Teaching qualitative analysis software with Quirkos
It’s a new academic year, and many professors, lecturers and TAs will be reviewing their course materials and slides for this semester and beyond. Those teaching qualitative methods will also be looking at how to teach qualitative analysis, and wondering about including software as part of that process.
While qualitative analysis software is only one small part of the qualitative methods puzzle and journey, it can take a disproportionate time to teach. Sometimes there is a lack of local support for software training, which even if provided by library or IT services, may have with specific classes scheduled at times that aren’t right for certain modules and coursework deadlines. If internal training isn’t available, tutors may teach the software training session themselves, assuming they have the time and knowledge to do this. This is one reason why there are so many (often excellent) dedicated trainers for qualitative software – although these courses come with an extra price tag to consider on top of the software itself.
This is one of the main reasons we designed Quirkos – we wanted to increase the number of people able to learn qualitative analysis software. While the other tools on the market are much more powerful, this also makes them more difficult to learn, and for basic projects many of these features are not needed. For those starting out in qualitative analysis, Quirkos is perfect – a good step up from highlighters, Word or Excel, but probably simpler and more flexible than those shoehorned alternatives.
This means it’s not just easy for students to learn, it’s also easy to teach. You can download pre-prepared teaching slides for modification to your course requirements (and branding) and all our resources including video tutorials, manuals and getting started guides are all available on our website without registration. There’s a 20 minute video guide which covers all the basics, so you can show this in your class and spend the rest of the session focusing on actual analysis, rather than just learning the tools.
And since Quirkos is identical on Windows, Mac and Linux, it’s easy to teach – everything is in the same place whatever platform your students are using. This really helps the technical holdups that slow down classroom learning.
We also offer the best student licences around: around half the price of other qualitative software, but without a time limit, so young researchers can keep using Quirkos through their full post-grad studies and careers. If your university or college doesn’t have a site licence for Quirkos yet, we can also help set this up, and make sure that everyone has access to it.
If you want more information on how Quirkos works for qualitative pedagogy, read how it fits into existing qualitative curriculms here, or and article providing links to a lot of the teaching resources we have already created for educators, including example data sets that can be used in teaching.
If you are wanting to teach Quirkos this year, please get in touch with us. We can help provide free or extended trial licences for educators, and point you in the direction of resources to help prepare teaching materials. We also have real qualitative research experience in our support and help staff, so you can get good tips on qualitative teaching as well as technical support.
If you haven’t tried Quirkos before, you can also download the full version of the software, without any registration for a full month to see for yourself how simple it makes qualitative analysis. Give Quirkos a try, and find out why researchers at more than 200 universities across the world are using for their qualitative research.