So this week's theme was about qualitative research and case studies. A theme that I on beforehand felt that my knowledge was quite sufficient within. I per example remember to have had many discussions about how to relate to interviews, focus groups, observations etc. in several courses that I have taken before. But as in pretty much every previous week of this course, I got the privilege to look at certain things from new perspectives this time as well.
During the week's first seminar we discussed the articles we chose in regards of qualitative methodology usage. As most times, I find it interesting to listen to others papers and what types of methods were used. An approach that I have not given much thought before is innovative ways of connecting methodologies to "build up" one another. I will definitely keep that in mind for my master thesis. My paper was this week about the Internet experience for visually impaired and blind people - a topic that intrigued me. The authors had a clear thought that the focus groups that they used should be the foundation for the interviews that they later conducted. A method that we in the group agreed on was somewhat of a good idea. However, as they did not provide that much information on how they conducted the focus groups, and why they even chose focus groups over other viable methods, I promoted a discussion about focus groups. This is also because of that I have often felt a little bit lost when conducting focus groups myself. I have often found it hard to be the moderator of a good discussion where everyone can have their say if you have one or two more dominant persons in the group. We discussed this and some possible solutions to that certain problem.
Now that this is the last blog post of the course, I would like to take the opportunity to shortly evaluate it as a whole. I think it was very valuable as a course that you take before you write your thesis. I cannot say that I am still worrying about anything in particular when it comes to parameters of methodology or report format - something that I might have done a little bit before the course actually. However, why not move the course - or make something similar - before the bachelor thesis as well? I think that it would have been very valuable to take in during that time, why wait until afterwards? Well well, all in all I have to say that I enjoyed the course and I believe that the content of it was relevant and important. Thanks!
What do you guys think about the course? Do you think it would have been valuable to have read before we wrote the bachelor thesis? Or do you perhaps think that we would not have taken in as much information and that we would not have been as interested in the subjects back then? Perhaps it is fundamental to have it before you write your master thesis?
SvaraRadera