Fully Involved Fourth Week
This was a very busy week. Everybody was working to get IRB approval of research projects before Mini University. Mini University is a week long vacation college. Older people, mostly IU alumni, come to take classes and workshops, meet old classmates, and make new friends.
Our lab group partnered with the School of Health to teach a workshop on risk. Our presenters focused on online risk, while the health professionals addressed sexual risk. In between parts, we handed out a survey that asked questions about how people view online risk.
For the Mini University class, I put together the folders with money, a short summary sheet on the presentation, the survey, and IU swag. I also assisted with the survey presentation. I gave out surveys both in the lecture and in the hallways. We gathered over 40 completed responses.
Most of the lab had to resubmit IRB applications for reapproval after changes that week. To help relieve everybody's stress, I assisted my colleagues with tasks that will be described in another post.
Our lab group partnered with the School of Health to teach a workshop on risk. Our presenters focused on online risk, while the health professionals addressed sexual risk. In between parts, we handed out a survey that asked questions about how people view online risk.
For the Mini University class, I put together the folders with money, a short summary sheet on the presentation, the survey, and IU swag. I also assisted with the survey presentation. I gave out surveys both in the lecture and in the hallways. We gathered over 40 completed responses.
Most of the lab had to resubmit IRB applications for reapproval after changes that week. To help relieve everybody's stress, I assisted my colleagues with tasks that will be described in another post.
So, in my last post, I mentioned the stress revolving around Mini University and last-minute IRB approvals. This week, I assisted one of our doctoral students, Tim, in preparing all of his material for IRB committee review.
I helped Tim with some of the work for his eye tracking study. He is looking at how people view webpages and browser security cues via eye and mouse tracking. I designed and wrote up an instruction set with tasks for the subjects to do online during the study. I created a list of questions for the subjects to fill out to make sure that the people were following the directions. We also had a concerns sheet so that people could explain why they were opting out of particular activities if they felt uncomfortable. We wanted to see if they noticed any of the security warnings that we had put into the system. I also designed and created a flyer for elderly people, who might be interested in doing the study.
I also assisted Tim with some programming. I downloaded a NASA website. We wanted to insert some malware, which would be picked up by the anti-virus program on the computer, into an on-page image, which subjects were instructed to download.
I helped Tim with some of the work for his eye tracking study. He is looking at how people view webpages and browser security cues via eye and mouse tracking. I designed and wrote up an instruction set with tasks for the subjects to do online during the study. I created a list of questions for the subjects to fill out to make sure that the people were following the directions. We also had a concerns sheet so that people could explain why they were opting out of particular activities if they felt uncomfortable. We wanted to see if they noticed any of the security warnings that we had put into the system. I also designed and created a flyer for elderly people, who might be interested in doing the study.
I also assisted Tim with some programming. I downloaded a NASA website. We wanted to insert some malware, which would be picked up by the anti-virus program on the computer, into an on-page image, which subjects were instructed to download.
I also found time to work on my normal projects this week.
I worked on the passwords project. First, I had to fix bugs in the projects' preexisting programs in order to make them run. Second, I created a program in HTML and JavaScript that would take an inputted sentence and turn it into a password that used the first letter of each word, upper-cased at least one letter, and inserted a random number and a specific, session-specific, symbol. For example, the sentence "You enjoy candy, especially dark chocolate covered mints." could be turned into Y!ecedc4cm
I also worked with Jacob, a Masters student, on creating categories for the certificate data we had collected. We wanted to create a multiple-choice question asking survey takers to mark all the answers that they thought describe what a security certificate does.
I worked on the passwords project. First, I had to fix bugs in the projects' preexisting programs in order to make them run. Second, I created a program in HTML and JavaScript that would take an inputted sentence and turn it into a password that used the first letter of each word, upper-cased at least one letter, and inserted a random number and a specific, session-specific, symbol. For example, the sentence "You enjoy candy, especially dark chocolate covered mints." could be turned into Y!ecedc4cm
I also worked with Jacob, a Masters student, on creating categories for the certificate data we had collected. We wanted to create a multiple-choice question asking survey takers to mark all the answers that they thought describe what a security certificate does.
This is the final post about this week, I promise. It was a really long, productive week.
We have just begun Wednesday morning seminars. Dr. Camp wants her undergraduate students to meet the visiting undergraduate researchers, who participated in the Bradford Woods retreat. Every Wednesday, many of the undergraduate researchers have a seminar with employees of the university, who discuss topics important to researchers, including ethics, diversity, and the research process.
This week, at our first meeting, we had a relatively awkward discussion on diversity. I am one of the few Caucasian students in the class and I am a firm supporter of diversity initiatives focusing not just on race, but also cultural background and gender. However, the session turned into a rant about the evilness of colorblindness, i.e. seeing people homogeneously and ignoring their racial background. I don't think that our instructor was particularly pleased at the guest speaker's comments and handling of the little discussion that followed. Many of the undergraduate students, who come from diverse backgrounds, felt embarrassed at how the issue was addressed.
Great news: I finally have food money! I also have a significantly improved social life thanks to meeting everyone at Bradford Woods. Before, I was going out once a week to swing dance with the IU Swing Club. However, now I am meeting friends I made at Bradford Woods for social events and meals.
We have just begun Wednesday morning seminars. Dr. Camp wants her undergraduate students to meet the visiting undergraduate researchers, who participated in the Bradford Woods retreat. Every Wednesday, many of the undergraduate researchers have a seminar with employees of the university, who discuss topics important to researchers, including ethics, diversity, and the research process.
This week, at our first meeting, we had a relatively awkward discussion on diversity. I am one of the few Caucasian students in the class and I am a firm supporter of diversity initiatives focusing not just on race, but also cultural background and gender. However, the session turned into a rant about the evilness of colorblindness, i.e. seeing people homogeneously and ignoring their racial background. I don't think that our instructor was particularly pleased at the guest speaker's comments and handling of the little discussion that followed. Many of the undergraduate students, who come from diverse backgrounds, felt embarrassed at how the issue was addressed.
Great news: I finally have food money! I also have a significantly improved social life thanks to meeting everyone at Bradford Woods. Before, I was going out once a week to swing dance with the IU Swing Club. However, now I am meeting friends I made at Bradford Woods for social events and meals.