The class, Digital Tools for Qualitative Research, was very useful for me. Although I might have been able to work my way through the online resources myself, having a dedicated time and place to work on it, and an instructor to walk me through it, was very helpful.
I think I will use the course information in more depth next quarter when I am taking the 966 class, and have more concrete tasks that I need to complete with the different tools we used.
The one thing that would make the course more useful is if we worked in a mac lab. I have a mac and most of my classmates do as well. So when we worked with programs that only run on a PC, it is not as helpful. (Also, the PCs in the classroom lab seemed slow.) Of course, if there really are programs that are great that only work on PC, then it would be worth it to get the software to run Parallels and use it. But right now, I am not sure if the difference between PC and mac alternatives would make it worth it to pay for software to be able to run something like Weft QDA.
In this class, even the simple resources like Zotero and the mind mapping and word cloud sites were very helpful, as general resources not just for qualitative research.
The only other suggestion I would have is if this course were to be more integrated with the 800 class that we are taking now. In the section I am in, the professor does not use any of these tools or even powerpoints in class. It is nice to know that research is really about understanding the theory and process and that the technology is helpful but not able to replace research skills. At the same time, in order for people of my generation to get jobs, we will be expected to know and use these tools and integrate it into our teaching, so it would be nice to see that modeled in a course. (This of course is beyond the scope of what our fabulous 692 teacher can do, though.)
Thanks Lauren for a great class!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
CAQDAS information - TAMS
For our Digital Tools in Qualitative Research class, we were asked to look at a review of various qualitative data analysis software packages and then choose one to look at in more depth.
Of the ones listed, most were available only for Window's. I'm a Mac user, so I chose one that works for Mac OS X.
I chose to look at TAMS - The Text Analysis Markup System. It is a free software package - another plus! - and can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tamsys/. I downloaded it and opened the program. However, I'm not working on a data analysis project yet, so I did not spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. The only way to really know how useful it will be, however, will be to spend a lot of time with it on an actual project.
Glancing through some of the documentation, it appears that the TAMS program will be very useful in coding text files and searching through codes.
It also seems to have a tool for playing QuickTime video within the file, making it work as a transcription tool as well. In the program's Help file, the sotware author describes how this program does not code video files directly, but codes the text transcript that you create from the video file. However, he notes "TA is very smart about this and can use the time codes to leap to the important spot in the video or the other direction (move the scrub bar and leap to the nearest time code in the log)." (Weinstein, TAMS Analyzer version 4.10b5h) I am planning to use video in my dissertation, so this could be very helpful.
From skimming through the help files, I can tell that the software developer was himself a Qualitative researcher, and he created the program to meet his own needs for a software package for the Mac. It seems that he has designed it thoughtfully, considering how "data collection" and "data analysis" are not really separate phases, but need to work seamlessly together.
Of the ones listed, most were available only for Window's. I'm a Mac user, so I chose one that works for Mac OS X.
I chose to look at TAMS - The Text Analysis Markup System. It is a free software package - another plus! - and can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/tamsys/. I downloaded it and opened the program. However, I'm not working on a data analysis project yet, so I did not spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. The only way to really know how useful it will be, however, will be to spend a lot of time with it on an actual project.
Glancing through some of the documentation, it appears that the TAMS program will be very useful in coding text files and searching through codes.
It also seems to have a tool for playing QuickTime video within the file, making it work as a transcription tool as well. In the program's Help file, the sotware author describes how this program does not code video files directly, but codes the text transcript that you create from the video file. However, he notes "TA is very smart about this and can use the time codes to leap to the important spot in the video or the other direction (move the scrub bar and leap to the nearest time code in the log)." (Weinstein, TAMS Analyzer version 4.10b5h) I am planning to use video in my dissertation, so this could be very helpful.
From skimming through the help files, I can tell that the software developer was himself a Qualitative researcher, and he created the program to meet his own needs for a software package for the Mac. It seems that he has designed it thoughtfully, considering how "data collection" and "data analysis" are not really separate phases, but need to work seamlessly together.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Zotero Review
I just started using Zotero, a bibliographic manager software, for our Digital Tools in Qualitative Research class. (available at www.zotero.org) Previously, I had been entering citations and saving them in Word's toolbox, but have found that the functionality of that is limited. In addition, it has no capability to download citations automatically from the web. I had also tried RefWorks, a bibliographic manager provided free through OSU's library, and found it clunky and difficult to use.
I usually use Safari for my web browser, so the first step was to install Mozilla's Firefox browser, as Zotero only works with Firefox. Next, I downloaded and installed the Zotero software. It was relatively easy to use. I had to download some additional plug-ins to get Firefox to work the way I wanted, for instance to be able to view PDFs within Firefox rather than downloading and opening them separately in Acrobat.
