Pretzel Croissant

Originally uploaded by Jeffrey Keefer

What a wonderful breakfast as we leave Munich–a pretzel croissant!
—–
Jeffrey Keefer
jeffrey@silenceandvoice.com

Blog: silenceandvoice.com
Twitter: twitter.com/JeffreyKeefer
Website: www.jeffreykeefer.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreykeefer

Marienplatz from Above

Originally uploaded by Jeffrey Keefer

I took this photo from the church tower across from Marienplatz.
—–
Jeffrey Keefer
jeffrey@silenceandvoice.com

Blog: silenceandvoice.com
Twitter: twitter.com/JeffreyKeefer
Website: www.jeffreykeefer.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreykeefer

Preparing to take my first vacation in 3 years (not including conference and work travel, of course; they are work to some extent after all!), we are traveling to Munich, Zurich, and Paris. In a week. With an excursion to Rouen to see the show Une ville pour l’Impressionnisme: Monet, Pissarro et Gauguin à Rouen as part of the Normandy Impressionist Festival this is shaping up to be a wonderful trip!

Tags: Munich, Paris, Zurich

I am beginning to work with and facilitate focus groups at my work, and wanted to share a resource I found to be rather helpful. While the book Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research is probably the best text on the logistical practices of preparing for, facilitating, and analyzing focus groups, it can be a bit tough to use for a quick, need-to-know reference.

Enter the Richard Krueger, the author of the above-mentioned book, who also freely makes his Focus Group Interviewing website information freely available. While the website materials are bare-bones, they are an excellent primer and ready-reference for those involved in focus group work. While this often includes market researchers, those of us within organizations who are trying to better understand the “whats” and “whys”  behind the numbers can make wonderful use of this form of data gathering and organizational feedback.

Tags: focus group

In case any of you have not heard about this, SnagIt, one of my favorite apps from Techsmith (a really cool company that I wish were closer to Manhattan so I could work for them!), now has an active (and open) beta download of SnagIt for Mac available.

I have used SnagIt for a long time, and must say I was most surprised with how this version of the application stays mostly hidden along the right of the screen, ready to be used as needed. While this is still a beta, and will undoubtedly be changed in the final version, it is exciting that it is being developed to finally meet the growing Mac user base.

Tags: snagit, SnagIt for Mac

I just learned that the call for papers for the 2011 AERC, Adult Education Research Conference, and CASAE, Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, Joint Conference was just released. While the information does not yet appear on their websites, it can be found on a PDF I uploaded here: AERC-CASAE Call 2011. 

As this conference is later than I can remember it in the past,  June 10 – 12, 2011, and is at the University of Toronto (beautiful campus), and I have some close friends in Toronto, perhaps I will consider submitting something for this. With the proposals due by October 3, no time to waste!

Anybody else interested in attending this?

Tags: AERC, AERC2011

I am trying out Evernote, the online note-taking and organizing software application that has been available for some time, but I am only now beginning to explore. It does seem a lot more powerful than I initially thought, as I was just thinking about it as an online to-do list and did not know I can save voice, webpage parts, or even upload images.

While I am using a version of this that I installed on my Mac, I struggled with downloading the BlackBerry version of this, since there is a coding problem on BlackBerry App World. Evernote sent me the current direct link, which is here if you also happen to use a BlackBerry Tour on Verizon. Seems they just fixed the link on the BlackBerry page, though I am glad that after reporting this problem, Evernote sent it to me directly.Kudos for Evernote Customer Service.

While I have a suspicion that this application does a lot more than give me a place to store my shopping lists per store, I do not seem to be terribly creative with online applications. I am wondering how others use this to help make things more efficient?

Tags: BlackBerry, Evernote, Verizon

I was recently asked about my experiences using the computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) application, MAXQDA. that I used for my most recent research project while engaging in my doctoral studies at Lancaster University,

I did not initially find this software particularly easy to use, but that is not an uncommon experience as I often find most new software easy to use (I even needed support with my new Mac on more than one occasion). I got the hang of it rather quickly, and now cannot envision coding by hand any longer. I am even starting to think I can use the software to manage a literature review I have coming up . . .

What I found helpful was the way I could assign codes to pieces of text, change the wording as needed, assign multiple codes, and then view those codes across participants, making the codes and participants visible on and off as needed, to begin to see similarities (and in turn beginning the process again). I was amazed at how this helped the process of bringing meaning out of the raw data. When I have previously done this with notes in margins, or colored highlights in Word, it became a challenge to remain consistent or even to be able to manage. Making changes were then nearly out of the question.

I recall a previous module paper where I had 8 interviewees, each one 20-24 pages in length of transcribed text. I was overwhelmed with so much information, and found the lack of an easy way to navigate and manage the raw text, much less the meaning I brought to it, a hindrance to the research process itself. I decided I would not allow that to happen again, and began exploring the various CAQDAS applications. Of the various options out there, I liked MAXQDA’s colorful user interface, the commitment of their support, how they attend and support a large qualitative conference I attend, and how the student costs are very reasonable, certainly compared to the other options. I now plan to reanalyze the data from that last project using MAXQDA, and am already beginning to speculate what different and potentially richer findings await . . .

I have thought about using one of these applications several times over the years, and decided I just have to get serious about it and make the change; good decision.

Tags: CAQDAS, computer assisted qualitative data analysis software, Lancaster University, MAXQDA, PhD

I am reworking a learning journal entry I made concerning the methodology I used for this module’s project, grounded theory. While I posted this within our course Moodle website, I thought it may be of some interest (or not) to share it here, especially given how little time I have had for blogging recently.

I have intentionally selected a different strategy of inquiry for each of our modules, having moved from case study to narrative inquiry to ethnography and now to grounded theory, based on Kathy Charmaz’s work. I recently attended a workshop that Kathy offered, as I had previously heard how this can be a rather involved and complicated process. I thought I understood it, until I tried my hand at it. As I imagined, I did need a computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) application to manage all the data that I generated (who would have ever thought I would drown in data of only 3 people?), so purchased and learned MAXQDA, one of the programs that people commonly use to handle and manage large amounts of data. I found the program a life-saver, as I never would have been able to do the 2 levels of coding that then I used to proceed to theoretical sampling, ultimately learning something that I did not expect to find at all.

Perhaps that is one of the benefits of grounded theory; I started with the text and was open to anything I found along the way, upon which I would ground (or build) my theory, without having some things in mind I was hoping (or even not hoping) to find.

Tags: grounded theory, Kathy Charmaz, Lancaster University, PhD, Research