This course started out
with the philosophical thoughts about knowledge and theory and then ended with
the research methods, so this course followed the course name very well ‘Theory
and Method for Media Technology’. First week of the course was focused on ‘what
knowledge is’ which was highly philosophical, it was my first time to read
philosopher’s texts because I don’t have interest in philosophy but in seminars
I actually enjoyed to discuss these concepts. One question from Kant’s text still
confuse me ‘How is it possible to gain knowledge of the world a priori?’ Also
the Plato’s thoughts about ‘what knowledge is itself’. I am glad that now I
have studied the new ways of perceiving the world and I will look forward with
these thoughts. The next week was about ‘critical media studies’ in which I have
learned new concepts such as enlightenment, nominalism vs realism (how we shape
society based on illogical things or historical background). We also discussed
revolutionary potentials with the help of new technology. After these two weeks
I was thinking that how these text relate to our field of study or this course.
But still I found myself a developing interest to read more about these
concepts and philosophy. The week after was focused on ‘what theory is, or is
not’, we have grasp the term ‘theory’ in different ways and I believe now I
have good understanding of theory and I have reflected my understanding in my
blog post. This theme was actually correlated with the first part and upcoming
part of the course.
Now, come to the purpose
of this blog post ‘ways of combining the research methods’ and also week 4, 5
and 6 which was about different research methods. I have learned a lot about
different research methods during this course even I have used these kind of
methods in my bachelor’s projects but actually now I can differentiate about
those methods which is quiet interesting. In theme 4, we had a seminar with
Olle Bälter in which I have learned a lot about how to create survey as survey
is an important part of any research method so I think it is important to know that
which kind of survey would be best in your research. Also he told us more about
advantages and disadvantages of web-surveys and paper-surveys. Which was also
linked with pros and cons of quantitative and qualitative methods. I would must
appreciate his way to compare the two different methods and structure of seminar.
I think this is the main difference of quantitative and qualitative methods:
During this course we
also had two guest lectures. Eva-Lotta Sandnäs
discussed the difference between collaborative and single-user setting, she
talked about research methods that she used in her research. In the next
lecture with Haibo Li, I have learned that most crucial thing for choosing or
combining the research methods is ‘defining the problem’. As he told us that
people usually put very little effort in defining the problem and just start
solving it. Even though they didn’t realize that, is it really a problem or is
there anything to solve? I think in real life, sometimes people chose research method
to use even before knowing the research question. There is a big risk of being
stuck or have a bad quality research when you don’t understand that which
research method would be better for your research question. Haibo Li also said
that if problem is defined properly then you will be able to see problem from
different angles which will help to define different research methods in better
way. For this purpose, prototyping is a best way to understand the problem or
idea as he suggested. So I have learned that it is more important to put more
effort in understanding the research question first, also understand the
difference between different methods to know that which method suits the
research question more. I believe that this concept will help me throughout the
life to solve problems.
In the
last theme of course, we discussed case studies which combines all the methods
so I think it was a good idea to place this theme at last. I think that I have
understood case studies in depth. Case study is a method used to narrow down a
very broad field of research into one easily research-able topic. While it will
not answer a question completely, it will give some indications and allow
further elaboration and hypothesis creation on a subject. Case studies should
not be confused with qualitative research and they can be based on any mix of
quantitative and qualitative evidence. I have used this method in my final year
project of bachelor’s which was software application ‘emotion based music
player’, we started by developing a prototype of the software and then
interviewed people to know how people interact with it which was quantitative
method. Then we interviewed two expert software developer to get more technical
insight which was I think qualitative method. And after developing the supplication
we used testing methods and ask people to use it and comment on it. So I think
sometimes it is very useful to combine different methods but it depends on the
nature of project. That’s why as I explained before that it is important to
understand the nature of the research project first.
During
studying different articles, I found one more interesting method ‘triangulation’
which also combines different research methods. Triangulation is one of the
several rationales of multi-research methods, refers to the use of more than
one approach to the investigation of a research question in order to enhance
confidence in the ensuing findings. Triangulation is a way to combine two or
more research methods in a strategy which is meaningful i.e. all methods should
correlate each other and describe your research question in a better way.
By
summing up all the useful things which I have learned during this course, I
think this course was a good start of my Master’s program and these thoughts
will help me throughout the entire program. Now, I can see the philosophical
part and methods part correlated with each other in better way. Actually I am
thinking now that this course was designed very smartly, for example first we
have to post pre-reflection so we were already having some understanding of the
phenomena during lectures and seminars, after reading other student’s blogs and
post-reflection we even have clearer understanding of all the themes. In this
way it was a real learning portfolio!
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