Reflections on theme 6

This week I read two texts about e-learning, one that used a qualitative study and the other one a case study. E-learning was to me a bit familiar since we've talked about it in the course Social Media Technologies. I did how ever learn thing that I didn't know before. I also realized that what we learn from this course is rather personal. For example this week when we got to choose two articles independently, I read about e-learning and other students read about other topics. I like that the course is so open that we can chose subjects based on our own interests.

This week also got me thinking about what kind of research could be considered as a qualitative method. My first paper used a questionnaire as a qualitative method and before reading the text I would have considered questionnaires as a quantitative method. Now I realized that the method itself is not the main thing when deciding if it is a quantitative or qualitative method, rather than why you are using it and how. For example in this paper the questionnaire was used to get a greater knowledge about the participants and create a deeper understanding. The authors could argument and motivate why the method is a quantitative or a qualitative one. Of course there are some guidelines and ground rules of what a qualitative study is but as long as the author motivates why his/her choice of method is qualitative I think it is reasonable. I think it is because of this grey area the definition of quantitative and qualitative studies is rather complex. What I’ll take with me from this week is once again something I’ve written about in my earlier blog posts; the importance of motivating your choices. The author in my article convinced me that a questionnaire could be a qualitative study, I will keep that in mind the next time I’m writing a paper.