Netnography, Virtual Worlds, and Tool Adoptions

Since the last class, I've been thinking a lot about my love for digital tools and whether I need to put my attitude about tool adopters vs. non-adopters in check. The best I can say is...maybe.

I didn't grow up around computers. I'm not a digital native. The first computer I owned arrived when I was a senior in high school, and I didn't get Internet service at home (dial-up) until after my Freshman year of college. My first laptop came after I graduated college. That was followed by a cell phone after I was married and a smartphone after I started my second career as a teacher. So technology hasn't always been a part of my life, but as I've experienced ways that it could make my life better and less complicated, I've embraced it. I'm pretty open-minded about playing with new tools, and if something doesn't work for me, I'm okay with abandoning it. The beauty of the digital playground is that there are always more toys.

So here's the issue for me: if tools exist to make the research process more efficient, transparent, and accessible, then why shouldn't they be widely used?

I appreciate that some people have found strategies that work for them and that tools may be difficult to learn, but I don't know if those reasons are good enough to warrant resistance. I think it comes down to a fundamental question of what is the purpose of research? If research is intended to be a primarily researcher-focused act--which it very well may be given that the researcher decides every aspect of the study--then the researcher should just use whatever works, digital or not. But if the purpose of research is to contribute more broadly to society and our understandings of the world or our fields of study, then I think digital tools are a necessary part of that. They allow closer and more verifiable examination of research, and they provide better data trails to assist novice researchers understand research practices. In this worldview, it seems selfish to resist using digital tools out of convenience.

I'm not saying that researchers have to learn and use every digital tool available. There are some that will be a better fit for the research and the researcher than others (I'm looking at you, EndNote...). But I don't think general ignorance of the tools or resistance to them is acceptable among those who want to do research professionally (i.e., academics). Tools are becoming more accessible and intuitive all the time, and even if a particular tool is rejected for one reason or another, researchers should at least consider them with an open mind.

So yeah, I guess I'm still on Team CAQDAS. Pretty passionately so...

Speaking of my CAQDAS passions, I was disappointed to see that the new Netnography book (Netnography: Redefined) isn't coming out until June. I've been having regular Amazon deliveries of books introduced through this class every Friday since the beginning of the semester. It will be weird not to race home on Friday to hide another package of qualitative research books before my husband sees it... I need to get better at reading nonfiction books on the Kindle...

I'll be curious to see how much of the Netnography book is actually "redefined." There are so many fascinating issues in the chapters we read that I can see applying to my own research of teacher bloggers. My research is going to examine experiences of bloggers and lurkers and see if there is any difference in how the quantify (with survey data) or account for (with interview data) their self-efficacy beliefs as teachers. I can imagine worlds in which aspects of Kozinets's four A's (adaptation, anonymity, accessibility, and archiving) could be relevant. For example, maybe adaptation differentiates those who blog vs. those who lurk. Maybe the bloggers are better able to adapt to the different types of technology involved in blogging. Anonymity is definitely an issue; teachers are highly public figures, so they have to be careful about any digital footprints they lead. Some will only blog or comment under pseudonyms while others are identifiable but careful about the types of information they share. Accessibility seems to be decreasing as an issue (and maybe the new book will speak to that since there are more recent Pew Internet Reports reflecting these trends). Archiving also factors in since everything is preserved on the many blogging platforms, and once something is published, it's hard to undo it. I want to explore more of the Netnography methodology to see exactly how it will fit into my research.

Finally, I enjoyed reading chunks of Holt's World of Warcraft dissertation. I didn't have a chance to read all of it, but it was interesting to learn about his research methodology. I think it would be incredibly challenging to research a MMORPG while immersed as a player. How do you juggle the research experience with the player experience? It seems like it would be hard to set playing goals such as getting to the raider/end-of-game level without letting that consume you or overshadow the research. But at the same time, I can't imagine any other way to study that culture. Similarly, I wondered about the possible ethical issues that could arise from having multiple identities (alts) within the game. It's definitely a possibility that is unique to the online world, and I wonder what issues that might present and how those are handled in the research. As always, there's a lot to consider.

