Theme 3: Quantitative methods

Reflect on the key points and what you learnt by reading. You can use some of the questions in Performing research article critiques as support for a critical review of the papers. Please note that some of these questions might not be relevant, especially not for the Lowenthal/Leech chapter since it is not an empirical study.

After reading the two articles by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech and Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. I felt that the topic of this week should have been Mixed methods instead of Quantitative methods. It could also have been “How to make research on online learning” since both of the texts dealt with this problem and it is a interesting and somewhat new way of learning. Anyhow I will analyze the texts separately.

In the first article by Lowenthal, P.R & Leech, N. Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement they try to bring fourth the problem about that available research about online learning has been synonymous with low quality. To combat this problem, they suggest that we should start to make use of mixed methods to improve the quality of these researches. They explain the mixed method as a combination between both quantitative data and qualitative data. The difference between these two methods can be described like this: quantitative data is when you gather large amounts of questions that can be rated with a simple yes/no or 1-10 value. Qualitative data is non numerical in nature and therefore it is much more abstract since you gain your data through In-Depth interviews and direct observation. Combining these two methods will therefore help us investigate problems in ways that quantitative/qualitative alone or side by side cannot. Hopefully we will see more of this type of research methods in the future and it would be interesting to try it out on our own (maybe in this course?)!

The second text “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes & Campbell is also about online learning but focus on emotions and how they affect how we learn. In the text they argue that emotions can’t be separated from learning and due to the increase of people studying online this subject has gotten a lot of attention lately. The interesting thing about this paper is that it is using a mix of a quantitative method, qualitative data and quantitative analysis which links it to our first paper and therefore is an example of a mixed research in some way. However this mixed research may not be spot on to how Lowenthal & Leech (2009) describes it.

After reading these two texts I’m looking forward to discuss them with the group and I’m curious how they interpreted these texts. I would also like to learn more about mixed research and I will finish my post with a quote that rimes well with it I think: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” - Albert Einstein


References: 

Lowenthal & Leech (2009). Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement . In T. T. Kidd (Ed.), Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for teaching practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Cleveland-Innes & Campbell (in press). Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.