Final Reflection

Final Reflection of the Course

            This is my final reflection on the Theory and Method for Media Technology. In this final reflection, I divides it into 2 parts. First, I would like wrap-up all my reflection from theme 1 to theme 6 and my opinion about the contribution of each theme to my knowledge. Second, I would try to answer the final question based on my knowledge, it is about different ways of combining different methods in order to answer complex research question.

Resume of all reflection and the contribution of each theme

            During my experience as a student, this is the first time I got a unique event when attending a lecture. Because in this lecture, we almost do the lesson in discussion format in each theme. This is my first experience to attending lecture abroad so there is some method that new for me to know. I think this is a good opportunity for me to know other opinion when we attending the lecture, I can know both of teacher opinion and my fellow student opinion, because each of them sometimes have a different point of view when solving and answer a question. In each of the session I tried my best to get the fruit of each lesson after hearing some argument and answer during the course, and sometimes I ask questions too if something still clouded my mind.

            In the first and second week, we discuss mainly about philosophy. This first part gives me an insight about what is knowledge itself and give me additional foundation and reason to study further. The knowledge is something that we must understand the whole picture about the “things” that we study, it is no matter from where the source is, as long as we get the concept about this things and we acknowledge it as a general truth. Also, in the second week we get another theme on critical media studies. In this theme we generally discuss about enlightenment and nominalism. From this theme, I get an idea that with knowledge we can move our society into the more advance world, because with this new idea we can get rid of superstitious matter that forbid us to move further. With this new knowledge, we try to unveil all the possibilities with the power of our reason, and with this knowledge we achieve a great civilization that we have today. However, the advance of technology must be accompanied with great care, because without a proper control this new technology can become a great misfortune to the society.

            In the third to sixth week, we discuss about theory and research methodologies. I think this is the real interesting in this whole course. Because, during these week we discuss more intense about theory and research method itself, and I think with these additional knowledge (because previously I have already learn some of them in bachelor degree) I could gather new information that can help me during this master program. At the beginning, we start to discuss about theory. This is an interesting step, because in this week we discuss about how to gather a theory and select strong theory to create a hypothesis. This is an important step when creating a research, because without a strong foundation, then our research can be crumbled along the way when conducting a research. After having solid theory and hypothesis, then we can choose several methods to analyze our prior hypothesis. In this step, we can choose quantitative or qualitative method, also if needed, we can do a collaboration between quantitative and qualitative based on our research. Each of them has their own strength and weakness, so it is up to us to decide what methods are useful to use to analyze the data. Furthermore, I get additional knowledge about case research method, this method is rather different because using inductive approach, so it is a valuable knowledge for me to acknowledge.

Combining different methods in order to answer complex research question

                In this section I would try to discuss about combining methods in order to answer complex research question. I would assume that complex research question is a huge problem that we need to solve it with our research. So, in order to answer this question, we need to do several things.

            First, we must analyze the question and find the real problem based on the question. If possible, we must view this problem from several angles to get more information about the real problem behind this question. Because, if we know the real problem, then we could formulate the possible solution for this problem. In one of our lectures with Mr. Haibo Li, he explains the importance to find the real problem, he shows an example when a bear chase a student and his teacher. The teacher thinks that the problem is how to outrun the bear, with this thinking he could not get the answer and eventually it can be disastrous for himself. On the other hand, the student thinks that the bear only satisfy if it get one prey, so the problem is how to outrun his teacher. And in the end we can conclude that the student has the right problem definition and answer. Sometimes to create a solution for this complex question, we need to use creative thinking or thinking out of the box and try to loose every burden we have that restrict to the question.

            Second, after finding the real “problem” then we need to gather theories that relevant to the problem. If possible, we must select strong theories to support our hypothesis in order to answer the question. We can use the general truth or the result of others research as base theories to create a hypothesis. When answering the complex question, we can use several hypotheses as a temporary answer based on the theories we selected. This hypothesis will be analyzed further, and if possible, it can become a new theory. As stated in one of the lecture, the theory must be falsifiable, so our hypothesis will be analyzed further in the next step.

            Third, if we need to conduct experiments to gather the data, then we must do the sampling to determine what kind of data we need for analyze the hypothesis. Sampling is part of the statistical methodology related to the retrieval portion of the population. If the sampling is done with the right method, statistical analysis of a sample can be used to generalize the entire population. Many sampling methods using probability theory and statistical theory. Therefore, to gather data we need to define what the right sampling method to conduct when doing experiments. Also, Mr. Olle Bälter show us the important things when design the questionnaire. Because this questionnaire is the main focus when gathering the data. A good questionnaire can collect the required data efficiently with a low margin of error.

            Fourth, we need to analyze the data using either quantitative method, qualitative method or mix method (using quantitative and qualitative). From Sallnäs lecture, she said that if we conduct a new research in a whole new field, we can use qualitative method to do the first survey, and after that it is depends on the research itself, because we can use quantitative method to analyze further. During this step, we will analyze the data we gathered before with one of research methods. If the problem is complex enough, we can use triangulation method to analyze the data and confirm it with our hypothesis. Triangulation is used using qualitative and quantitative method concurrently when analyze the data, with this method we can get a bigger understanding when solving the complex problem.

            Finally, we must conclude the research. Based on our first hypothesis and analysis result, we must define the connectedness of the experiment result and the hypothesis. We must conclude if our hypothesis is still valid or not. Furthermore, in this conclusion, we can give our ideas or advice for the further research for this problem.