Waiting on the World to Change

This morning, I woke up at an ungodly early time to work on grading my students' writing pieces. As I sat down to start the task, I had the thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if there was a tool I could use that would let me just click a few buttons for their writing rubrics and send them their results?" A Google search later, I found two new tools: Doctopus and Goobric. Doctopus compiles all of my students' writing pieces from Google Docs into one spreadsheet. Then Goobric takes a rubric you've created in a Google Spreadsheet and applies it to the document. You'll see a split-screen with the rubric on top and the student's writing below, and you can just click the box of the descriptor that applies. You can even record audio feedback for your student!

When  you're done, you click "Submit," and that's where the real magic happens. It will automatically paste the appropriately shaded rubric with a link to your audio comments at the bottom of your student's document, AND it will input the rubric scores on your Doctopus spreadsheet. It's amazing, and it made the quality of my feedback far better in much less time than it would normally take me to grade essays.

All because I did a quick Google search to try and solve a problem this morning.

When I then started reading the Markle, West, & Rich (2011) article, I quickly came down from my technology-empowered high and settled back to the real world. The fact that they provided the video clips along with the conversation analysis did so much to emphasize the inadequacy of CA as a stand-alone method, and yet, CA and other types of transcription are standard practices. The tools exist to make the practice better, so that's not the barrier; it's the researchers and gatekeepers who are standing in the way.

Just as I was able to find tools to improve my grading process, so, too, could researchers improve their data process. I know those tools exist. For example, iBooks Author (Mac) allows you to write and publish text with embedded multimedia files. Magazines are moving toward a similar format for their digital editions where they add slideshows, videos, and playlists to enhance the content. Our class readings this week suggested many other tools as well. Scholars could still write traditional texts for hard copy books and journals, but they could have the enhanced digital version available online. In addition, if researchers were concerned about privacy issues for their research subjects, Markle, West, & Rich (2011) suggest that there are tools that could be used to edit the files to protect subjects. The pitch of a subject's voice could be raised or lowered to make it less identifiable to others, and video could be edited to mask a person's face. As long as the researcher was transparent to both the subjects and the research audience about using these tools to alter the data and justified it based on privacy concerns, I don't think it would be a problem. We could at least start heading in that direction.

Markle, West, & Rich (2011) make two arguments that I think are home runs for the move toward multimedia enhanced writing:

1) It frees up writing space so that the research quality improves. When researchers are constrained by word count limits, it's unfortunate to have to dedicate some of those precious words to transcripts that don't even reflect the conversation as authentically as the audio file itself would. The field would improve by more thorough analysis of the interview rather than a transcribed account of it.

2) It improves the teaching of novice researchers. It takes the research process from an abstract concept to a concrete, hands-on experience. Researchers would enter the field better equipped to conduct powerful research, and the quality of research would improve as a result.

These seem like two major benefits that would outweigh any disadvantages advanced by resistors.

But people still need to want to make the shift, and I'm not sure how to convince them to do it. I face this challenge constantly when I find new teaching tools like Doctopus and Goobric that I want my colleagues to try, but they resist for reasons that don't always make sense to me. Exposing the ways that technology improves the process or product is one way to help, which is why I'm grateful that we have this class. Articles like the one by Markle, West, & Rich (2011) are helpful, too, but I always wonder if the people who need to be reading those articles actually are. The fact that their article is being published in FQS over a more traditional research journal makes me wonder if they're already preaching to the choir.

So I guess I'm leaving this week's readings a little bit frustrated because the world is not changing as quickly as I'd like it to. The benefits of using these technology tools seem overwhelming and obvious to me, but I feel like I'm in the minority on that front. I think things will get better as younger people move into academia, but that's still a long time to wait.

And I'm impatient.