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Eine bevölkerungs- und systembezogene Perspektive auf Gesundheit, starker Anwendungsbezug und Interdisziplinarität, aber auch eine Affinität zu quantitativen und epidemiologischen Methoden und Methodenpragmatismus zeichnen Public-Health-Forschung und -Praxis aus. Diese Orientierung stellt die qualitative Methodenausbildung in Public Health vor einige Besonderheiten. In diesem Beitrag reflektieren wir das Konzept der zweisemestrigen Grundlagenveranstaltungen im Masterstudiengang Public Health der Fakultät für Gesundheitswissenschaften der Universität Bielefeld. Wir setzen mit dem Seminarkonzept auf forschendes Lernen, bei dem die Studierenden den Forschungsprozess mittels der konstruktivistischen Lehrmethode des Cognitive Apprenticeship durchlaufen. Diese offene Herangehensweise ermöglicht es uns, auf unterschiedliches Vorwissen und unterschiedliche Kompetenzniveaus zu reagieren. Mit einer gegenstandsbezogenen, pragmatischen Vermittlung bereiten wir auf die Nutzung und Weiterentwicklung von Methodenkompetenz in der späteren heterogenen Forschungs- und Berufspraxis in Public Health vor. Zugleich bleibt es für uns eine Herausforderung, Studierende für die Bedeutung und den Nutzen der Anwendung einer Vielfalt qualitativer Methoden zu sensibilisieren. The field of public health is characterised by a population and systemic perspective on health, applicability and interdisciplinarity, and a slant towards quantitative and epidemiological methods and methodological pragmatism. This presents specific challenges for the teaching of qualitative methods in public health. In this contribution we reflect on the concept of the two-semester methods seminars in the master of public health course at the School of Public Health at Bielefeld University, Germany. Our teaching is guided by the concept of enquiry-based learning. In our methods seminars, we employ the constructivist teaching method of cognitive apprenticeship to introduce students to the research process. This open approach allows us to respond to different degrees of prior knowledge and levels of competence. With our pragmatic, application-led teaching, we qualify graduates to develop and employ methodological skills in their later academic and practical careers. At the same time, it remains a challenge to sensitise students to the significance and benefits of a wide range of qualitative methods.

Background The use of distance education using digital tools in higher education has increased over the last decade, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study aimed to describe and evaluate nursing students’ experiences of the pedagogical transition from traditional campus based learning to distance learning using digital tools. Methods The nursing course Symptom and signs of illness underwent a transition from campus based education to distance learning using digital tools because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This pedagogical transition in teaching was evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Focus group interviews ( n  = 9) were analysed using qualitative content analysis to explore students’ experiences of the pedagogical transition and to construct a web-based questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised 14 items, including two open-ended questions. The questionnaire was delivered to all course participants and responses were obtained from 96 of 132 students (73%). Questionnaire data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and comments from the open-ended questions were used as quotes to highlight the quantitative data. Results The analysis of the focus group interviews extracted three main dimensions: didactic aspects of digital teaching , study environment , and students’ own resources. Social interaction was an overall theme included in all three dimensions. Data from the questionnaire showed that a majority of students preferred campus based education and experienced deterioration in all investigated dimensions after the pedagogical transition. However, approximately one-third of the students appeared to prefer distance learning using digital tools. Conclusions The main finding was that the pedagogical transition to distance education reduced the possibility for students’ social interactions in their learning process. This negatively affected several aspects of their experience of distance learning using digital tools, such as reduced motivation. However, the heterogeneity in the responses suggested that a blended learning approach may offer pedagogical benefits while maintaining an advantageous level of social interaction.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has created a need for educational materials and methods that can replace clinical clerkships (CCs) for online simulated clinical practice (online-sCP). This study evaluates the impact of using simulated electronic health records (sEHR) for inpatients, and electronic problem-based learning (e-PBL) and online virtual medical interviews (online-VMI) for outpatients, for an online-sCP using a learning management system (LMS) and online meeting system facilitated by a supervising physician. Methods The sEHR was reviewed by medical students and subsequently discussed with a supervising physician using an online meeting system. In the e-PBL, medical students reviewed the simulated patients and discussed on the LMS. For the online-VMI, a faculty member acted as an outpatient and a student acted as the doctor. Small groups of students discussed the clinical reasoning process using the online meeting system. A mixed-method design was implemented. Medical students self-assessed their clinical competence before and after the online-sCP. They answered questionnaires and participated in semi-structured focus group interviews (FGIs) regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the practice. Results Forty-three students completed the online-sCP during May and June 2020. All students indicated significant improvement in all aspects of self-evaluation of clinical performance after the online-sCP. Students using sEHR reported significant improvement in writing daily medical records and medical summaries. Students using e-PBL and online-VMI reported significant improvement in medical interviews and counseling. Students also indicated CCs as more useful for learning associated with medical interviews, physical examinations, and humanistic qualities like professionalism than the online-sCP. Eight FGIs were conducted ( n  = 42). The advantages of online-sCP were segregated into five categories (learning environment, efficiency, accessibility, self-paced learning, and interactivity); meanwhile, the disadvantages of online-sCP were classified into seven categories (clinical practice experience, learning environment, interactivity, motivation, memory retention, accessibility, and extraneous cognitive load). Conclusions Online-sCP with sEHR, e-PBL, and online-VMI could be useful in learning some of the clinical skills acquired through CC. These methods can be implemented with limited preparation and resources.

