rep

rep

Winter School: Computing for Social Anthropologists.

Report to ESRC

J. Davis, University of Kent at Canterbury

BICA Issue No. 4: March 1986

1. The grant was originally offered for a Summer School, but for various reasons it became a Winter School, held from 2-11 January 1986 at the University of Kent.

Thirteen people said they would come, and on this basis the Office agreed it would be reasonable to go ahead. In the event five teachers and five graduate students turned up1, but it was not clear that so few would, until the first day of the school.

2. The program provided for three kinds of event:

    Formal classes.
  1. B. Evening discussion sessions.
  2. C. Supervised practice.

The formal classes , lasting 90 minutes, were held twice each day. The first eight were divided: participants could attend either a series on UNIX, or a course in `C' programming. The second eight classes were on special topics, and were attended by all the participants. The last session was a review of the course.

The evening discussion sessions were on topics of general interest (e.g. the hard and software requirements of anthropologists using computers in the field).

The supervised practice sessions were periods (a total of four hours per day) when a graduate student was on hand in the terminal room to give advice.

A complete programme is at Appendix 2.

In addition, participants had unlimited access to Lucy (the Anthropology Orion) for twenty-four hours each day. The figures for usage show that participants logged on for rather more than 200 hours connect time. That is an undercounting: people from the University of Kent used their own account numbers; when Lucy crashed for 16 hours, all users were switched to another machine.

3. In one major respect the Winter School was disappointing. Why did so few people come? There are about 120 teachers of anthropology in UK, and I think about 50 new graduate students each year. The school was advertised in Anthropology Today , the newsletter of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and in BICA (Bulletin of Information in Computing and Anthropology). I sent multiple copies of the program and booking forms, with a personal letter to each of the UK departments, with a request to distribute them to colleagues and graduate students. In two cases I know this was not done; in four, I know it was. That leaves seven where is it uncertain what happened.

I also tried to do direct mailing to ESRC students, but ESRC does not keep easy lists of students by discipline.

I know that my colleagues in other universities are without exception forward-looking and intellectually adventurous; and I know that they and their students ought to learn computing. I think that publicity was well targetted, that the timing was right, and that only one person wrote to say the costs were too high.

I think that next time we will benefit from word-of-mouth \*- those who did come will spread the word. And I shall try a wider, less closely targetted, publicity, as well as trying to get lists of graduate students to write to them directly.

4. The Winter School was in all other respects a success, although we will do some things differently next time, to take account of the comments of participants.

    People did acquire computing skills to a level which they could use in their home institutions: at the end of the UNIX course they could use the programming facilities of awk , and were doing so successfully. On the `C' course, they wrote programs using functions, made satisfactory use of control-flow and could use pointers and arrays with relative ease. Some participants were experimenting with structures, to a level which suggested they might use them in their research.
  1. 2. The second half of the course introduced them to artificial intelligence, relational databases, bibliographic programs, mail, gtree , and so on. This had two valuable effects: on the one hand, people acquired understanding of what anthropologists might use computers for, what the limitations and drawbacks are, what the direction of future developments may be. On the other, they acquired skills in using databases and computerised bibliographies (for example), which they can export to their home institutions. Everyone said that they found this part of the course stimulating and useful. I think that the graduate students were more practical in their attitude: at any rate, one of them said that their main purpose was to get skills they could use in their three years of research, rather than to learn now about developments which might not be achieved before their completion date had arrived.
  2. 3. The evening sessions generally began at 7.30, and were discussions led by me or Fischer or Ryan. They were relatively less focussed, and raised many broad issues about computing and anthropology. They were extremely popular: I think none of them ended before 11.00, and one continued until midnight; if it is any indication, that is after closing time in East Kent.
  3. 4. A general point arose, which is worth reporting. One participant said, and no-one disagreed, that a major advantage of the school was that they were taught by people who knew they were not stupid \*- who knew their professional standing as students or as teachers. He was therefore less shy about asking questions or in asking for help; this was not the case when he had been taught by people in a computing laboratory.

5. Lessons learned by us. I intend to apply for funds for another winter school in January 1987. The lessons we know we have learned are listed below. It may be that the committee has suggestions about others.

