Theme 4: Qualitative methods

Qualitative research paper

I chose the paper Honeymoon with IWBs: A qualitative insight in primary students’ views on instruction with interactive whiteboard by Sad & Özhan (2012), published Computers & Education. The paper presents a qualitative research about interactive white boards (IWB). The authors have studied how the students experience the IWB and how pedagogically beneficial it is.

The qualitative method used is focus groups, in the form of group interviews. During these focus groups the authors asked the students semi-structured questions, which the students could discuss with each other. They divided students in to homogeneous groups, with students of similar background and experience in the same group. They did this so that the discussion would flow better between the students. Sad & Özhan (2012) also pointed out that they had 10 students in every focus group. They argued that this number was small enough to have a good and interactive discussion and large enough to get comprehensive data.

Overall, I think they used the focus group method in a good way. Every decision they made when conducting the method was motivated in the paper. This qualitative method is a good way to gather deep information regarding personal experiences and opinions (Ruben & Chisnell, 2008). Compared to individual interviews, the focus group promotes discussion, which can benefit by giving the participant new ideas and a possibility to share more valuable information.

I think that the decision they made about creating homogeneous group could be questioned. If you don’t randomize the groups, and instead intentionally make them homogeneous, you take away probable disagreements and arguments in the focus group. Like-minded persons have a greater chance of agreeing, which doesn’t encourage argumentative discussions. By conducting the focus groups this way, some interesting discussions and data might be missed out on.

One other questionable aspect they mentioned is that they excluded shy and “less articulate” students from the focus groups. They did this to get a better discussion environment. I think that they have a point in that the discussion could be more giving if the participants are good at talking and expressing themselves. On the other hand, by excluding shy and less articulate students you take away a part of the students that also are affected and could have opinions regarding IWBs. These students might have interesting opinions that are typical for that group and by excluding them there is a possibility that you miss out on valuable data. By intentionally altering the sampling like this you risk having the validity of the research lowered (Cleveland-Innes, 2012).

Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses

Fernaeus & Jacobsson (2009) write about how robots can be controlled without screens and more specifically discuss how these instead can be controlled by signs, like clothes and symbols. Different signs would make the robot behave differently and make different actions. The paper doesn’t present any specific methods used and is more an overview presentation and discussion about how the use of signs could be designed and implemented.

I liked that the authors had taken into account that we expect the robots to behave in a certain way depending on the sign. I think that the connection they made with fashion and comic is relevant because of the importance of visual representation in those areas and what we associate particular signs with in these areas.

One difficulty with using signs to control robots is that they can mean different things in different countries or cultures. One type of clothing or symbol might make the robot do something which seems natural for one culture, since it correlates to the sign in some way. That same sign might in another culture associate to a completely different thing and thus the action of the robot won’t seem that natural.

Question

Are qualitative methods better (more preferred) than quantitative methods in certain research areas (or the reverse)?

References:

Cleveland-Innes, M. (2012). Lecture, 2012-11-12.

Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM. 

Rubin & Chisnell (2008). Handbook of Usability Testing.

Sad, S. N. & Özhan, U. (2012). Honeymoon with IWBs: A qualitative insight in primary students’ views on instruction with interactive whiteboard. In Computers & Education.