Fourth Theme...

This week’s theme is the Qualitative Research Methods. What exactly is a Q.R.M.? According to the book “Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide”, a qualitative research is very efficient method applied mainly in cultural researches. With Q.R. scientists can get deep information (data) about certain groups’ social behaviors, values and opinions. The data are collected through audiotapes, videotapes, and field notes. Moreover it is important to highlight that qualitative and quantitative methods share many differences.  The primary one is that in quantitative researches the applied tools adopt a more strict methodology like closed-ended questionnaires. While in qualitative researches is used a more flexible methodology like open-ended questionnaires.

- Q.M. in my paper : 

I have chosen the article “An examination of asynchronous communication experiences and perspectives of students in an online course: a case study” by Selma Vonderwell”, which was published in the journal “Internet and Higher Education” that has an impact factor for 2011 equal to 1.015.

The main purpose on this qualitative case study was to examine the asynchronous communication (communication through discussion forums, blogs, e-mails etc.) experiences and perspectives of undergraduate students in an online course. The whole study was conducted with two particular questions as a guideline; “What are the implications of asynchronous communication on student learning?” and “To what extent does asynchronous communication and interaction enhance student learning?” The author used many sources in order to collect a bigger and of better quality amount of data. His main data sources were interviews with 22 preservice teachers, student and instructor email transcripts, discussion board transcripts, and two independent peer reviewers’ reviews. By using multiple sources for data collection, the author gained the benefit to cross-check his findings and so to have well-grounded results in his research. The results of this study are important basically for the instructors. They get to reexamine their techniques about communication with their students.

- Reflections of the course’s article:

The main purpose of the paper “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Y. Fernaeus and M. Jacodsson, is “the design of physical languages for controlling and programming robotic consumer products”. In this paper, the authors introduce us the design concept of actDresses, which has been envisioned by two informal kinds of sign systems that are widely popular today.  The first kind of sign systems is the one applied in comics. Comic book artists are combining text, pictures and visual markings in order to communicate with their audiences. There have been researches shown that such a multifaceted method can be applied also in visual programming. The second kind of sign systems that the authors examine is dealing with practices of clothing and accessorizing, and how these practices could possibly be used in order to control the behavior of physical interactive electrical devices. Over and above that, the authors wanted their research to be more solid. So they worked on three different example scenarios about “how physical decoration and labeling can be used for controlling, programming, and predicting the behavior of robotic systems”. The first scenario was role assemblage outfits for the Pleo robot dinosaur, the second was a behavior pin collection for the experimental GlowBots platform and the third and last one was comic signs for a prototype consumer vacuum cleaner robot.

References:

“Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide”, Familly Health International, 2005.