This is my final reflection in the course DM2572 Theory and Method for Mediatechnology. During the course we have discussed different topics, such as what is knowledge, what is theory and later more concrete subjects as quantitative and qualitative methods and case studies. In this final reflection I would like discuss the course first and then later discuss how to combine different methods in order to answer complex research questions.
How have I experienced this course?
Before taking this course I knew this was a course that contained a lot of reading and writing and which is in a way my biggest weakness. And combining that with the fact that it is in english made it even harder for me. During the course I have felt that it became less difficult in every theme. The first themes were much more difficult than the latter. I would say that the tipping-point came after theme 3 (even tho the theme for week 3 were less difficult than the previous two weeks).
One thing that I appreciate is that I’m taking this course after the bachelor thesis. I’ve read on others blog post that they have discussed the pros and cons with that order of courses. I see positive aspects of having the courses in that order since what we are talking and discussing here is more concrete for me now, and I can relate to the different methods in a way that I wouldn’t be able to if it was the other way around. And still, I can learn by my mistakes in my bachelor thesis that I now have detected, and correct those mistakes for when I’m writing my master thesis.
How have I experience the order of the themes?
In the beginning of the course we discussed what knowledge is, generally about critical thinking and what theory is. As I said above, these topics has been hard, for me and I guess everyone else as well. I can’t really see how the two first themes are related to theme four to six, but I guess they have made us stand on a solid ground in order to be able to discuss the more concrete topics (such as quantitative, qualitative methods, case studies etc.) otherwise we would just scratch the surface of those topics.
How have I experienced the course structure?
The way the course has been organized feels like an optimal way of organizing such a course. I specially liked the continued examination these blog post has represented. And the rolling schedule has made it easier to come up with a studying plan for this course. To write own and read others blog post have been a nice way to reflect my own thoughts and read how others have interpreted and understood the different topics. Unfortunately I didn’t realise we were suppose to comment on each others blog posts and therefore I kind of rushed through some of the other course students blog posts at the end of the course, which perhaps was not optimal.
It is funny to see that many others interpret and payed attention to other parts of the lectures than I did. In the first themes we were talking about how different people percept different things in different ways, and I think the blog posts is a very good example of that. Perhaps I find one little detail about quantitative study more interesting than someone else does, just because I have maybe used that in my bachelor thesis. We all percept lectures in different ways depending on our past experience, and by reading the blog posts you can get a glimpse of how others sees the lecture and the key points.
Combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions.
Now I would like to discuss the different methods and how they can be combined in order to answer complex research questions.
First I would like to repeat what Haibo said during his lecture. In order to conduct a research paper, or solve any problem in general, you should focus more of the time on defining the problem than a person usually does. When you have defined the problem correctly the problem solving will be much easier. It is easy to interpret a problem as much bigger than it really is, and in order to find the “real problem” which might be only a part of the first thought problem it will eventually save you a lot of time and effort.
What I have learned regarding different methods during this course is that they all have pros and cons, and they are suitable for different purposes. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend to Eva-Lottas lecture about collaborative settings, but I understood from reading others reflection from that lecture that when you are doing a research in an area that is not well explored you should use qualitative methods in order to get a little understanding of the area in question so that others research can build upon your results. This statement states one of the pros with qualitative methods, that it gives you an in-depth analysis of a subject, but more importantly the statements says that other research can build upon you results. I find that interesting since when you are doing a research of an area, there most likely have been researchers that already have explored some part of that area previously, and you don’t want to re-explore the same thing as they have done, therefore you want to do something else, perhaps change what kind of method you are using. When you are not using the same method as the previous researchers have used you will get an different perspective of that area/object and that proves that you need to use different methods in order to get different answers and when combining different methods you can answer more complex questions and discover, more fully, an object and by combining different research papers, the area will be more explored.
In the first theme we were asked to describe what Kant meant when he said “Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition.” and as I interpreted it we need to see the object from another perspective. This can be related to how different methods can be combined in order to answer complex research questions. Every different method gives their own perspective, for example quantitative method gives you an overview of the subject but can’t explain why a result pattern occurs and the qualitative method can describe why something is occurring but not what is occurring. To fully be able to answer a complex research question you need to use different methods in order to get different perspective to fully understand and be able to fully answer a complex research question. Every little method has their own pros and cons, which we have discussed during the seminars, and by combining the different methods they are filling the gaps of each others disadvantageous.
The most obvious example of combining different methods is to combine quantitative and qualitative methods in order to get an understanding of what (for example) people thinks (quantitative result) and why they think like they do (qualitative result). But everything is not just surveys and interviews, sometimes you need to conduct a design research study in order to find how a prototype works and combine that with qualitative interviews to fully understand the prototype. Sometimes you need to conduct a case study to understand a phenomenon with the help of qualitative and quantitative methods. They are all linked to each other and therefore it is perhaps wrong to nominalisticly see them as separate methods and instead see them as tools that are alike but with some different properties.
Finally I would like to thank for this course and I hope I will remember much of what I’ve learnt to be able to write my master thesis in a good way.
