Convergence Culture, Qualitative Research, and the teaching of...

Image via WikipediaI have been reading Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins...and I also follow his blog now.  Convergence is about the ways that technologies/media are all coming together...even while they may be seeming to go off in different directions.  (That's the 2 second definition).

I have been thinking about these principles and how they apply to technologies in qualitative research.   If you consider the historical pathway of technologies in QR, you see how the introduction of a new technology (when it comes to be seriously taken up by researchers) leads to a kind of overdomination of that form of data for a period. 

Example:  Early anthropology is dominated by participant observation--the notebook/fieldnotes and the portable typewriter.

Example 2:  Enter cameras--and we begin to see photo studies that have a life of their own (Riis, Collier)

Example 3:  Tape Recorder....and the dominance of interviews.  This is something that still hangs over us. 

Well, now we have convergence culture--technologies in which everything is combined into one cell phone or other device,--audio and visual recording (photo and video), software for organizing materials, text facilities, and the phone and internet capacity for sending and sharing materials on the spot, geospatial tools for locating the data.  You can collect data, organize it, and share/represent it--all from one place. 

The digitalness of it makes it possible to merge and connect different forms of data with ease.  So, what does this imply for the ways we think about teaching qualitative research data?  I think it is fair to say that our qualitative research classes look much like, I think, they could have looked in the early 20th century (if they had had such a thing)...observations are taught as if we were in the South Pacific with Margaret Mead.  Photography is still suspect in many social science products.  I know I am going overboard to make my case...but you see what I mean.

For qualitative researchers my question is:  how do you teach methodology in an era of convergence culture?  How does the inter-connectedness of our data collection tools--the digitalness of it--reshape our notion of the separate pots of data.  Three trends that seem critical for me in overhauling my own qualitative research teaching are:

1.  Contexts:  All the data that is available to contextualize an issue or concern; all of the descriptive statistics, geolocating material, images--everything that can be drawn upon to understand the topic of inquiry.  How do you assemble this collection; curate the possibilities in service of understanding the issue?  YouTube, audioclips, photos, maps (GoogleWorld), articles, statistics, applications, blogs, tweets, etc.   This is a vastly different task than simply going to the library, looking in the card catalog (off or online) for the article you want, finding it on the shelf, making notes, and then putting the journal back on the vfc

2.  The data you make:  The many different forms of data that you make and how you make it.  What are the digital possibilities for being sensuously present in the world and with others thinking about a particular topic.  (Qualitative research is about the employment of the senses to understand naturalistic contexts...the senses that we are so uniquely endowed with, thus it is fair to say it is a sensuous activity). How are these forms of data collection now inter-related?  As interesting, how can we meet and greet in the virtual world?  This, too, is sensuous--as we use our eyes and ears to engage in social experience. 

3.  The data they make:  Now, more than ever, we can extend the senses and the forms of knowing by joining in collaboration with others (lay researchers, participants) to explore the data they collect on a project of shared interest.  They can tweet their experiences back to you; they can be mapped by their cell phones as they move through a day; they can photo and geolocate.  They can also join you in the process of trying to make sense of it.  Often they may have their own data collections, organized on the web as Flickr accounts, participation in communities of like-minded souls, or in blogs. 

I hope this doesn't frighten off the next semester of qualitative research students...hopefully, by then, I will have thought it through a bit more. 

The Future of Qualitative Research

I have been playing around with a diagram of the issues I have been thinking about in relationship to the future of qualitative research.  Here is the really messy drawing that I made in my journal.

 I think you might need some translation help.  That messy circle in the middle is qualitative research.  It is standing at the intersection of vast changes we are facing in numerical, spatial/geographical, and sensory technologies.

I think I have come to the same conclusion that Tim Berners-Lee did--it's all about data.  Big data, little data, data displayed visually, tracked geographically, understood on a visceral body level through probes that provide feedback on every sense.  We can do all this--at the broadest and finest levels. 

These worlds of expanding data are bringing together the virtual and the non-virtual...in ways we could not have imagined even a few years ago.

So what will qualitative research look like in the near future?  How will it be practiced?

When I think about the people and movements that point us forward in these areas, these names come to mind:


Numerical--Big Data--Nathan Eagle

Cultural Geography--Mei Po Kwan, Marilyn Cope

The sensory and qualitative research:  Walter Gershon, Alex Ruthmann

These are random names in a sea of much activitiy that is emerging within and around qualitative research.

