Final reflection

Throughout the content of this course I’ve been faced with numerous researchers’ definitions of theory and method-related concepts, exemplified in several different interesting articles. The course contents varied between the themes from very abstract discussions on topics of epistemological philosophy, to the very concrete field of research methods such as qualitative, quantitative methods, and case studies. Therefore it’s been an interesting and thought-provoking experience to venture through these 6 themes in search for the understanding of research and how one should go about it, as a media technology student.

First off, I bet many of the course participants (at least from what I’ve been able to extract from seminar discussions) were quite confused when standing in the face of academic philosophy, although fundamental. Many of us had previously never really come across the school of epistemology and Kant’s and Plato’s work within this. Thus, it certainly posed for great seminar discussions where one not only were discussing concepts and their definition, but also the outlook one had on knowledge creation - and life itself. The subjects on a priori and a posteriori knowledge, and synthetic/analytical judgements were, for me, very hard to grasp at first - but once I did they were basically present in every other thought the following days. These almost obvious, yet fundamental and deeply perplexing concepts are very much central to someone venturing into the world of engineering. Be it as a researcher of some sort, or as someone working in a business context, the creation of knowledge will more often than not be central to the work at hand. It has also been personally developing, to find out our/my view of the world and how one defines concepts, and thereby creates knowledge, through learning about epistemology.

Furthermore, the following themes 2 and 3 continued in the wake of theme 1 yet ventured towards more modern philosophy and towards defining more practical problems and opportunities of our research culture, and the fundamentals behind what empirical research is. For instance, the enlightenment and concepts surrounding it, as well as concepts relating to its critique, were the basis for theme 2’s discussion where Benjamin’s and Adorno & Horkheimer’s texts provided the frame within which the seminars took place. During this theme we delved deeper into the philosophical issues from the previous week in a more practical advancement. The lecturer Håkan went at the definition of nominalism and realism through explaining Plato’s allegory of the cave, which lead us up to the discussion of if the nominalistic Vs. realistic point of view has actually had great impact on the revolutionary potential of culture. The fact that it does points towards that, since media technology often is in close correlation with culture, media technology has a great impact on society and can therefore alter it significantly through innovation.

In theme 3 we built upon these prerequisites of knowledge gained from the past 2 themes and started studying theory, and what theory and its related concepts mean in high-level research. The most important aspects I bring with me from this theme is that there is no such thing as an objective truth. Based on the philosophical arguments of Kant and Plato, and further embraced by Benjamin and Adorno & Horkheimer, I’ve learned that the idea that us humans can create a truth of some sort is simply absurd since our view of what is and what isn’t differs from individual to individual based on physical and mental characteristics. However, we as students at a technological university are more or less brought up with the notion that empirically based theories are true until proven otherwise - an idea which in itself may seem harmless, but which can in the long run damage our perception of what is truth and what is theory. This I believe is especially true when faced with people/students of some other school (for instance philosophy) where basically nothing is true and yet everything is (since one often times work under the assumption that everything obeys to Kant’s forms of intuition). So, for us as engineering students to excel at our own work, and at the same time invite for people of other cultural academic backgrounds to do the same, this is important to be aware of.

The lectures and themes 4-6 where a lot more practical and bore a lot more resemblance to what I had previously done during my 4 years on the program of media technology. However, this time, it wasn’t just the understanding of the concepts design research, quantitative/qualitative methods, and case studies in practice this time - it was the fundamental understanding of how and why they work, accompanied by the discussion of in which scenarios which are more applicable than others. For instance, during Haibo’s lecture on design research he spoke of a more business oriented view, although he did start off with describing the fundamentals to doing great research: spend a lot more time on defining the problem than you think (often times a lot more time than actually coming up with a solution) and when you finally get to defining a solution, make it as easy as was every possible. Even though this is something one might have come across before (the notion of the easiest solution always being the best one), the fact that problem definitions requires so much effort for research to be great was indeed interesting. Also, choosing between quantitative and qualitative methods is of course also part of this definition. Sadly, from what we’ve learned throughout the course, there is no formula as to which one to use where and why. However, it could be extrapolated from seminars and lecturers, that the symbiosis between the two methods often derive the greatest, most in-depth, and most generalizable results. For instance, case studies (another part of the course I found most interesting) are often times great examples of ground-breaking research that include both of these methods.

To summarize, I believe this course has given me great methods for creating, conducting, analyzing, and reflecting on research - both in an organisational and academic context. It’s been interesting to read up on research relevant to my education as well as historical documents on theoretical concepts that have taken us where we are today. Thank you for reading my blog!