In Fall 2010, MERM arranged for doctoral student and ECPS Research Methodology GAA Yan Liu to offer a free two-part introductory quantitative software workshop on SPSS.
Now, we are planning a free qualitative software workshop on Atlas.ti to be offered in February or March, 2011 by Sharalyn Jordan, who is currently teaching EPSE 595. This workshop is open to faculty and students. We are considering 4 dates/time slots for this 4-hr workshop. Here are the potential dates with their time slots:
Wed., Feb. 16, 2011: 1:00 to 5:00 pm (note: This is during the February Break.)
Thurs., Mar. 3, 2011: 4:30 to 8:30 pm
Fri., Mar. 4, 2011: 10:00 am to 2:30 pm (note: includes a 30-min. lunch break in the middle)
Thurs., Mar. 10, 2011: 12:30 to 4:30 pm
If you are interested in attending this workshop, please e-mail Yan at lyspa2004@hotmail.com by Monday, Jan. 31, 2011 to let her know any and all dates/time slots that you could possibly attend and if you already have a copy of Atlas.ti on a laptop that you can bring or not. This information will help us determine both interest and which date will work best. Only one tutorial can be scheduled. We will select the one date (sorry, the time slots are set) that accommodates the most people. An e-mail will be sent out to inform everyone of the selected date and time slot for the workshop and to confirm registration.
Here is a brief description of the workshop:
This workshop is designed for people who are unfamiliar with Atlas.ti but considering or planning to use it for a research project. The introduction provides a brief overview of issues and resources that will help participants make informed decisions about computer software support for their qualitative research projects. The focus of the workshop will be Atlas.ti skills development. Participants will learn basic skills for starting and maintaining a project on Atlas.ti knowledge workbench: 1) importing, opening, saving and transporting files, 2) coding text documents, creating code families, and memos, and 3) producing reports. More advanced skills, including constructing network views, will be demonstrated but not practiced. Participants will leave the workshop with a list of resources for developing their own skills. Please note that this workshop is not an introduction to qualitative text interpretation/data analysis. Prior familiarity with qualitative interpretation/analysis procedures is required to understand the use and benefits of software support. Workshop participants are encouraged to bring 2 text documents (can be short excerpts, must not be confidential excerpts) saved as word documents (.doc) or rich text files (.rtf) to practice coding.
Again, there are limited copies of Atlas.ti available in the CMS labs. Thus, faculty or students who already have Atlas.ti are encouraged to bring their laptops with the software to the workshop. Alternatively, you may choose to purchase Atlas.ti in advance and load it on a laptop for use during the workshop and later research. A quick check of the internet shows that Atlas.ti can be purchased by students for their own personal use for a very reasonable price ($99 U.S.). This is a bargain compared to the single-user educational price (e.g., faculty) of $598 U.S. (note that the non-educational price is $1800 U.S.) for Atlas.ti. All of this pricing is also better than NVivo which is $135 U.S. for 6 mos. only or $199 U.S. for 12 mos. only for students and $650 U.S. for a single-user educational (e.g., faculty) copy.
