Applied Media Research - Qualitative Research

Last week in Applied Media Research, we had our first question for Digital Fiction Factory. This week we had a break and so focused on qualitative research and in what ways we can use it. Next week we have our question from Onteca and then the week after its a question from Nine Lives Media.
So. Qualitative research! We discussed this in detail in one of our earlier lectures and so today we created exercises in our groups to practice and see if we could produce some qualitative data. Basically, we had to create something that would take about 20 minutes at most, where we would find some sort of answer to the question 'how do we promote a course to students?'. The idea was to find out their experience and more than just numbers.
My group decided on doing something physical and so we created a table which looked like this...

Then we picked 6 different ways in which a student could find out about university...

We then explained each one to the participants and here is what I said:

Interview

• One on one with a university representative or lecturer talking about the course

University Fair

• Stalls from multiple universities at one place e.g. Echo Arena. Where you are free to walk around

Open Day

• Open day at the university of your choice, where you can walk around and talk to people about them

Website 

• A university website where you can navigate freely through information, videos and more

Prospectus

• A book filled with everything you need to know about the courses

Seminar

• A lecture type situation where a presentation is shown and university representatives/lecturers share information

What we also did disclose is that if we actually had the time, we would allow the participants to experience each of these situations or a simulation of the situation. This would have gave a truer result that them just thinking about what they might be like.

The results that we got were as follows (from 3 participants):

From these results I worked out the order that the categories go in:

1. Website
2. Open Day
3. University Fair
4. Seminar
5. Prospectus
6. Interview

The students who took part said the exercise was fun and easy. They understood why and what they were doing. They took about 5 minutes on the exercise and seemed to think about and discuss their ideas. We wanted to ask them what they thought so that we had more than just the information in the tables to take from the exercise.

What was our method?
We wanted something that was quick and simple to do, bit of fun and not too serious. We allowed participants to order their best and  ways to find out about university courses. We observed what they were doing when arranging the categories, and listening to what they were saying.

What did we find out?
The best way to advertise/promote university is through a website or some sort of online source in which students can freely navigate through and choose what to see and what not to see themselves.

What did I learn about qualitative research methods?

It is more about the detail and the understanding of the questions. Qualitative research can be fun rather than simple yes or no questions.

Other ways of using qualitative research were used by the other groups through diary entries, video diaries, letters, postcards, focus groups and other physical activities.

My Reflection

This lecture was interesting to do because we were allowed to just work on something rather than watching a presentation or slide show which is something we do a lot across the course. I liked creating the activity because I have a kinesthetic way of learning where I prefer to do rather than just read. Although in school I have done a lot of work on research methods, I suppose it was good to have the refresh.

You Learn Something New Everyday

The main thing that I took from today is that practically doing something seems to be a better way of getting results, over questionnaires or other forms of quantitative research.

Speak Soon!