This is the picture I will be thinking with--what is that future going to look like?

International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry: 2011!

Image via WikipediaIt's that time again and I am getting ready to head to Champaign, Illinois for the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. 

I will be taking part in two activities:

1.  An Arts Exhibition!!!   The Exhibition related to my Journal Project will be up for two days (Friday and Saturday, May 20th and May 21st) in Illini Room B.  I will be giving a "gallery talk" on Friday from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. 


2.  A panel organized by Liora Bresler of the University of Illinois:  Saturday, May 21st
134997  Issues in Arts in Qualitative Research
11:00-12:20 131 English
Chair: Liora Bresler, University of Illinois
Conceptualizing Arts-based Research as Relational Practice, Donal O’Donoghue, University of British Columbia

Contact Improvisation and Lingering Caress in Arts Based Research, Liora Bresler, University of Illinois

The Ethics of Self and Other in Arts-Based Research, Petula Ho Sik Ying, The University of Hong Kong

Technology and Arts-based Research: The Question of Aesthetics within Qualitative Research, Judith Davidson, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Discussant, Johnny Saldana, Arizona State University

Look forward to being there! 

International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry...May at the University of Illinois

Image by Jeffrey Keefer via FlickrI have two program pieces accepted for the Seventh Annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.  It will be held in May at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois. 

Here is a description of what I will be doing:

7^th Annual International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry

University of Illinois—Champaign, Illinois

Thursday May 19-Saturday May 21, 2011

Friday May 20 and Saturday May 21

Illini Room B: 

Art Exhibition:  The Journal Project:  An Interactive Exhibit Bringing Together Arts, Technology, and Qualitative Research

This exhibit explores the split between technology and the arts in qualitative research.  In this study, 18 months of personal journals were analyzed in qualitative data analysis software and through arts-based approaches.  In the exhibit, social science posters mix with fiber arts (felt and multi-media pieces) to create a multi-dimensional approach to data analysis.  The goal is to demonstrate the strengths of both methods of interpretation and the ways we can learn from their interactions.  

Gallery Talk:  Friday 3:30 pm

Judith Davidson, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Issues and Practices in Arts-based Research

Chair: Liora Bresler

Participants: Donal O'Donoghue, Liora Bresler, Petula Ho Sik Ying, Judy Davidson

Discussant: Johnny Saldana

Overview:

Arts-based inquiry is based on the notion that the processes and the products of arts can contribute significantly to research. The concept of arts-based research (ABR) as a methodology, generated in the early 90s, grew and expanded rapidly, spawning distinct genres and communities. This panel examines various approaches under the umbrella of ABR, focusing on the concepts of relational practice, embodied inquiry, and ethics of self and others involved in documentary films. Presentations will also discuss the practices of cultivation of “habits of body/mind” for intensified engagement in conducting the research, and qualitative data analysis software involved in ABR.

Technology and Arts-based Research:  The Question of Aesthetics within Qualitative Research

Judith Davidson, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

One University Avenue . Lowell, MA 01854 .

Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) has been available to qualitative researchers since the early 1980’s, but few qualitative researchers have made use of it in relationship to arts-based research approaches.  Not only have qualitative researchers using arts-based approaches shunned the use of QDAS tools, but the general consent within the field has been that the use of these technologies for the conduct of qualitative research, would necessarily be an unaesthetic experience.  Drawing upon my Journal Project (a study of my personal journals that employs QDAS and arts-based approaches), the work of Mark Johnson (philosophy of aesthetics) and Liora Bresler (aesthetics of qualitative research), I seek to develop an alternative perspective that joins technology and arts-based research in qualitative research through a grounding in the notion of aesthetics.  In this way I hope to develop a discussion that will allow qualitative researchers to participate more thoroughly in the global research conversation of a digital age. 

You can get to the conference and the program at this url:

http://www.icqi.org/ 

Anthologize

Image by MatthiasHeil via Flickr

Something very exciting has just happened in the world of academia and technology.  Thanks to Dan Cohen and his NEH funded group for developing a really interesting tool.  Take a look at: 

Anthologize

You can read more about the development of this project on Dan's Blog:

Dan Cohen on Anthologize

I think there is great potential for academic use here--turning blogs into articles and publications, providing students with new ways to write.  This was a tool that was waiting to happen.  Thanks to everyone who worked on it.  I look forward to trying it out. 

