"Using the computer certainly altered our way of working. We all agreed
that working in pairs at the computer provided an important forum for both
furthering our knowledge of the data and negotiating our understanding of
the interpretation of that data. " (Ford, Oberski & Higgins, 2000:
http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR4-3/oberski.html)
The above quotation illustrates my point that I find valid also to NUD*IST
(I'm experienced with NUD*IST and Nvivo) and Atlas.ti (based on reviews).
They have limited support for multiple coders, but not for teamwork, i.e.
they are best to merge the contributions of different users" after the
coding. This seem valid to CDC's Ez-text and AnSWR too. Coding as an
interactive or even simultaneous process is not supported by a merge
function!
The current workaround is to use software like MS Netmeeting and Lotus
Sametime to obtain limited teamwork functionality. These workarounds also
allow cooperation over the Internet - an important issue when the research
team are at different places. With todays technology there are no reason
(other than historical) that file sharing over TCP/IP (which enable file
sharing over the Internet) is not supported when packages support file
sharing and multiple users.
The fact that efficient teamwork only can be obtained by number of
workarounds (I regard merge as a workaround for teamwork support) put
requirements on computer fluency beyond the average team member I have been
working with. I recognize Sarah Delaney who is "trying to code an entire
project on [her] own!"
I find "one-stop-shopping" as an useful analogy to describe the challenge
for QDA software developers concerning teamwork functionality. Anything
else is an obstacle to an order of magnitude increase in use of QDA
software.
I'm not as negative to QDA software as indicated by my criticism, just
impatient because teamwork support "would change my life" as Sarah Delaney
put it. And, I would love to hear from people out there who have teamwork
experiences with QDA software which proves me wrong. I'm willing to put up
a web-site with QDA software teamwork resources if anyone can convince me
it is worth the effort.
Ragnvald Sannes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ragnvald Sannes, assistant professor: <http://www.bi.no/users/fgl88001/>
Norwegian School of Management BI: <http://www.bi.no>
Information Management Faculty Group: <http://infomgt.bi.no>
E-mail: <[log in to unmask]>, Phone +47 6755 7181, Fax +47 6755 7678
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|