
Join Lee Hall to learn how to take field notes and discover how field notes add an advanced, social, interactive dimension to qualitative research.
Define field notes basics, capture what you witness with descriptions and quotations, filter to your research question, and maintain a structured framework using audio, video, and photos.
Live field notes provide synchronous, public coverage of field events using tools like Twitter and Instagram, contrasting with traditional private notes, and balancing brevity with comprehensive documentation.
Gain a practical overview of taking live field notes, using laptops, notebooks, or smartphones, and sharing big ideas in real time on apps like Twitter or Instagram.
discover how to connect your field notes to an audience by selecting data to share, testing apps, and using hashtags, while organizing notes across Twitter and Instagram.
Learn to organize live field notes by collecting tweets, photos, and on-paper notes within 48 hours and consolidating them in Storify to publish a cohesive, searchable story.
Process and reflect on live field notes throughout data collection to refine observations, shape interview questions, and maintain the open, public spirit of life field noting via a project blog.
Introduce live analysis—a real-time sharing of field notes and data insights with the app community—guided by collaboration with a developer, permission, and targeted tagging.
This course is an introduction to the concept of live field note taking. You will learn what live field notes are, how they are similar to and different from traditional field notes, and you will learn how to take them in ways that are appropriate for your research context. This course is intended to expand on basic concepts you have already learned and enacted in applying qualitative research. It is assumed you have some knowledge and experience with taking and analyzing field notes in their traditional format.
You will learn how to connect your field notes with an audience and identify apps that are appropriate for your project. I will share with you techniques I have found helpful for organizing and processing my own live field notes. The course ends with a brief introduction to the concept of live analysis to help you get thinking about next steps.