Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

For the qualitative research I chose the paper “Movement Perception in Music Performance – A Mixed Methods Investigation”. This study is trying to investigate the influence that musicians’ movements have in the experiencing music performance. In order to have a deeper level of knowledge they used mixed qualitative and quantitative methods. 

The one of the qualitative methods was a survey with multiple choice and comments. The participants had to categorize the segments via multiple choice, but for each segment they had also to make a comment about their choice. The point of that was a further analysis of the individual interpretation. However, the survey was not easy accessible and was not in everyday language for non musician participants. The pure qualitative method that was used was the interviews. Interview data were collected from the performers and the composers. The data were textually analyzed and synchronized with other research tracks. That gave a different approach to the concepts and insights.

From the paper I have learned how difficult it is sometimes to get qualitative data. The quantitative data were easy to be gathered in this research, but the gathering of qualitative data was challenging. Neither the form nor the language of this study subject was accessible and established by convention. In order to have a valid selection of terms, they based the concept of the qualitative research in literature.

The participants had to evaluate the perceived effort of a music performance. The segments that they had to evaluate contained only auditory or visual information of the performance. The results were quite the same in the evaluation of the auditory and the video performance, because the participants (except one) were musicians and they were able to recognize the effort of the artist only by hearing to his performance. They qualitative method has to be developed in an everyday language, so more participants, and non musician can take part to the study.  

Case study involves an in depth and detailed examination of a particular situation. This method of study is very useful when you want to try a theoretical model in real world situation. In particular, case study research design is useful for testing whether scientific theories and models actually work in the real world. You can see if your model is realistic only by trying it out in a real situation. Also case study is used in social science, psychology, anthropology and ecology, when they come to understand a more specific case this method is regarded as a valid one.

I chose the paper “A case study of Augmented Reality simulation system application in a chemistry course” from Computers in Human Behavior journal. Aim of the study is to develop a set of inquiry-based Augmented Reality learning tools for a specific lesson of chemistry in junior high school. They want to examine its effect on students’ cognitive performance, compare its effects on high-achieving and low-achieving students and investigate students’ attitudes toward the software. They have also reviewed relative computer-assistant tools in chemistry, and they end up that the AR it would be the most suitable since micro world cannot be observed in reality. Also, before the design and the development of the AR tool, researchers interview the teachers about previous experiences in computer assistant tools in chemistry. In my point of view the aim and the prior constructs were well defined.

Three hypotheses have been made for the study. Each of them has a different case concept. By introducing the AR tool in the lesson they are try to improve students’ learning motivation instead of improving the grades. They had based this case in previous relative studies.

Data gathered by quantitative and qualitative methods. Students took a Pre test and after the revision lesson with the AR tool the hade the same test again. They also answered a Likert scale questionnaire after the post test, about their experience with the tool. The questionnaire consists of four constructors in order to cover every need of the study. According to Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient grade, questionnaire and all the constructors are considered as reliable. Researchers choose randomly 5 of the 29 student and interview them to further explore student learning experience. However, in my opinion they should have interview every student in order to have better results. Also they video-recorded the entire class took some pictures during the process and kept literal notes of exceptional student performances.

All these information of the case study were analyzed after the end of the experiment. In order to analyze the quantitative data they conducted a paired t-test on the pre-test and post-test scores. They calculated statistics for the questionnaires. The results were represented but the researchers didn’t really explain “why”. However, they lead them to think of a lot improvements and future applications. 

A lot of research has been done in computer-assistant tools, AR tools and Virtual environments in education. The case study and the results were based in relative previous studies. There are not any conflictions with previous studies represented and it could be interesting to have a different approach by comparing the results to conflicting studies.