Qualitative research methods to analyze Learning 2.0 processes: Categorization, recurrence, saturation and multimedia triangulation

Abstract

The developments of the Web have generated new modalities and contexts of learning, shaping what is nowadays called “Learning 2.0”. Within this new phenomenon it arises a trend of moving out from the linearity of written word toward new multimedia complexities, that lead to a parallel semiotic complexity lying behind them. Understanding the above mentioned complexities implies to preserve and make explicit the collaboratory construction of knowledge through the identification of events, instruments, signs. This identification is in fact an analytic process, where the researcher divides the raw data into units of meaning making that must be read both in the specific contribution made by every mode (text, images, audio) as well as a whole. This is possible through an inverse process of analysis and interpretation that depends on specific instruments regarding the qualitative methodological approach. These last must be, in fact, appropriated to the new environments and phenomena. In this work the authors introduce several examples of educational research practice where categorization and triangulation were implemented on data collected from interactive processes in online learning environments, to further obtain recurrences and saturation of data. In second place, going a step further on the discussion of appropriated methods to Learning 2.0 analysis, the so called “multimedia triangulation” is presented, on the basis of analysis of data collected inside the same case study.