Seminar updates

Thank you again for a wonderful seminar. A couple of final notes:

* I appreciated your thoughtful reflections about the seminar, and recorded many of the ideas, suggestions, and wishes that were shared this evening.

* If you're taking the seminar for credit, please submit your final writing no later than Monday, March 16.

As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me.

Thanks for the great session on Thursday evening! Some notes in preparation for Monday:

* We'll start (as usual) at 5:30, but we'll (most likely) continue until 7:30.

* I'll provide dinner. Please feel free to bring a dessert to share.

* Everyone should be prepared to share some reflections/questions. If you're writing something, you'll have up to 10 minutes to share your work and ask/answer a question or two.

* I'll need the writing by the following Monday (March 16), so that I can get grades to Linda.

* If you have any questions about Monday (or anything else), please don't hesitate to email me.

Only two sessions remaining!

For Thursday:
We'll be focusing on data collection and analysis. Sophia will share some of her work on the Speechome project, and we'll try out an analysis activity with some interview transcripts. I've posted the readings - please post your questions/comments by 3pm on Thursday!

For Monday:
We've been working hard for the past several weeks, so I thought we should celebrate with a seminar/dinner combination. I'll provide dinner - you bring your reflections (and maybe a dessert?) to share.

Please RSVP by email by Friday, so I know how many people to plan for. Based on the meetings I had with people who are writing, let's extend class by 30 minutes to 7:30pm on Monday, so that we have enough time for sharing and some wrap-up.

Following our readings of ethnography and action research, we're looking at another approach: narrative inquiry. I've put the readings up on the Schedule page.

Please post your questions/comments/reactions to the readings by 3pm on Monday.

I've met with seven people who are planning to write/share something. If you are planning to write a paper (expected with for-credit participants), please email so we can set up a time to meet before the session on Monday.

Having started the conversation about action research tonight, we're going to continue on with action research next session, looking at concerns regarding validity with an example.

Please post your questions/comments/reactions to the readings by 3pm on Thursday.

If you are planning to write a paper (expected with for-credit participants), please email so we can set up a time to meet before the session next Monday.

The readings are available on the Schedule page.

Thank you for the engaging discussion on Thursday about validity and reliability. We'll be returning to these issues again in the context of participatory approaches.

We're now turning to action research traditions - and our upcoming session on Monday at 5:30pm is focused on developing an understanding of what action research is and how it's different from the approaches/examples we've already discussed.

Please post your questions/comments/reactions to the readings by 3pm on Monday.

The readings are available on the Schedule page.

We're continuing our discussion about ethnography on Thursday - digging into the issues of validity and reliability.

Please post your questions/comments/reactions to the readings by 3pm on Thursday.

The readings are available on the Schedule page.

I've changed the schedule a bit. Instead of case study, we're going to take the next two sessions to continue our conversation about ethnography. In Tuesday's session, we're going to examine several examples. On Thursday, we're going to use these examples to talk about validity/reliability/generalizability and issues of "goodness" for ethnographic work.

The readings for Tuesday (instead of Monday because of the holiday) are available at:

http://mas790.media.mit.edu/schedule#ethnography2

Please post your comments by Tuesday at 3pm. In particular, please note which two examples you chose to read (more information about that available on the class site, linked above).

This session's readings are available here. Post your questions and comments below.

Some follow-up notes from yesterday's session:

• Yannick (and others) raised the issue of generalizability. Janet Ward Schofield has a chapter, entitled Increasing the generalizability of qualitative research, that I think addresses this issue thoughtfully. Most of the chapter is available through Google book search, and I'll work on making the whole chapter available to you as a PDF.
• Ian requested some examples of qualitative research yesterday. Now that we're looking at particular approaches, there are examples embedded in the readings. (For example, the LeCompte reading in the next session provides examples of ethnographic work.) For more examples (and a response to Angela's question about how to succinctly represent qualitative work), I recommend skimming some qualitatively-oriented journals. Sage has a listing of all its journals by journal title - some of the journals I follow that include qualitative studies include New Media & Society, Convergence, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Educational Researcher.

Looking ahead:

• Thursday's readings are available on the schedule page
• Micah graciously volunteered to facilitate the next session, about ethnography. Please let me know what session you'd like to facilitate...
• Please respond to Thursday's readings by posting your questions/comments as you read (these don't need to be long or beautifully formed, just a way to share your in-progress reactions to what you are reading)
• I've added email addresses to the mas790@media mailing list. If you're reading this, but haven't received any messages from me (and would like to), please let me know.

Miscellaneous notes:

• Someone from COUHES is coming to ML to talk about online research. If you're interested, come to the Cube conference room (E15-135) tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1pm.
• ML is hosting a conference and proposals are due Friday. You should submit something!