Critical CinéEthnographic Methods: a New Dimension for Capturing the Experience of Learning in Twenty-First Century Qualitative Research

Abstract

Learning technologies continue to grow in complexity, making it increasingly difficult to understand their impacts on stakeholders using traditional research methods. While comparison and treatment studies, may show if a digital learning tool improved learning, the why, when, and how questions of user experience are often left unexplored. This paper provides a description of Critical CineEthnography, a research approach that leverages the many forms of media that result from today’s learning technologies, including video, personal artifacts, and screen images. This approach provides researchers with the ability to build deep qualitative depictions of the stakeholders’ complex digital learning experiences, while also allowing an outcome that can more easily communicate with a practitioner audience. Critical CineEthnography supports the building of a complex picture of participants as they actively use technologies. The video results can be easily shared with academics and practitioners alike using widely available online platforms.