Teaching cases NVivo for Qualitative Analysis

NVivo for Qualitative Analysis

This workshop provided the students with insight into and practice with qualitative data compilation and treatment with NVivo in the context of business communication. 

Motivation

As a university, AAU has a problem-based teaching approach where students work with projects on almost all semesters. Therefore, it is important to qualify students’ competences throught small and large projects based on qualitative data and give them tools for data compilation and treatment in relation to subsequent work tasks.

Use of technology

  • NVivo

  • NCapture

NVivo is a software for qualitative data analysis and AAU already has a licence so that all faculty and students can download and use the programme. NCapture is an NVivo extension. Occasionally, it fails to produce good results when capturing data online, so we introduced GoFullPage as an alternative.

Outcome

The students got a successful basic introduction to the software, its features and how NVivo can support their analytic work. They can now continue exploring it further in their own time.

Activities

Before the workshop the students were advised to download and install Nvivo, so that it would be ready when the workshop began. 

The 6 hour workshop was divided into three parts. Each part included an introduction from the teacher and the opportunity for the students to try out practice for themselves: 

  • The students were presented with the programme of the day and the intended learning objectives, and then given an overall introduction to Nvivo.
  • The students were introduced to tools working with collecting data (Ncapture and GoFullPage), but were also supplied with premade data sets from the technical support team, and were then supposed to import data into Nvivo. The workshop focused on data from the web, interviews and social media. 
  • Finally, the students were introduced to tools for treating data, including coding, analysing and visualising data in Nvivo.
  • The workshop ended with a recap and a Q&A-session. 

Ressources and support

  • Students can download NVivo with the AAU software licence

  • Slides from lectures

  • Links to NVivo help pages

  • Data set examples (website, Twitter, interview transcription)

  • Presentation (introductory)

  • Instructions

  • 1:1 support during student exercises

Challenges and advice

  • Our own (lack of) familiarity with some functions of the software.

  • Differences in layout and names of functions as regards operating system differences in PC vs. Mac. Be sure to familiarize yourself with these differences before the course.

  • A one-day course/workshop only allows for a very general introduction to the programme.

Mia Thyregod Rasmussen and Lise-Lotte Holmgreen on their teaching case:

Navigate digitalcurriculum.au.dk

Basic information:

Teacher: Mia Thyregod Rasmussen and Lise-Lotte Holmgreen

Faculty: Humanities and Social Sciences, Aalborg University

Department: Business Communication

Course: NVivo workshop

Level of study: Mixed

Teaching method: Demonstrations and group work

Duration: Full-day workshop

Academic objective

The overall Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO) was for students to be able to: 

  • Critically assess the potential of digital methods 

  • Assess the impact of digital methods on the field of media and communication (in relation to qualitative and quantitative methods) 

  • To understand the particular ethical, technical, and epistemological challenges that come with using certain digital tools (in this class Voyant) 

  • To be able to use the digital tool practically in an empirical study

Revised 29.06.2023