The research I have undertaken is a qualitative research. It is a small-scale scholarly enquiry, as required within the framework of the PgCert. I see it as a prototype for a possibly larger, more long-term investigation.
I have progressed through an iterative process of firstly establishing a baseline by looking at the current experience of my students of a year long online teaching & learning MA course; virtual spaces replacing in-person interactions on campus; then I followed on with three interventions, all investigating if we can take tools and methods successfully being used in psychotherapy for decades, in order to alleviate and prevent any negative impacts of the shift to the online medium.
I have gathered four data sets and made several learning points, which have flown from one intervention into the next interventions, during my iterative Action Research (pls see also the previous four blog posts on this, as well as my Workflow entry on Research Methods).
When I researched into ways of analysing qualitative research data I came across this description by Tesch, which struck a strong cord with me:
“Qualitative research is to a large degree an art. The question of its valicity does not depend on replicable outcomes. It depends on the employment of a data ‘reduction’ process that leads to a result that others can accept as representing the data. The result of the analysis is, in fact, a representation in the same sense that an artist can, with a few strokes of the pen, create an image of a face that we would recognise if we saw the original in a crowd. The details are lacking, but a good ‘reduction’ not only selects and emphasises the essential features, it retains the vividness of the personality in the rendition of the face. In the same way a successful qualitative data reduction, while removing us from the freshness of the original, presents us instead with an image that we can grasp as the ‘essence’, where we otherwise would have been flooded with detail and left with hardly a perception of the phenomena at all” (Tesch, 1990, p. 304).
I have distilled the data sets I collected during my interventions by picking out (and anonymising) key extracts, as described above, trying to make the necessary brushstrokes to get the likening of the overall study. I have further drawn from it the key learning points and fed them back in turn into the next iteration of my intervention (please see the blog posts on the three interventions).
Distilling the data sets I followed the described criteria in Visualizing Research (Gray; Malins, 2004, p.132). They describe the metaphor of using spectacles, sieves and filters in order to analyse data. This I found really useful. I filtered to come to the essential distillation, sieves to capture precious material and spectacles to apply new vision.
Now how would I like to present the overall picture?
I have chosen to employ a creative analytic practice, i-poems, as described in Kara, 2015, p. 117-118: “I-poems are a way of identifying how participants represent themselves in interviews, by paying attention to the first-person statements in the interview transcripts. This technique was developed by Carol Gilligan and her colleagues in the 1990s and used more recently by UK researchers Rosalind Edwards and Susie Weller in their longitudinal research investigating change and continuity in young people’s senses of self over time. The interview transcripts are carefully read to identify the ways in which interviewees speak about themselves, paying particular attention to any statements using the personal pronoun ‘I’. Each instance of ‘I’ is highlighted, together with any relevant accompanying text that might help a reader to understand the interviewee’s sense of self. These highlighted phrases are then copied out of the transcript and placed in a new document, in the same sequence, each instance beginning in a new line, like the lines of a poem. I-poems can be very helpful in identifying participants’ senses of self by foregrounding the voice, or voices, that they use to talk about themselves. This is an adaptable technique that can be used with participants of different ages, genders, abilities and backgrounds (Edwards and Weller 2012: 206) although working with I-poems is quite time consuming, so they’re best used with a small sample or sub-sample (Edwards and Weller 2012: 215).”
I combined this i-poem approach with the method of using filters, sieves and glasses, as described further up (Gray, Malins, 2004).
Here are the two poems that are the outcome:
1.) I-poem distilled from the data set prior to intervention, so talking about the online learning experience over past year:
In the beginning I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. I missed the atmosphere. But […] I travelled and this gave me hat freedom.
[…] after months I started to feel less involved, …. this feeling started…. I felt I was somehow cut-off from the group.
I felt, … sometimes after switching of the PC it felt as if the world of the university, all students and everything just disappeared, as if, you know, like after switching off a movie
[…] I have to be on my toes, that if I don’t watch out I loose the university, or the university disappears
I somehow feel more anxious about my progress on the course, or, or, no more like I fear for my place in the university
I haven’t been in the actual building, on campus for months and months and months it ‘s like Does it exist? How sure can I be?
I find it more difficult to communicate online
I am missing the random chats. And also in an actual classroom I felt more immersed, as I was fully there and no distractions
2.) I-poem distilled from the three data sets of the three interventions, so after the therapy exercises:
I found some areas easier to access than others, e.g., when we got to the toes it got really intense, I could really feel my awareness and I felt a tingling sensation.
I wasn’t aware that I had so much tension in parts.
I was totally gone. Afterwards I felt less inhibited to talk about my project. I felt more calm and light
I felt more focussed afterwards, somehow…
I felt like, like we just experienced something together
I feel like I can communicate
I mean I am somehow more here
I think I am not explaining myself very well
I was really ready
I feel more open
I lost track of time
References:
Edwards, R.; Weller, S. (2012) Shifting analytic ontology: using I-poems in qualitative longitudinal research. Qualitative Research 12(2) p. 202– 17.
Gray, C.; Malins, J. (2004) Visualizing Research: A guide to the research process in art and design. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Kara, H. (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences : A Practical Guide. Bristol: Policy Press
Tesch, R. (1990). Qualitative Research Analysis Types and Software Tools. New York: Falmer Press.