How to read an Academic Paper - Week 6

This Weeks Task

This week we are tasked pre-reading an academic paper in a certain order so that we can discern if it is worth reading in its the entirety. For this blog, I will perform these steps on the two papers chosen in my last blog. Following these steps, I will know whether I want to read them fully.

1. Did the abstract tell you the three things I said it should? If not, what did it tell you? (NB If your paper doesn't have an abstract, it is not an academic research paper!!! Go and find another one!)
2. What seems to be the research question(s) they were trying to answer?
3. What  methods) did they use to answer the question(s)
4. How credible do you think the paper is? (hint: look at who authors are and where and when it is published also compare what they were asking with what they did)
5. Did you agree, or not, with what they wrote in their conclusion? Why?
6. Briefly describe two things that you learnt from the paper. 
7. In no more than 250 of your own words (i.e. a paraphrase), describe what the paper is about - you could start with “This paper describes……….”

Paper 1: Does Gamification Work? — A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification

1. Did the abstract tell you the three things I said it should? If not, what did it tell you? 

Lars gave us a list of 'hints' for reading academic papers, for this question he is asking if  the abstract tells you the following information:

a. What the research/paper/article topic is

b. What the authors/researchers did and

c. What they discovered/or created/or concluded.

I found for this paper that the abstract aimed directly at the information Lars mentioned. The abstract glossed over this information, summing it up into short sentences that give a solid idea of what the paper covers.

2. What seems to be the research question(s) they were trying to answer?

The general question that is being approached here is whether or not gamification is a viable route for businesses and services to go down. With a greater academic interest in gamification, there has been a wealth of papers published, despite this, nobody has aggregated the results to begin answering the most pertinent question from society as a whole; is gamification a viable option to improve workplaces and services?

3. What  methods) did they use to answer the question(s)

This paper is based on Secondary Research, it uses information from other papers to approach a question about the topic as a whole. This type of paper appears to be the purest form of Secondary Research possible as it has heavy referencing of other papers and relies solely on their information alone by aggregating their discoveries to answer a bigger picture question.

4. How credible do you think the paper is? 

There are a multitude of factors making this paper credible in my eyes;

• It is a conference proceeding paper
• Multiple credible authors
• Heavy referencing of other academic papers
• Follows the standard academic paper structure
• Distils information into a readable format

5. Did you agree, or not, with what they wrote in their conclusion? Why?

The conclusion provided a sound answer to the question being put forward by providing sound conclusions discerned from the aggregated information gathered from the huge list of papers the authors referenced. A lot of research was done to produce the paper and the fruits of their labour were realized successfully in my opinion.

6. Briefly describe two things that you learnt from the paper. 

I learnt that the positive effect of gamification is only realized depending on the individual and also the context of the situation given. People interact with gamified systems differently, so gamification is only effective in the situation where it is targetted at people who find a positive impact from using a gamified system as opposed to other options.

Secondary research is necessary for topics of such a size that they produce a large number of papers.

7. In no more than 250 of your own words (i.e. a paraphrase), describe what the paper is about - you could start with “This paper describes……….”

I have found that this paper provides a healthy overview of academic papers related to gamification and motivational affordances. By reviewing peer-reviewed studies on the topic they have successfully created a framework for examining the effects of gamification via drawing definitions of gamification and contrasting it with motivational affordances.

This paper points out some gaps in existing literature at the time. Positive effects of gamification are put forward with a caveat that it is dependant on context and also dependant on the individual participating. (Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. 2014) This means that gamification systems appear to be unlikely to replace core societal systems entirely but may exist as offshoots to already existing systems in order to appeal further to those who benefit from this type of system.

Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of
Empirical Studies on Gamification. In proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference
on System Sciences, Hawaii, USA, January 6-9, 2014.

Paper 2: Quantum Computing in the NISQ era and beyond

In Class Notes

Today we looked at the specifics of APA referencing, while it is a simple format it must be followed correctly in order to properly reference your academic material. We have been provided with a table which displays a multitude of formats for different types of documents. Remembering how to do all of these seems rather tricky so a source like this is likely needed to keep, in case you need to ensure you are using the correct format for APA referencing.

This weeks exercise will be a dive into reading academic papers, the style we have been given to try is a bit more involved than simply reading it top to bottom, there are a number of preliminary steps you can take to discern if it is worthwhile before diving in.