In this article an account is given of the net-based working processes among the members of a group of qualitative researchers, called \"Leuchtfeuer\" (NetzWerkstatt, Institute for Qualitative Research, Freie Universität Berlin, see http://www.qualitative-forschung.de/netzwerkstatt/arbeitsgruppen/gruppen/NW4/). After presenting the group and the contexts of group development, three main characteristics constitutive for the group's profile will be outlined using the metaphors of: \"island life,\" as extracted before from data analysis (Section 5.1); \"'voluntariness in joining or leaving, in taking and giving back\" (Section 5.1.1); \"specifics in the phase of life of candidates doing their doctorate\" (Section 5.1.2); \"confining and protective mechanisms adapted by the 'islanders' during their voluntary insulation in a 'virtual island world'\" (Section 5.1.3). Section 5.2 addresses the question in what respect does \"island life\" meets specific requirements of qualitative research: exploratory phases of qualitative research need expert colloquy in \"periods of rough copy and draft\" (Section 5.2.1). This can be explained by attributes like \"spontaneity\" (Section 5.2.2) and \"'fluidity\" (Section 5.2.3) of successive utterances; both dispositions of mutual support by informational expert interchange emerge from \"island life.\" This situation of enhanced communicative activities among experts will on the one hand stimulate productive thinking and abductive reasoning. Along with extensive activities (Section 5.2.4), each researcher is summoned to develop capacities of reflection and selection in respect to one's own subject matter. From our point of view, the general conditions of the NetzWerkstatt concept—particularly aspects of \"protection\" and \"continuity\"—constitute a potentially serviceable and commonsense definition of the field of communication. However, the range of possibilities opened by permanent and quasi-automatic documentation of communicative research work—in our context referred to as everyday activities in the form of correspondence among group members' synchronous written communication (chat) and asynchronous digital correspondence (mailing list)—have not yet been adequately recognized. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs090134

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has been described as the fastest growing academic development movement in higher education. As this field of inquiry matures, there is a need to understand how SoTL research is conducted. The purpose of our study was toinform this debate by investigating research approaches used in SoTL publications. We analysed 223 empirical research studies published from 2012 to 2014 in three explicitly focused SoTL journals. We classified the studies as either qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods using an analytical framework devised from existing literature on research methods. We found that the use of the three research designs was fairly evenly distributed across the papers examined: qualitative (37.2%), quantitative (29.6%), and mixed methods (33.2%). However, there was an over-reliance on data collection from a single source in 83.9% of papers analysed, and this source was primarily students. There was some, but limited, evidence of the use of triangulation through the use of multiple data collection instruments (e.g. survey, assessment tasks, grade databases). Similarly, only one-third of publications classified as mixed methods integrated the analysis and interpretation of the qualitative and quantitative data equally within the study. We conclude that current SoTL research is characterised by methodological pluralism but could be advanced through inclusion of more diverse approaches, such as close reading, and adoption of strategies known to enhance the quality of research, for example, triangulation and visual representation.

