Bouncing Between the Dark and Bright Sides

Abstract

The authors carried out a 4-year qualitative analysis of a case study in higher education. An undergraduate course based on the principles of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) was designed, implemented, and evaluated. The process was developed by a community of practice, formed by quite a number of researchers coming from the information and communication technology and education fields. All of them belong to the Intelligent & Cooperative Systems Research Group—Education, Media, Informatics and Culture transdisciplinary group. The case provided many “tasty” partial results that were used to develop and improve three ad hoc supporting tools: Quest, Samsa, and Iloca. In this article, the authors offer a set of reflections about how the aforementioned tools were fed by the ethnographical analysis carried out, helping to overcome problems of flexibility and contextualization that are typical of the generic supporting tools generally used in the evaluation of higher education innovations.

Methodology or method? A critical review of qualitative case study reports

“…In two studies, vicarious experience or vignettes (Nairn & Panelli, 2009) and images (Jorrín-Abellán et al, 2008) were effective to support description of context, and might have been a useful addition for other case studies. Missing contextual boundaries suggests that the case might not be adequately defined.…”

“…Secondary sources were used as primary methodological references indicating that study design might not have been theoretically sound (Colón-Emeric et al, 2010; Coltart & Henwood, 2012; Roscigno et al, 2012; Snyder-Young, 2011). Authors and sources cited in methodological descriptions were inconsistent with the actual study design and practices used (Fourie & Theron, 2012; Hooghe et al, 2012; Jorrín-Abellán et al, 2008; Mawn et al, 2010; Rytterström et al, 2013; Wimpenny & Savin-Baden, 2012). This occurred when researchers cited Stake or Yin, or both (Mawn et al, 2010; Rytterström et al, 2013), although did not follow their paradigmatic or methodological approach.…”

“…In Table III, we present the 34 case studies grouped by journal, and categorized by research topic, including health sciences, social sciences and anthropology, and methods research. There was a discrepancy in categorization of one article on pedagogy and a new teaching method published in Qualitative Inquiry (Jorrín-Abellán, Rubia-Avi, Anguita-Martínez, Gómez-Sánchez, & Martínez-Mones, 2008). Consensus was to allocate to the methods category.…”

Creencias e integración de recursos digitales: un estudio con docentes universitarios de Ciencias de la Salud

“…Este estudio, de naturaleza cualitativa, se ha desarrollado mediante la tradición de investigación del Estudio de Caso (Stake, 2010). Esta es una de las corrientes más usuales en investigación educativa debido a que posibilita el análisis en profundidad de realidades sociales particulares y contribuye al estudio de sistemas bien delimitados en acción (Jorrín-Abellán et al, 2021), y de compleja o rizomática naturaleza (Estévez et al, 2021). En la Figura 1 se presenta, de forma gráfica, el esquema de los elementos que configuran el estudio.…”

“…El análisis de datos se llevó a cabo mediante el procedimiento establecido por Miles et al (2020), el cual presenta tres pasos recurrentes que se combinan continuamente: la reducción de datos, la representación de los datos y la elaboración de conclusiones y su verificación. Estas tareas u operaciones constituyen el proceso analítico básico, común a la mayoría de los estudios de naturaleza cualitativa (Jorrín-Abellán et al, 2021).…”