In short, the paper is about the upcoming and innovative ways of presenting a learning experience to students. It involves the differences with communicating face-to-face (F2F), using web conferencing, room-based video conferencing and virtual worlds. Having several case studies with different scenarios and then later comparing them in a cross-case study. In each scenario there was a group of students experiencing the teacher F2F and another group in a remote location. It was also about involving the F2F students more with the remote students, using different tools and assignments to further enrich the learning experience.
To evaluate the impact on the students and teachers within these scenarios, interviews were carried out after the lecture or group activity was done. Some of the benefits with interviews would be the added layer of complexity and possibility of new insights into the subject. The one interviewed can give their own vision about the study and therefore provide the researcher with clarity and other things relevant to the research. The biggest limitation would be the time investment, having to process, theorize and reach conclusions while filtering through all this data demands a lot from the research team.
There were also some collected data from the teachers beforehand, where the researchers asked the teachers of their previous experiences with teaching in a normal setting and their thoughts on the coming experiments. If that was not enough they also carried out a survey to gain some secondary quantitative data from the students to easily understand the opinions of the masses.
I’m having a hard time seeing any real methodological problems in this study. They used a good combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to gain insight into the subject and from there created solid conclusions. They could easily stake out the problems with the qualitative data from both the teachers and the students. But maybe I am biased because of my relative short experience with qualitative research studies, and therefore having a hard time assessing this one.
A case study is a study where you focus on something within a specific context, not changing the settings over the course of the study. It’s about gathering data that is relevant to the event in question. Other research methods are likely to create a theory or a hypothesis at the start of the project, but a case study is more about having a basic idea and then building on it whilst working on the study. There is a process for creating strong theory from a case study and it involves eight steps. According to Building theories from Case Study Research by Eisenhardt these are: Get Started, Selecting Cases, Crafting Instruments and Protocols, Entering the Field, Analyzing Data, Shaping Hypotheses, Enfolding Literature and Reaching Closure.
To begin with the study has a well defined problem that it tries to explore. The researchers have seen that other studies have come up short when dealing with this subject and use them as references when discussing the origins, providing a solid foundation for their agenda. One of the biggest strength of the study is the fact that it is collecting data from different types of agents (students, teachers) within the different cases and therefore gain a broader picture of the situation, but also because of the multiple cases and the cross-case referencing with the use of a within-case analysis, creating multiple forms of evidence to back up the study’s final conclusions. Because both qualitative and quantitative data is used in this study, it can be combined according to Eisenhardt to create a synergistic view of the whole, which is a great strength.
I cannot really find any direct flaws and weaknesses within this paper, it is a cohesive and well developed study which agrees with more or less all of "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" by Eisenhardt.
References:
Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.
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