Theme 4: Quantitative research - post reflections

This week both the preparations and seminars have been interesting. Just as last week we were asked to find a paper on our own that we found interesting and that were relevant to media technology. According to me this is a good approach for the reason that every person has the opportunity to find a paper they have interest in reading.

One thing that I though about a lot this week is concerning the subject. We were not asked to find a paper that considered a specific topic but instead we were asked to find a method that was used in the paper. I found this a bit frustrating that we were left with only these instructions. I am not questioning the fact that we should be able to search for papers and information ourselves, because we should be able to do that. But to my knowledge it is very rare that in research you only search for papers using a certain method rather than searching for paper that it relevant to the subject which you are writing about. But even if I am mistaken, I do think that we should have gotten some more information on good ways to do it, or things that can be good to considerate when doing it. This is because we are after all actually taking this class to learn this, not because we know this.

During the first seminar we were, just as last week, divided into smaller groups and asked to first present our paper to the other persons in the small group and then chose one. It is interesting to hear what other articles people read. In the smaller groups we were also asked to do “flow charts” of the paper that we chose. I believe this method can be useful, for example during a presentation to make it visual and clear what the paper is about.

The second seminar was the most interesting of the two this week. I appreciated that Olle chose to use a different approach at the seminar than usual. I got the impression that it was easier for everyone to participate in the discussion. It also created a good opportunity to discuss different topics, which of course is the point with seminars. But during some seminars it is hard to maintain a good, and relevant, discussion. During this seminar I did not feel that this was a problem. Some points that were made during the discussion gave me new insights concerning qualitative vs. quantitative studies and I believe that this knowledge will help we in the future.