The Journal Project Marches Forward

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I haven't posted for awhile, but that doesn't mean I have been inactive. Indeed, the Journal Project is marching forward. I've completed all the preliminary analysis and have been working on drafting a book outline and filling in parts of the chapters as that is possible.

Here is my tentative title (and this is one I've settled on among what seems like hundreds that I have generated):

Interior Conversations:  Technology, Aesthetics, and Qualitative Research

How is that for a pithy label for the work?! 

I've actually been having many good conversations with colleagues about the tentative outline and this has been extremely generative.  In addition to pointing out new ways of understanding the concepts, they have directed me to processes that have helped me to develop the materials in new ways ("That's interesting.  Write a memo about it!").  I have also been directed to some very good books.  Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding arrived from Amazon.com this last week. 

Questions I am skating around include:  What is a technology?  How is a technology a thing?  How do things (and technologies) compose practice?  How are aesthetics part of understanding, designing, and practicing with things (and technologies)?  How are aesthetics part of motor activity or embodied?  How is technology/things embodied? 

A rich area for me has been thinking about the ways qualitative researchers react to and avoid use of qualitative research software and related technologies.  I am beginning to see how these reactions are also embedded within streams of thought in sociology and other disciplines.  It appears that reaction to technology is often a confused response to industrialization and its ills.

Finally writing about family, provides me with new insight into the ways in which I am a living example of the tension between aesthetic and technical views as they were simplified and magnified in my family of origin.  Back to thinking! 

Bruce and Bishop: New Literacies and Community Inquiry

I have just had the opportunity to read Bertram (Chip) Bruce and Ann Bishop's chapter for the New Literacies Handbook "New Literacies and Community Inquiry".  Sorry I can't give you a better reference than that. 

It is typical Bruce, in that it, in a careful (and yet seemingly effortless manner) he (and Ann) take the reader on a gentle journey reflecting in great depth upon Dewey's contributions to our world and expanding our understanding about literacy, technology, community and the meaning of inquiry.  I always marvel when I read one of his pieces--How does he do it? 

The opening paragraph really says it all.  Chip and Ann--I have to quote it!

Community inquiry research focuses on people participating with others, on the lived experiences of feel, thinking, acting, and communicating.  It sees literacy as part of living in the world, not simply as a skill to be acquired in the classroom.  Inquiry is central, because as people live, they encounter challenges.  Through inquiry, people recognize a problem, mobilize resources, engage actively to resolve it, collaborate, and reflect on the experience.  Making sense of experience in this way, and doing so in concert with others in embodied historical circumstances, is fundamental to learning.

While Dewey is central to the story, Chip and Ann have also turned to Jane Adams (a contemporary of Dewey) as a complimentary pragmatic voice.  Reading this piece and talking to their colleague Jeanne Connell (also at the University of Illinois) who is doing work in Adams and educational philosophy, I am convinced that I have to read more about Adams soon. 

From a very person perspective, I am asking myself--what are the implications of this piece and its focus on community inquiry for my teaching and my research? 

1.  It takes me back to work I did with Sarah Kuhn on Thinking with Things in Qualitative Research...and the question of:  How do researchers, particularly qualitative researchers, appropriate technologies for their work?
2.   How does apprenticeship in qualitative research serve as a form of technology itself, one that defines the ways technologies of research will be encountered?  How does this apprenticeship establish the rules of technology useage?  As researchers mature, how do they appropriate technology?
3.  How do classes serve as communities of inquiry?  Are we providing good thorny problems of civic value?  How does coursework engage students as democratic communities engaged in understanding problematic concerns?
4.  How might Chip and Ann's discussion of technology as lived experience serve me in thinking about the technologies of qualitative research?

Chip--as always, it's been a good read!

Books from the ICQI conference

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It's been a long hiatus from blogging, but that's what the end of the semester will do to you.

A week ago I was at the ICQI conference in Champaign, Illinois (what fun!) and as my annual treat I picked up an armload of new books.  I feel strange carting off this much paper in this age of online communications.  I am not sure how much longer this tradition will continue.  I may find myself 'beaming down' the latest book into my I-Phone or some other device.  But for now I have this nice pile of fresh pages.

Here are my choices:

Erotic Mentoring:  Women's Transformations in the University by Janice Hocker Rushing (Left Coast Press).  This is the one I've started to read.  I like her invitational style (which she attributes to encounters with Ellis and like-minded qualitative researchers).  I was particularly interested in this book because of the possible connections to my own journal study.  There is a strong Jungian perspective here, something I haven't run into for a while. 

