Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In this chapter, we focus on one of the groups (made up by three girls and two
boys) as a unit of analysis. Each of them played a different role in the creative pro-
cess. From a theoretical and methodological approach, the reason for this decision
is related to the ethnographic perspective guiding this research. Both the large group
and each of the fi ve small groups became independent units of analysis related to
each other but maintained some degree of autonomy. In the small groups, which
make sense in the overall context of a large group, activities are considered from a
holistic point of view. Moreover, we must take into account that the practices and
meaning change over time. However, while all groups participated in similar activi-
ties, only the selected group had the opportunity to attend an interview on a local
radio station to present the experience. That happened a month after the workshop
ended. This gave the students the opportunity to refl ect and synthesize collectively
the meaning attributed to its activity and faced them with questions coming from
both the broadcaster and a professional video game critic who also participated in
the interview.
8.3.2
The Data
The corpus of data consists of video- and audio-recorded sessions, the photographs
taken during the most relevant moments of the workshop, and the video games cre-
ated by the students; moreover, the researchers elaborated an interpretative sum-
mary of the sessions, and we carried out interviews to the groups. Four focus-group
interviews were carried out (one per team) at the end of the workshop. A fi nal
interview, as previously mentioned, took place at the local radio station in which the
participants were the students in the group that will be examined in this chapter.
Moreover, the whole class participated in a Weblog, presenting personal collective
and personal refl ections. All this allowed for different interpretations of the same
activities. The data collected appear in Table
8.1
.
Table
8.1
allows us to see the data collected throughout the workshop and, more
specifi cally, those corresponding to the group whose activities will be analyzed in
this chapter (group 2). All data have been combined following an interpretative
approach, which allows us to examine both practices and mental representations as
present in conversations.
8.3.3
Data Analysis
We adopted Gumperz's (
1981
) concept of ethnography. This is defi ned as a “thick
description,” including participant observation, interviews, mapping and charting,
interaction analysis, study of historical records, and current public documents. It is
assumed that ethnography is much more than a set of methods or techniques; it is
understood as a way of approaching culture to understand people's practices in
