iPhone, iResearch. Exploring the use of smart phones in the teaching and learning of visual qualitative methodologies

Abstract

Mobile phones are a characteristic artefact of contemporary societies, transversally present in both public and private spheres, including the students’ daily life. This paper showcases an innovative teaching activity that takes advantage of this fact by promoting and valuing the use of smart phones in the university classrooms, specifically when teaching and learning visual qualitative research methodologies. While collecting and interpreting data, sociology undergraduate students were invited to use their smart phones and respective apps, thus combining textual annotations with audio, photo and video recording facilities. By the end, this strategy proved to be especially important in the development of the next generation of scholars’ competences to generate imaged-based records effectively and efficiently in order to answer research questions, inform interpretation and develop questions for further research.