Pre-seminar reflection 6

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

I read an article written by Hector R. Ponce and Richard E. Mayer named “Qualitatively different cognitive processing during online reading primed by different study activities”. The research was published 2014 in the journal “Computers in Human Behavior” (Impact Factor: 2.489). In this article the authors investigate the process of learning for 64 psychology students at the University of California. This is done through a method containing eye-tracking of each student when presented with a text and a task. The text was about the eastern vs. the western-styled steamboats from the 1800’s. The task differed between three versions: some students were asked to simply read the text, some student were asked to read the text and take notes, and others were asked to type characteristics of the two types of steamboats into a graphic organizer. Thus, eye-tracking was used to conclude that students only reading, and those reading and taking notes, tended to read the text from start to finish, whereas the group comparing the differences between the steamboats read the text by jumping between the two sections describing each type of steamboat. Furthermore, after concluding this test the students got to answer a short questionnaire where their reading comprehension was tested - here the comparative students scored best, followed by the note-takers, and finally those that only read.

The benefits to this qualitative method is that it yields a full picture of the different approaches to learning, while backing this up with a quantitative questionnaire where the data is statistically comparable between each of the student groups. The test-subjects were given an opportunity to test the program before the actual test to induce certainty that no functional problems occurred. However, I believe the test was rather skewed toward usage of the graphical comparison way. Had it been another type of text, I think the results would’ve varied a lot.

2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

It was confirmed from the paper that qualitative methods can yield important discussions that delve deeper than generally a quantitative method could have done. Furthermore, the usage of qualitative methods provides a different, and I would argue more real, result as compared to if the authors would’ve simply used a questionnaire to ask how the students read the text.

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

The eye-tracking method’s main problem are the test-subjects’ confidences to use the measured tools, which could’ve been improved had they tested the system before the tests.

1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study is a quantitative, qualitative, or combined method which is used to provide a deeper understanding of a certain phenomena or entity. According to “Building Thories from Case Study Research” it’s a research strategy from which data can be analyzed in order for theories to be created. In short, it’s a study using a certain type of strategy which involves going deeper than normally into a particular subject, thus rendering the reader with enough data to create theories and build upon the original authors’ research.

2. Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

From the journal “Computers in Human Behaviour” (Impact Factor: 2.489) I’ve chosen the article “The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university” by the authors Nicholas J. Kelling, Angela S. Kelling, and John F. Lennon.

Based on Table 1 from “Process of building theory from case studies” I would say that the case study in my selected article was rather well done since it followed the format of Eisenhardt’s table 1 fairly well. For example, in the getting started phase, the problem which is to be investigated is defined through explaining the theories behind it. The authors also state that the test were made a priori. Also, for the selecting cases phase, the authors have chosen to go with two different experiments. The first one was a questionnaire at the South Florida Polytechnic, sent out to establish how well informed the students at the university were on the subject. The other method was to collect social media data of the students’ usage (mainly focused on Twitter).

The results showed that students preferably consumed news on TV or from reading newspapers when it came to their consumption of news media outlets. The social media data from Twitter indicated that the platform was widely used by students to discuss certain topics.

Thus, the strengths of my selected paper is that the study is well conducted and presented, with a thorough investigation leading up to it. However, a weakness might be that I had a hard time figuring out the concrete research question of the paper. Instead of having a specified question to be research, the authors lay down a number of theories as basis for their two different case studies. One might however argue that this works since they come up with relevant results based on these theories.