Knowledge is now recognized as an important basis for competitive advantage and many firms are beginning to establish initiatives to leverage and manage organizational knowledge. These include efforts to codify knowledge in repositories as well as efforts to link individuals using information technologies to overcome geographic and temporal barriers to accessing knowledge and expertise. We suggest that Knowledge Management (KM) efforts, to be successful, need to be sensitive to features of the context of generation, location, and application of knowledge. To this end, we highlight the situated organizational learning perspective that views knowledge as embedded in individuals, in connections between individuals, and in artifacts as a useful lens to examine phenomena related to the establishment of KM initiatives. In an ethnographic case study of an effort to change knowledge-work processes in a market research firm, we apply the situated knowledge perspective to highlight the factors responsible for the limited success of the initiative in the firm. This study suggests that a consideration of the situated knowledge web and the alignment of the initiatives with the features of the knowledge web are central to success in knowledge management efforts in firms.

Das Lehren und Lernen qualitativer Forschungsmethodik wirft für viele qualitativ arbeitende Sozialwissenschaftler/innen eine Reihe von Fragen und Problemen auf. In diesem Beitrag, mit dem wir ein Symposium zu dieser Thematik auf dem 2. Berliner Methodentreffen im Juli 2006 aufnehmen und weiter entwickeln, sollen einige grundlegende Problemdimensionen skizziert werden. Das Lehren und Lernen qualitativer Methoden ist nicht unabhängig vom Selbstverständnis qualitativer Sozialforschung zu sehen. Wir unterscheiden zwischen einer paradigmatischen und einer situativ-pragmatischen Sichtweise. Mit diesen beiden Auffassungen verbindet sich auch ein unterschiedliches Verständnis der Vermittelbarkeit qualitativer Methoden. Eine pragmatische Auffassung geht eher mit der Annahme der Lehrbarkeit qualitativer Methoden im Sinne einer Technik einher, während sich mit einer paradigmatischen Auffassung eher die (konstruktivistisch geprägte) Vorstellung eines gemeinsamen Einübens methodischen Handwerks verbindet. Schließlich ist hier auch der institutionelle Stellenwert qualitativer Prozeduren zu berücksichtigen, insbesondere in Relation zur Stellung quantitativer Methodenlehre in diversen Lehr- und Lern- Kontexten. Aus diesen Überlegungen leiten sich fünf zentrale Dimensionen der Lehr- und Lernbarkeit qualitativer Methoden ab: Formen der Vermittlung (zwischen Lehrbuchwissen und Cognitive Apprenticeship) und Erfahrungen damit, die institutionellen Kontexte unter Einbeziehung ihrer Entwicklungen und die Rolle außeruniversitärer Methodenvermittlung, die Passung zwischen Person und Methode unter besonderer Berücksichtigung relevanter subjektiver Kompetenzen sowie, als eine besondere Form eines kontemporären Vermittlungskontexts, das Long Distance Learning und seine Implikationen für das Lehren und Lernen qualitativer Methoden. (ZPID).

Objective. In the course of daily teaching responsibilities, pharmacy educators collect rich data that can provide valuable insight into student learning. This article describes the qualitative data analysis method of content analysis, which can be useful to pharmacy educators because of its application in the investigation of a wide variety of data sources, including textual, visual, and audio files. Findings. Both manifest and latent content analysis approaches are described, with several examples used to illustrate the processes. This article also offers insights into the variety of relevant terms and visualizations found in the content analysis literature. Finally, common threats to the reliability and validity of content analysis are discussed, along with suitable strategies to mitigate these risks during analysis. Summary. This review of content analysis as a qualitative data analysis method will provide clarity and actionable instruction for both novice and experienced pharmacy education researchers.

The authors describe an emerging paradigm of educational research that pairs theories of embodied learning with a class of immersive technologies referred to as mixed reality (MR). MR environments merge the digital with the physical, where, for example, students can use their bodies to simulate an orbit around a virtual planet. Recent research supports the idea that body activity can be an important catalyst for generating learning, and new technologies are being developed that use natural human physicality and gesture as input. However, existing research on embodied learning technologies has been disparate, driven largely by specific technical innovations and constraints, and often lacking a clear focus on establishing their efficacy in educational contexts. On the basis of the unique characteristics of these technologies and on their own experiences conducting research in this area, the authors put forth six precepts for embodied learning technology researchers that pertain to the rationale, design, and execution of empirical studies.