Part of the QualMIP series, introduced here. 

Technically, it's week 12 but blog entry 11, since week 11 was a review of the semester plus a presentation of projects. Tonight... was feedback night.

Major takeaways

  1. Constant awareness of positionality and related concepts -- bias, personal experience, etc.
  2. Rich awareness of everyday interactions. Formerly "boring" situations reveal a depth of interaction, and there are more tools with which to analyze what's going on; there are always questions we can ask.
  3. Along the same veins, "having a larger toolbox" with which to experience the world (one of our original goals, so that's fantastic.)
  4. The importance of self-care and sensitivity to one's own state and emotions. "You are your own research instrument." Along these lines, the policy of grace weeks was a MASSIVE hit, and... I will do this again.

Other takeaways, in absolutely no particular order

The value of team dynamics in learning qualitative research, which I'll need to consider for future (presumably larger-group) iterations. It's nice to have a team and learn about your differences in perception, and to get comfortable tossing ideas around with -- but there's also value in switching it up. Cesar, Paige, and Emily worked together super-well, and this contributed tremendously to the success of the project.

NINJAs. Instructor-student ratio is key. If I scale up much, I absolutely need course NINJAs (teaching assistants) and/or coinstructors.

More memo assignments. In perhaps the first instance of students asking me to give them more homework, the group requested more exercises focused on forcing them to try different memo formats during exercises. In a 2-credit independent study, I tried not to overload them, but this is top priority to add in for a full-scale class. Suggestions include having some group-facing memos (both small and large) in addition to individual ones, so they can see what it's like to memo with and for different audiences as well as in different formats.

Interview nonverbals were a good skill to gain -- you don't really need to talk during an interview. (Quote from last night: "It's kind of like therapy. They just listen so you can talk and figure it out yourself.") Each individual has distinctive movement patterns. (I think of them like voices.)

More rounds of interviewing/observing skill practice. There was universal acclaim for more repeated practice for interviewing and observing, specifically. This fits nicely with the request for more memos. I think "more structure" will be the order of the day in the next (larger) round of the class.

Ambiguity, followed by framework introductions (worksheets, whiteboard grids, etc.) is a good pattern. Don't give the frameworks at the beginning -- let students try to figure it out -- but at some point, it's really nice to see how others have ordered topics. (I agree! It's hard to do this without introducing reading assignments... or is it? I could make worksheets from the readings, and leave the citations at the bottom for students to optionally look at if they want, I guess.)

The introduction to various qualitative research paradigms was good (although I feel it was too theoretical). This might be something valuable to use reading assignments for (one of my restrictions in this independent study design was "no course readings," and in a full-scale course I would relax that somewhat). Showing examples of work in each paradigm and having students do work across at least two (somehow) would be a plus, since everyone ended up in the interpretivist camp this time.

Project development lifecycle examples. Similarly, the close reading was useful so they could see parts of a project at a different stage than where their own projects were at. Finding some way to see (close readings of) different projects at different stages in development earlier on might help.

Instrument development was useful to see! This time around, it happened accidentally when Emily created one as part of her project (a massive table for sorting data about dance events). Do this more explictly next time.

Inter-rater reliability and validity could have used better discussions. (Yeah, I kinda pulled those out of the top of my head when it became clear we needed to discuss it during studio. More planning would have been good, I admit.) Also, we did not have a unit on member-checking, and should.

Using Olin as a convenient study location was a plus, largely for the exercise of "making the familiar strange," and the ease with which we could (potentially) experiment with environmental disruptions (something we did not do this time). Using locations other than Olin on occasion was also a big plus, so... mix it up. (Me: "I'm sure I can find strange, safe, but uncomfortable situations to dump people into.")

Protocol testing was a good exercise. However, we won't have a convenient AHS capstone in need of protocol feedback in future iterations of the course, so teams will have to come up with protocols for that exercise and swap them (a good addition to the exercise, really). Make sure to specify those protocols be made on non-sensitive topics; this time the AHS capstone topic was about something that some people considered touchy, and about something others didn't have experience with, which made it difficult to test as they scrambled to fabricate stories.

Keep the unicorn exercise (that we did with Insper).

The artifact analysis scavenger hunt was too much to pack into one day -- split it over two class periods so we can take more time doing it.

Bounding projects was something everyone did, and a good skill to develop in general. Perhaps develop exercises specifically targeting this? (I've talked with faculty at other times about "project bounding" being a skill that Olin students need to develop more generally.)

Derrida. In a simultaneous I-am-proud-but-also-sort-of-scared moment, the idea that "everything is text" ended up being an impactful phrase... I think the students meant it as "everything is data" and "everything can be analyzed" or something similar, but I'll need to be careful about introducing Derrida in the future, because... there is such a thing as just enough postmodernism to be dangerous (I'm at that stage myself, right now).

The machine trick/geneaology. Related to the above thought, the constant asking of "how did that get there? how did this come to be?" is a habit of mind that I am silently rejoicing over. Even the most intimidating, formal-looking things have some kind of backstory (and psst... the world is hackable.)

Apparently, my metaphors are popular (and help with conceptual understanding, I... think). I don't even remember what they were, but I supposedly compare things to programming and dancing quite a bit, and there was laughter.

Mental health. One of the most surprising but gratifying comments was that QualMIP was a good influence on student mental health this semester -- that it contributed to better self-care, ways to move on from cycles of overthinking, permission to be kind to oneself, awareness of one's own state, and... well. Mental health. I'm glad for this -- I'm glad this could be a space for that -- and I'd like to find a way to keep making it a better space for that, because it's SUPER important, especially at a place like Olin.

And finally, having a giant teddy bear in the office is fantastic.