http://remarkableathenianyouth.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-qualitative-research-or-its-all-in.html#comment-form
http://reb2572.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-6.html#comment-form
http://theoandmeth.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-reflection-qualitative-research.html#comment-form
http://duckyduckyducky.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-seminar-6.html#comment-form
http://theoatmeth.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-post-seminar.html#comment-form
måndag 26 oktober 2015
måndag 19 oktober 2015
torsdag 15 oktober 2015
Post-seminar reflection 6
Since this week’s lecture was cancelled the only reflection I have is from the seminar, however - as with most weeks previous to this I believe the seminar to have been most thought provoking anyways. During the seminar we discussed in groups of three our different qualitative papers - how they differed and why. While we didn’t reach any grand conclusions in our discussion, we could see an indication that the papers with generalizable results were less in-depth than the ones that didn’t (hardly surprising though).
The more fruitful discussion emerged when we started discussing case studies and our chosen texts. I quickly learned that the definition I wrote in my pre-reflection when trying to explain it to a first year student didn’t really cover all aspects, and those it did cover it covered quite poorly. First off we struggled to find a definition to the very concept of a case study since we thought of it from the perspective we initially defined it from - business cases. From the media management course I attended last year the word case was imprinted as something related to business model cases, and thus we discussed the case study’s definition sort of as “study on something which is a real occurence from which one can draw conclusions and build theories”. However, as the discussion progressed in the entire seminar group we quickly realized that the common denominator between all the business cases and case studies in research scenarios was that they were studies of a novel occurrence in which people researched in-depth information on the subject. Thus, from this one could later build theories that are generalizable and therefore applicable on other cases. For instance, Ilias mentioned some author who specialized on case studies in medicine and gave one example of a story of some guy who had gotten an iron rod through his skull without dying. This man’s close ones later noticed him having different character traits and that his personality was altered from this event. Thus brain scientists could perform a case study of this man to deduce which parts of the brain had been affected by the rod and therefore build theories on which brain functions that determine character traits and personality.
I found this discussion interesting and it certainly highlighted the concept of case studies and explained it further, since I (previous to the seminar) obviously hadn’t quite grasped it. Summarizing, I would actually say that this week’s theme was the most interesting since we got to venture somewhat outside the shackles of scientific research and into something which felt more creative and engaging.
måndag 12 oktober 2015
fredag 9 oktober 2015
Post-seminar reflection 5
This week we’ve handled and discussed the subject of design research from different angles. FIrst off, at Habio’ lecture, he discussed broadly what research is and how one does research. I found it rather interesting that the idea-creation phase when starting a project should be preferably devoted, almost entirely, to defining a problem rather than coming up with solutions to solve it. Furthermore he went on discussing that problems can be extremely intricate and hard to grasp, but that the biggest obstacle to overcome is how to come up with the simplest solution to that particular problem.
Also, Haibo discussed that it is crucial to solving any engineering problem that it must involve mathematics (and often complicated mathematics). Even though I understand where he’s getting at (since he’s very technically minded, and most technical problems require some form of mathematical skill) I would have to disagree that a media technology engineer’s problem solving skills should be limited to his/her mathematical ability. For instance, solving managerial problems within the media management, or solving HCI problems within interaction design, are valuable skills a media technology engineer can have. These particular areas of problem solving are probably, most of the time, not related to strictly mathematical problems.
Seeing as we didn’t have a seminar, I don’t feel as there is as much to reflect about as there usually is - since one has mostly gotten to digest fixed information rather than discuss certain aspects of design research with people of different view-points. Thus, simply discussing what I’ve learned would mainly consist of me reciting what was written in my previous post on theme 5. However, the lectures have been interesting and have given a deeper understanding to the articles that were read in preparation for each corresponding lecture. Even though I guess they could’ve gone more in-depth on the topic of design research rather than going through their own articles (which we had read already).
torsdag 8 oktober 2015
Pre-seminar reflection 6
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
onsdag 30 september 2015
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