Theme 6 – Reflection

In this seminar, that was the last one for this course, we talked about case studies and qualitative studies although the focus was on case studies. Before the seminar I found case studies a bit hard to understand, I couldn’t really tell how they differed from qualitative studies. But in the seminar I learnt that in the beginning of a case study, one does not necessarily know what to look for. A case study don’t need to have a defined problem to investigate, it is enough with just an idea. Also, the questions in a case study could be open-ended so that one cannot answer yes or no. I also learnt that a case study is a lot like a field study, the main difference is that a field study often is made by just one person while a case study often is made in teams.

We also took some time of the seminar to discuss the course and how we experienced it, like a lighter course evaluation. One thing that we talked about was when the right time to take this course are. I believe that some parts of this course (like the part with quantitative and qualitative studies) could be good to have before we write our bachelor thesis. Olle talked about “the perfect survey” in one of the previous seminars and I would really like to have that kind of lecture in the beginning of the bachelor thesis, especially since I used a survey in my bachelor thesis. On the other hand, I am not sure that I would have learned so much about it if I hadn’t practically used it before. Since I had done a survey I could really relate to it and see what kind of things that I did “wrong” in the survey I used. So I think it is both good and bad that we take this course after we writer our bachelor thesis.