Strategic Reading & Conceptual Modeling

Abstract

“Strategic reading” is a term coined to conceive reading as a process of constructing meaning by interacting with text. While reading, individuals use their prior knowledge along with clues from the text to construct meaning, and place the new knowledge within this frame. Strategic reading is then a pivotal ability for conceptual modelers, more so if domain knowledge needs to be acquired mainly from the literature as it is the case for research projects. But this might turn problematic. In Quora and other PhD forums, students moan about their frustrating reading and literature review experiences. 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 (and hence, conceptual modeling) can be more effective if annotation is conducted in direct relationship to a main research 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 a RCA platform (i.e. MindMeister) and a reading platforms (i.e. Mendeley). The aim: improving RCA awareness while reading so that annotations can be traced back to the RCA issues.

This work is being jointly developed by Jeremías P. Contel from the University of the Basque Contry (Spain), and John Venable from Curtin Universtity, Perth (Australia).