂection on the top of their weekly
report. The user’s weekly report will be grouped byeach project and including the activity name, date,priority, and the percentage of progress. Below eachproject, there will be a form for adding activity related
to that project 3. Meanwhile, on the project page,
users can see the report of all members of the project,
but cannot add, edit, and delete the others report. At
the end of the weekly report, users can see who has
seen their reports and comments section that they canlike and reply to. Every comment feature event will
trigger the notiﬁcation and related users will achieveit.

6situations and obstacles such as family events, a workshop, and other activities that do not relate to theresearch but are equally important to the individual.
As a result, we have provided several implications for
future technology design including: (1) facilitate interaction to increase participation; (2) make the systemeasy to use to improve the eﬃciency of work; (3) engage students to gain willingness in blog writing; and(4) remote collaboration.

4Study 2 - Blog development

These design implications are expected to facilitate productive team member interactions, to increase
participation, to ease each users‘ concerns, to engage
and motivate students to write useful blog entries andto improve the eﬃciency of research work. From thedesign implications, we start to implement the initialdevelopment of improving the blog design in the lab
we studied. The initial development will continue tobuild on AWS EC2 and change into a dynamic website with a PostgreSQL database, SQLAlchemy, andPython Tordano. This website can also be accessedby smartphone browser to read ([Figure 1b] and write
their reports and plans using the form on the new activity modal shown in the Figure 2b or below the activity list within the same project shown in the Figure
3 as seen in the computer browser.

5

Study 2 - Blog demonstration

We implemented the initial stage of the blog tomotivate students to increase users eﬃciency in research by having three diﬀerent pages on the blog: (1)Discussion and Conclusion

Our study found that participants have a strategy
to hold weekly in-person meetings that helped themget motivated to write their reports on the lab system tool. Mentors and students experienced this toolby helping them communicate their progress and plan
their work with their supervisor and colleagues. Detailfeedback should be provided by the project mentor to
improve the quality of student’s reports and mentors
also expected to get feedback from students. Reporting and planning tools are expected to facilitate collaboration, help research stakeholders organizing themeetings, supervise students remotely, and help on lab
communication by giving feedback and comments features. As planning and reporting continue to be beneﬁcial for research teams, our study provides insights
and design guidelines, complimented with the initialdevelopment design for future technology supported
tools.

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