Basically the
study tries to describe the meaning of mixed research and what the researchers
need to take into consideration while dealing with and applying mixed research
with the goal to improve online learning research studies.
Furthermore they
discussed that a few researches within online learning nowadays conduct mixed designs
although the increasing popularity of it[1].
The issue is clarified with the example of the paradigm war or the debate
between the quantitative positivists and the qualitative constructivists. These
guys need to understand that the best result may come from a combination
between qualitative and quantitative methods. Obviously, the limitations of a
quantitative study are often embossed with the benefits of a qualitative study
and vice versa. Thus, we need to aid the pragmatists who make room for utilized
mixed research.
I assume that the
sample size could possibly be quite complicated to combine in utilized
mixed research like they mentioned in the article[2].
I mean a quantitative study is mostly dependent on a large sample size to
become trustworthy in the long run, while in a qualitative study it´s more
likely to be a bonus if the sample size is huge. In mixed research designs you
have to somehow combine the large amount of relatively predictable answers with
more well developed answers, but it could be tricky or at least be
time-consuming if these qualitative answers have to live up to the same extent to
those quantitative answers. Perhaps that’s why we rather often see additional selections
within a quantitative method which can advance by using a qualitative method,
for instance by choosing if you want to attend to an interview within a survey.
Hence, that procedure decreases the validity of the study according to me because
of the self-selection alternative a participant is exposed to.
Emotional presence,
learning and the online learning environment
This study discuss
the relationship between emotions and empirical data in online environments, by
arguing if emotional presence could be
an underlying aspect within online community research.
It´s mentioned
that previous inquiries haven´t focused enough on the importance of
highlighting the emotions in educations[3].
I believe that a lot of us are aware of that more research in this subject is
necessary, although we don´t really know how we can accomplish a relatively successful
study in terms of validity and reliability regarding this issue. Spontaneously,
when I saw the main headline of this study, I assumed that this is going to be
an abstract, confusing and complicated paper to read. Hopefully the statements would
be clarified by means of the more concrete theory design and action in order to
for instance help me understand and separate abstract terms like social,
emotion and presence in this particular context, but obviously with the results
to hand, I was very wrong. Anyway, will we ever be able to visualize these
abstract terms by using some theories of design and action?
With regards to the previous
paragraph I didn´t find this study especially trustworthy, perhaps because I
didn´t realize exactly how they proceeded with the method. “Qualitative data, drawn from open-ended questions
about the online experience, were evaluated by four
different coders using a grounded theory analysis process
of open, axial and confirmatory coding.”[4] Actually this quote doesn´t say so much to me, because
I need to understand how for instance these coders worked in order to make the
results comparatively comprehensible and reliable. In addition, I demand a more reasonable
definition of this grounded theory.
Finally, I´m not so sure if
I have learned anything particular from these two studies, but I´m more aware
of that the utilized theory and the method might not be that obvious for the
readers as it might be for the authors.
I feel the same way as you do about the paper not being as abstract as expected. I was surprised that the authors used such a quantitative method and analysis. Since the data they collected is very abstract and subjective, I believe it is better to use a more qualitative research. It is hard to classify and categorize qualitative data the way they do in the paper, and I felt the paper got very confusing and complicated by using such unexpected quantitative method and analysis.
SvaraRaderaThe aspect about the sample size of mixed research is an interesting aspect. Like you say the sampling can differ quite a lot between qualitative and quantitative research, in terms of number of participants and so forth. This is probably one of the (few) problems with mixed methods. This far I've had a hard time finding any disadvantage with using mixed methods. But this issue is probably something researchers definitely have to have in mind when they're exploring the use of mixed methods further.
SvaraRadera