Final blog post

The course went by so fast and involved so many different themes that I had to go back and read the blog posts I wrote in the beginning to refresh my memory. The themes can be divided into two subgroups, one is more philosophical and the other one was more “hands on” and practical. The philosophical part, which we started the course with, lead to a big change of my mind set. My way of think that there is only one correct answer was not a good match and I had some trouble to think in a more open way. But once I let go of my old way of thinking I really enjoyed discussing the different ideas and views of the world.

One of the main ideas that I like to read, write and discuss about was the statement: knowledge is perception. This was something that we read about for the first theme, the two texts was not the easiest to understand but after the lecture and the seminar it all become much more clear. By using senses to evaluate the world you get knowledge about it. How does the objects look like, feel like, smell like and so on? What you can see and experience is what you can know. But even though we all use our eyes to see we will not see the same things. This is what Socrates means by ”not using eyes to see with but rather through them”. If I look at something I might notice different things from what my friend would base on what other experiences I have. The senses together with experiences you have will result in a difference in what you are deceiving compared to your friend. Therefor it can be seen as it is a bit subjective and dependent a lot of the person and his/hers earlier experiences.

So the question, or should I write theme, for this last post is to “reflect about different ways of combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions”. And I believe that is was a good thing to start of with defining knowledge, if we understand what knowledge is then we can find ways of finding new knowledge. So we can ask questions like: What can we know? What do we build our knowledge on? Some would ague that we can only know what we can see and others are not sure that we can see anything for what it really is without using previous subjective experiences. The philosopher Kant was talking about having knowledge a priori, having knowledge that is free from earlier experiences

Like I said, this kind of themes was really an eye opening for me and I enjoyed the seminars especially. What I take with me from this is that there is more then one way to see things and one does not have to be more correct than the other. Understanding that the knowledge I have can be depending on what I have experienced earlier can be good if I would do any research on something new. If I know how me as person can affect the knowledge, I can be aware of it and try to avoid influencing the study with my own feelings.

The second subgroup I mentioned I would like to describe as a bit more hands on, this part was not as hard to understand and analyse since some of themes was something we worked with during writing the bachelor thesis. During these themes I gained some knowledge about different way to do research and how to plan and form a study.

The most important knowledge I take form this part is that it is the aim of the study should decide what kind of method I should use. And also make sure that I invest time in fully understanding the problem; so in other words follow Haibo Li´s recipe for success. Spending 90% of the time defining the problem and then 10% solving it. So if you send time understanding the complex problem it will be easier to find a great solution.

If I am facing a very complex situation in the future I feel like I now have more tools to use so that I can move forward and solve it. If the field is about something absolutely new I and cannot find any data about it I will perform a case study as method to understand the field better. After that I can move on with a research method that suits the goal the best. If you have the question ”what do they like” it is quantitative using questioners and if you have the question ”why” is should be qualitative using interviews for example.

Some of what we read during this course was new and some themes was about things we had read and touched upon earlier, but overall I am really satisfied with the course and what I have learned. Like I wrote earlier, I feel like I now have the tools to answer a complex question. I have a better view of what knowledge is and how you can reach it. And once again I will end with a very interesting way to look at “failure”, it is a perfect way to gain new knowledge. It is easier to receive knowledge if you have tried and failed first. And you are never done with knowledge you will learn though out your life as long as you are willing to.