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CS
5754: Virtual Environments |
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Tips for performing a
literature review To
perform your literature survey, first make sure you understand the scope of
your chosen topic. Talk to Dr. Bowman if you need help getting started.
Make a list of some terminology related to your topic that might serve as
good search terms. Once you're ready to search, don't start with Google! Start with more specific search engines that are
more likely to return relevant results. These include the ACM digital library, IEEExplore, and Citeseer. Try several different versions of search strings,
and search both titles and abstracts if possible. Browse the results looking for papers directly related to
your topic. Once you have identified 2-3 "core" papers and read
them, you can broaden your search in a couple of ways. You can look at the
references of a core paper and follow the most relevant ones (searching
backward in time). You can also search for other publications by the same
author(s) on the same general topic. Finally, using some of the tools (esp. Citeseer) you can find out which papers have referenced your
core paper and look at those (searching forward in time). After all this, you
can do a Google search to uncover anything
interesting (e.g. commercial products) that the other tools might have
missed. Once you
have identified all the papers/sites that relate to your topic, read all the
abstracts (at least). For those that are the most interesting or relevant,
read the entire paper. Then organize your papers into categories –
these categories will serve as the outline for the related work section of your final report.
Finally, ask yourself, "What important research questions remain in this
area that have not yet been adequately addressed?" Some of this will
come from the future work sections of the papers you read, but you will also need
to think deeply about the subject yourself. As you
put together your annotated bibliography, you may format the references in
any way as long as they are consistent.
Include as much bibliographic information as you can (including page
numbers, volume/issue numbers for journals, publishers, etc.) for each
reference. You may reference URLs if that is the only option, but most of
your references should be published articles. At this
time you may also want to draft the related work section of your final
report. As you summarize the existing research, do not simply list papers or
projects and describe their content. Rather, you need to provide a readable
summary of the topic that shows how researchers have addressed the topic and
how their approaches and results are similar or different. Bring out the
relationships between different papers/projects. And show the limitations of
the existing research (limitations that you will hopefully address). Support
your arguments with as many citations as you can, but do not simply make the
sections a list of citations. Here are two examples, one showing the style
that I want, and one demonstrating a poor, "laundry list" style. An
example of good literature survey style (from a paper on comparisons of VE
displays): Note
how the literature is divided into several categories, how the author makes
several points of his own, and how he constructs an argument demonstrating
the limitations of the existing research. Many
authors have noted the importance of studying the differences between
displays and the effects of displays on users, applications, and tasks [e.g.
7, 16]. Few, however, have provided empirical evidence of these effects. One type
of display comparison study found in the literature is a comparison of
desktop and immersive displays for a particular task or application [e.g. 1,
11]. These studies attempt to demonstrate the effects of immersion, as
opposed to the effects of a particular type of display. A second
type of experiment compares the value of multiple VE displays for common
tasks [e.g. 25, 28]. This is closer to the intent of our work, but is not
explicitly focused on 3D interaction. A few
studies have looked at the effects of particular display characteristics on
interaction performance or usability. For example, Arthur [2] studied the
effect of field of view in an HMD on performance in searching and walking
tasks. The prior
research most similar to ours involves studies that compare users' behavior
and performance when interacting with VEs using different displays. Kjeldskov
[15] reports an ambitious study on the usability of 40 common 3D interaction
techniques in a semi-immersive curved display and a fully-immersive surround-screen
display. He found qualitative differences in the usability of particular
techniques between displays, but no quantitative data was collected. Our own
prior work [3] did demonstrate a statistically significant difference in
users' behavior between an HMD and a CAVE during a navigation task. An
example of poor literature survey style (using the same references as the
example above): Note
how there is no organization to this writing (the paragraphs don't indicate
different categories or themes), how the author doesn't analyze any of the
literature, and how he simply lists the existing projects and papers. There are
several existing examples of display comparison experiments in the
literature. Brooks [7] said that such experiments were important. One group
compared a desktop display to a CAVE for an oil-drilling application [11].
Arthur [2] studied the effect of field of view in an HMD on performance in
searching and walking tasks. Another study [25] looked at five different
displays for construction-related tasks. Bowman et al. [3] looked at users' preferences for real
and virtual turning in HMDs and CAVEs. A CAVE
and a semi-immersive curved display were compared by Kjeldskov [15], and he
used over 40 different 3D interaction techniques with the displays. Military
applications on different displays were compared by Swan and his colleagues
[28]. A comparison between a CAVE and a monitor has also been performed for a
statistical analysis application [1]. A
SIGGRAPH panel considered the relative advantages and disadvantages of HMDs
and surround-screen displays [16]. |