I also had to download a plug-in for Word, so that I would be able to put my citations into a document. This was a little more tricky, but I eventually got it working.
My assessment, after using Zotero for only a week (in which I only had to format and turn in one paper with minimal citations) is that, in general, I appreciate its ease of use. I particularly like how I can capture citations from web pages, Amazon, and library search engines. One of the first things I did was pull up my order history from Amazon, where I've bought many of my textbooks, and save citations for those books into Zotero. I also did an online search for required articles for one of my courses, and tried to remember to save the citations for each one as I saved the PDFs. It will take some time before I automatically remember to save citations in Zotero when I am searching and downloading articles.
One feature I was expecting, and was disappointed to find that it did not work, was to be able to capture citations from within Carmen, OSU's course management software. Many professors post PDFs of required readings in Carmen, and I was expecting that Zotero would be able to capture these citations as well. Not so. Zotero can save web page information with the Carmen site cited, but not information about the source of the articles themselves. For this, I had to manually enter the bibliographic information.
Another major fault I found was with the automatic formatting of sources for different style guides. It appeared that, like magic, Zotero could generate correctly formatted citations. However, I discovered that with APA citation, while Zotero appears to get the information in the correct order, it does not automatically adjust for capitalization. In APA, uppercase letters are used only for the first word in a title, first word in a subtitle, and proper nouns. However, when Zotero captures information from websites, library searches, and the like, it captures the titles the way they are written, usually with all words capitalized, and does not fix this for APA. I could not find a way to work around this problem, so with many of the books I captured, I had to go in and adjust the capitalization of the titles. I see this as being a major drawback, especially when I cite the same work in papers that have to be formatted differently, such as APA for some journals but MLA or Chicago for others.
Despite these drawbacks, I plan to continue using Zotero. It is definitely easier to capture, enter, and save citations, and inserting them into Word documents is not much more difficult than with Word's own citation manager. Unlike Endnote, Zotero is free, and a new feature allows you to access your saved citations from the internet, including on mobile devices. Although I generally work from my laptop, I can see where this feature may come in handy in the future. My only wish is that I had discovered this software earlier and had all of my old citations already in it.
I usually use Safari for my web browser, so the first step was to install Mozilla's Firefox browser, as Zotero only works with Firefox. Next, I downloaded and installed the Zotero software. It was relatively easy to use. I had to download some additional plug-ins to get Firefox to work the way I wanted, for instance to be able to view PDFs within Firefox rather than downloading and opening them separately in Acrobat.
I also had to download a plug-in for Word, so that I would be able to put my citations into a document. This was a little more tricky, but I eventually got it working.
My assessment, after using Zotero for only a week (in which I only had to format and turn in one paper with minimal citations) is that, in general, I appreciate its ease of use. I particularly like how I can capture citations from web pages, Amazon, and library search engines. One of the first things I did was pull up my order history from Amazon, where I've bought many of my textbooks, and save citations for those books into Zotero. I also did an online search for required articles for one of my courses, and tried to remember to save the citations for each one as I saved the PDFs. It will take some time before I automatically remember to save citations in Zotero when I am searching and downloading articles.
One feature I was expecting, and was disappointed to find that it did not work, was to be able to capture citations from within Carmen, OSU's course management software. Many professors post PDFs of required readings in Carmen, and I was expecting that Zotero would be able to capture these citations as well. Not so. Zotero can save web page information with the Carmen site cited, but not information about the source of the articles themselves. For this, I had to manually enter the bibliographic information.
Another major fault I found was with the automatic formatting of sources for different style guides. It appeared that, like magic, Zotero could generate correctly formatted citations. However, I discovered that with APA citation, while Zotero appears to get the information in the correct order, it does not automatically adjust for capitalization. In APA, uppercase letters are used only for the first word in a title, first word in a subtitle, and proper nouns. However, when Zotero captures information from websites, library searches, and the like, it captures the titles the way they are written, usually with all words capitalized, and does not fix this for APA. I could not find a way to work around this problem, so with many of the books I captured, I had to go in and adjust the capitalization of the titles. I see this as being a major drawback, especially when I cite the same work in papers that have to be formatted differently, such as APA for some journals but MLA or Chicago for others.
Despite these drawbacks, I plan to continue using Zotero. It is definitely easier to capture, enter, and save citations, and inserting them into Word documents is not much more difficult than with Word's own citation manager. Unlike Endnote, Zotero is free, and a new feature allows you to access your saved citations from the internet, including on mobile devices. Although I generally work from my laptop, I can see where this feature may come in handy in the future. My only wish is that I had discovered this software earlier and had all of my old citations already in it.
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