The Intellectual Sandbox

Amongst the various tasks that I need to get done to close out this academic quarter (what one friend refers to as her “freedom list”), I need to write an evaluation of the class I have been taking on Digital Tools for Qualitative Research, Ed P&L 692. Fortunately, that is a relatively simple, and enjoyable task, largely because it was a really, fun, interesting class. In fact, this class was the closest I have come to “playing” since I started my doctoral program – which is high praise, indeed, from me. After all, I tell people that what I like most about working on my PhD is having the time, space, and permission to play in the intellectual sandbox of the social sciences. If that is the case, then this course gave me the bucket and spade, and some of those fun little sand molds for building sandcastles.

The course is also rare amongst graduate courses in that it really does do exactly what it sets out to do – that is, introduce you to the digital tools and software that you may need to conduct qualitative research, and provides an introduction to how to use them. We started off with the basics – blogs, wikis and citation management software, and moved on to audio and video editing and transcription software, through to the final session where we tried out some analysis software.

Although I thought that the first sessions might be a little tedious since I feel pretty familiar with those basic tools, I found new things to learn in terms of how they could be used, and the open-source software that is out there for managing them. For example, although I have been using Endnote for managing my references for a few years now, I had worried that maybe I was missing something by not using other software. This class gave me a chance to use some of those other systems, and discover that although there are always pros and cons, I am pretty content with my investment in Endnote. Similarly, I had known about Google reader, and how it could be used to provide a digest of all the blogs I follow, but, until this course, I had not got around to setting it up. I still want to figure out a better way to integrate notes, pdf’s of the references and their citations. The cute little elephant icon of Evernote is mocking me from my MacBook’s menu bar as I write this, but I have just not had the time to play with that enough to figure out how useful that will be. File that as still on my “to-do” list.

The real strength of this course, however, became apparent when we started recording, editing and transcribing audio and video, which are a critical component of most qualitative research. I have been fortunate to take this course in conjunction with EPL 966, the second course in our core Qualitative Inquiry sequence, in which we have been interviewing and transcribing interviews. So it was really great to have access to and tuition on these tools just in time to use them. I have used both TransanaExpress Scribe for transcribing, and plan to use HyperRESEARCH to play around with coding. I think that if I had been shown these tools separated from the need to use them for 966, I might not have appreciated their importance. Then, when I did need them for transcribing and coding, I would probably have forgotten a lot of the detail of how to use them. So, I think that I was lucky to have the opportunity to take both of these courses at the same time. and

In fact, I think that this course should really be the lab component of the main 966 methodology course. That would also justify expanding this course, 692, into a 2 credit component of 966, so that it could run as a weekly 2 hour lab throughout the quarter, rather than just for half the quarter for 1 credit. There is so much software out there to try, and it is only really in a lab session that you have the opportunity to try it all out. 966 would also provide the data that you need to test the software adequately. And having more time would also allow for a more in-depth discussion of the methodological implications of using digital tools in research.

Overall, though, probably most significant of all for me about this course, was being prompted to set up this very blog for myself. I have long been a rather compulsive follower of various blogs, and have always kept some kind of personal journal, so it is surprising, really, that I never got around to setting up my own blog. Part of that was due to lack of time and motivation to explore the software involved, but, probably more importantly, there was no real reason or excuse to feel like I could or should inflict my voice on the blogosphere. Now that I have done so, I find it surprisingly liberating. And my concern about whether anyone really wants to read it is, actually, irrelevant. Not that I don’t welcome readers, if you are out there, but that I am finding it interesting writing for my blog whether anyone is reading or not. In other words, in the blogosphere, even if no one sees the tree falling in the forest, it still matters, to me, at least. The question is, will I continue now that the course requirement to do so is over? It remains to be seen, but I think that I will be back. So watch this space.