iPhone, iResearch. Exploring the use of smart phones in the teaching and learning of visual qualitative methodologies

Abstract

Mobile phones are a characteristic artefact of contemporary societies, transversally present in both public and private spheres, including the students’ daily life. This paper showcases an innovative teaching activity that takes advantage of this fact by promoting and valuing the use of smart phones in the university classrooms, specifically when teaching and learning visual qualitative research methodologies. While collecting and interpreting data, sociology undergraduate students were invited to use their smart phones and respective apps, thus combining textual annotations with audio, photo and video recording facilities. By the end, this strategy proved to be especially important in the development of the next generation of scholars’ competences to generate imaged-based records effectively and efficiently in order to answer research questions, inform interpretation and develop questions for further research.

Keywords:

• Creative methodologies
• mobile methods
• qualitative inquiry
• social mobile devices (SMD)
• visually literate student

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the dedication and enthusiasm of all students who participated in the spring semester of 2018 in the course ‘Qualitative Analysis Laboratory’ (LABQUAL) [SOC2413], taught to sociology undergraduate students at the University of Évora (Portugal), as well as to the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this volume for their attentive and useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This presentation took place on 8 June 2018 at the University of Évora. A teaser for that public presentation was prepared by the teacher and is available online, on Youtube, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLkP4izVSEg&feature=youtu.be