    Timing: for ESRC students the summer is a bad time. They are either pressing ahead with their research after their first year, or waiting to take up their first grant, and therefore Future events will be planned as Winter Schools. ineligible for ESRC support.
  1. 2. Publicity: present methods (relying on the good will of colleagues) seem to be inadequate. We will extend formal advertising to journals and magazines (MAN, New Society). We will try to get lists of graduate students in each department. I think we now have a subscriber to BICA in every department in UK except East Anglia and Newcastle, and these people can be asked to publicise the school further.
  2. 3. Course content: we will make various minor adjustments to the UNIX elements. Mail, for example, was introduced by accident at the end of the course to occupy people who wouldn't fit into the Perq demonstration of gtree . It turned out a great success, not only because of the sociability involved in communicating with other course members: people said they had learned things about file systems in UNIX which they had not fully appreciated before. I think we shall make a number of adjustments of this kind, as a result of seeing how participants responded to the course.
  3. 4. Practical interests: we will need a better way of meeting the very specific needs of graduate students. One of them said that they had only a short time to complete their research, and they were not especially interested in hearing about developments which would fruit fully only after their grants were over. They had a more practical interest than the teachers. I do not think in fact that the time they spent on such topics as artificial intelligence was wasted: they learned what the limits of computer-use are at present, and they learned important things about the style of problem-solving in computing. The point is, to make that apparent. Nevertheless, we should do more to identify the specific needs of the graduate students who come, and to address them in the sessions on applications.

6. Future developments.

    Participants said that they felt isolated and that it was important to them to maintain momentum and contact. In their home institutions Social Anthropologists are not regarded as typical computer users, and indeed it seems that their colleagues do not regard their interests and skills as typically anthropological. They are treated with varying degrees of off-handedness and indifference. The problem was to provide some continuity of contact among people with similar levels of skill and similar interests.
  1. We have therefore pushed ahead with out plans to establish a Bulletin Board held at Kent which people can log on to via Janet. This will include general news, computing for anthropology news, and some applications (e.g. access to our bibliography and versions of refer ). I hope that this will be inaugurated in April, during the ASA conference which is to be held here this year.
  2. 2. We plan also to start a news group, available over the UK net, providing anthropological news and sources. We do not, at the moment, have much to put into it, and in any case local administrators have to be persuaded to take it. So this is a slightly longer-term project, and should be available from next winter.
  3. 3. We plan to repeat the Winter School in future years. In spite of the disappointment about numbers, all the participants agreed that this should be done: it had been a worthwhile experience. The schools should provide basic training for anthropologists until this is available in anthropologists home institutions. We hope that some of the people who did UNIX this year will return to do `C' in the future; but we do not intend to provide advanced training \*- a start-up course, rather than a part-time diploma.
  4. 4. We plan an additional short conference, perhaps biennial, for skilled enthusiasts we hope to have created through the winter schools. This will supplement the Bulletin Board and the newsgroup, and allow people from different institutions to meet. Appendix 1: Participants.
  5. Dr W Wilder, Department of Anthropology, Durham.
  6. Mr S. McKay, Department of Anthropology, Durham.
  7. Dr A. Akeroyd, Department of Sociology, York.
  8. Dr D. Rheubottom, Department of Anthropology, Manchester.
  9. Mr K. Meethan, AFRAS, Sussex.
  10. Mrs. J. Collins, AFRAS, Sussex.
  11. Mr C. Kirk, AFRAS, Sussex.
  12. Miss J. Bagg, Social Sciences, Kent.
  13. Dr N. Colclough, Anthropology, Kent.
  14. Dr J. Eades, Anthropology, Kent. Appendix 2: The programme of sessions.

Part A: Introduction to Unix (Michael Fischer).

Session 1: Introduction: Logging on and off; codemaster.

Session 2: Editing and text formatting.

Session 3: More editing.

Session 4: Files: Input and output.

Session 5: Awk.

Session 6: More complex Awk.

Session 7: Text manipulation.

Session 8: Shell programming.

Part B: `C' (Nick Ryan).

Session 1: Introduction: Why `C'?

Session 2: Variables and operators.

Session 3: Functions, flow control.

Session 4: Arrays and pointers.

Session 5: More functions.

Session 6: Structures.

Session 7: More data structures.

Session 8: Final thoughts.

Part C: Useful applications.

Session 9: Simulation (MDF).

Session 10: Simulation (MDF).

Session 11: Computerised bibliographies (JD).

Session 12: Computerised bibliographies (JD).

Session 13: Expert Knowledge systems (MDF).

Session 14: Relational Databases (NSR).

Session 15: Kinship and the computer (NSR).

Session 16: Kinship and the computer (NSR).

( Alternate Session 15, 16: Mail (JD)2.

Session 17: Course evaluation (JD, NSR, MDF).

Evening Discussions:

Thursday 2nd Jan: Models and computer models.

Friday 3rd Jan: General discussion

Monday 6th Jan: Research design for computing

Tuesday 7th Jan: Computers in the field

Wednesday 8th Jan: Institutional aspects of computer use

Thursday 9th Jan: Using mail to communicate between Universities

Return to Contents page