Reflections "before" / Theme 3

To be honest I was fascinated by both articles “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009) and “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. They are both concerning very current and up-to-date topic – online education. And as far as this sort of education is growing (and I often use it) we definitely need to increase the quality of it and understand better all the problems and details concerning it. 

The main problem of the first paper “Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement” by Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009)  is a very low quality of research on e-learning. The researchers are comparing online-learning and traditional way of learning. In this particular chapter the researchers are inventing a new method to collect data, that they name mixed research. Mixed research is a new  strategy of researching that  unites quantitative and qualitative analysis to achieve a more trustworthy way to do a research. In my opinion, the purpose of study more exploratory because the researches are creating a new method to grow the quality and trustworthiness of online research studies. According to Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. qualitative data have to be checked with a comparative analysis:  content analysis,  the number of words, social presence, keywords, domain analysis, taxonomic analysis and  component analysis. The researchers are claiming that if we are relying on the only one kind of analysis, there could some interpretative (hermeneutics) errors happen. They come to conclusion that using both quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis will help solve some kinds of problems  that one method or even several methods approaches will not [1]. But I must say that researchers totally understand that such kind of research is definitely much more complicated than simply quantitative and/or qualitative studies separately. But this new way of researching in turn will definitely increase both quality of online-learning research and all that we know about e-learning. I think that this method is a good way to combine the best parts of qualitative and quantitative analysis. But I think the paper is lacking some more information, data and, actually, critique against this method, because it can’t be so that this method is the best one in the world.

The main problem of the second paper “Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment” by Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. is the question of the presence of emotion in online learning. The researchers are wondering if emotion influence  the experience of online learning (as far as online learning is using new technologies). The purpose of the study is explanatory. They are using mostly quantitative methods – their data is collected from surveys, conferences, discussion transcripts and is presented in the following “Findings” part of the paper. But they also have qualitative data from the open questions in the survey. They come to conclusion that emotion may constrain learning as a distracter, but on the other hand, it may perform as an enabler in support for such activities as thinking, decision‑making, stimulation and directing [2]. And they conclude that emotions are definitely present in e-learning communities. The researchers define emotional presence as an experience which is overhang in the online environment. They also have many questions and aims for the further research (such as, e.g. 'how do emotions impact design and organization, facilitation and direct instruction' [2]?) I find this as a really good example of how qualitative methods can be used in research to obtain a very good result.

References:
[1] Lowenthal, P. R. & Leech, N. (2009). Mixed research and online learning: Strategies for improvement. In T. T. Kidd (Ed.), Online education and adult learning: New frontiers for teaching practices. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
[2] Cleveland-Innes, M. & Campbell P. (in press). Emotional presence, learning and the online learning environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.