Autoethnography as Method by Heewon Chang (Left Coast Press).  I was very curious to see how a qualitative research methodology text would be translated through the eyes of autoethnography.  I also met Heewon at the conference--she was sitting near me in the session on coding organized by Ray Maietta--and it was then that I realized she was one of the winners of the first QSR teaching grant.  Now I am curious to talk with her more about the ways she is using NVivo with autoethnographic content.  You can do it, of course, but for the technophobic, technology is often frowned upon with more humanistic content or approaches.  Heewon--I will be calling! 


Guyana Diaries: Women's lives across difference by Kimberly Nettles (Left Coast Press).  I thought this book would be an interesting opportunity to read a real ethnography--not another methodology book--not that I distain methodology books.  In keeping with my journal project, it seemed like this would be a place to encounter some good feminist theory.  Nettles describes her studies of The Red Thread Development Corporation, a woman-run activist organization. 

Poetry as Method:  Reporting Research Through Verse by Sandra Faulkner (Left Coast Press) couldn't help but catch my eye.  Faulkner not only talks about representing research in poetry but also explores the ways poets processes parallel/intersect with similar processes of researchers.  She also provides guidelines for evaluating research poetry. 

Finally, I've been searching for a book(s) that would be helpful for moving students into doing online research, and that's why I came home with Janet Salmons Online Interviews In Real Time (Sage).  I looked at several other books on related topics, many with a more comprehensive approach but Salmons seemed the most engaging.  It is very hard to buy books about new technologies because once the book appears, you know the technology has moved on.  It looked like it offered advice that could hold with a range of technological changes. 

It's summer, so back to blogging! 

Qualitative Data Analysis (QDAS) and Web 2.0: Which Way?

Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS or CAQDAS) grew up over several decades.  Designed by qualitative researchers to serve the unique needs of qualitative researchers, it is fantastic stuff.  Each brand (and there are quite a few out there...if you don't believe me look at the list maintained on the CAQDAS web page (CAQDAS Networking Project)  does some similar things...and sometimes some different things.  What is common to all is the nice little digital container you get to store, organize, and work with your materials; a means of tagging or coding those materials, that is, breaking them up into small findable bits and pieces; and a means of reorganizing them, juxtaposing, linking, etc. 

But like much stand-alone software, QDAS is now having to face the challenge of Web 2.0.  They are not the only ones (consider Microsoft Word up against Google Docs or Wiki's) and you get the idea.  Suddenly the world is a lot wider; there are more possibilities; and potential gains and losses. 

As with most things in our technologically fast-moving world, the horizon on this issue moved toward us very quickly.  Silvana diGregorio and I published our book on QDAS in December 2008 (Qualitative Research Design for Software Users, which focused on a suite of well known software packages.  Since that time, we've become increasingly aware of the fast-paced change out there as Web 2.0 moves forward with new tools for qualitative researchers...and QDAS developers are pushed by Web 2.0 innovations in new directions to meet user demands. 

As a result of these changes, several issues arose for us:

1.  What do you call this new stuff?
Currently, we have settled on QDAS 2.0, which stands for the hybrid situation that currently exists while the field uses a mixture of both QDAS and new Web 2.0 tools that do qualitative research types of things.

2.  Who's Who is this area now?
Whereas QDAS developers used to be a cozy world unto themselves, the field is wide open now.  In addition to QDAS developers you now need to keep track of:

• the big companies in Software and Web 2.0 development.  (Google, MS Labs, IBM--and many more of the big, hardy group are conducting research and developing prototypes for tools that will do a lot of things qualitative researchers will like and want to use)
• Government funded research tools--pay attention in particular to the UK's Economic and Social Research Council activities (ESRC)  
• Wild West of new independent developers who are developing web-based tools and new Apps.  Take a look at Annotate, Ethnosnacker (where you can learn about the Everyday Lives application for the I-Phone).  
  

 As I write this, Silvana is in Hawaii (lucky lady!) delivering a talk "Using Web 2.0 Tools for Qualitative Analysis: An Exploration" at Hawaii Int'l Conf on System Science (HISS-43).  Good wishes for a great talk! 

I'll be writing a lot on the QDAS/QDAS 2.0 challenge in the upcoming months because it is so near and dear to my heart.