[Air-L] Internet Research Methods Syllabus Inquiry

[Jennifer Stromer-Galley]

Hi fellow AoIR-ers,

I am building a shiny new course at the graduate level that aims to tackle the topic of Internet Research Methods.

I am already swimming in more ideas than I can handle about this course, and thought I would turn to this savvy crowd for some advice.

Have any of you taught an Internet research methods course? If you have, what were your primary goals in the course? Did you focus primarily on qualitative methods, quantitative methods, or both? Did you critically examine methodological challenges for Internet research or focus primarily on the how tos of Internet research?

I ask these questions because I am a bit torn about how to proceed. The topic of Internet research methods is really broad. Textbooks on the topic that I have found focus either only on qualitative approaches, typically critically examining the challenges of qualitative approaches when brought to the Internet. Or if the textbooks focus on quantitative approaches, they are primarily recipe books, like how to suck up and count behaviors online (think "data analytics" or "data science").

I am also a bit torn about whether it is better if the students already have a fairly good handle on traditional "offline" methods before they come into the class. This term, there won't be any prerequisites, but I wonder how much background would be helpful for students to have of methods generally in order to understand the challenges of Internet research.

Anyhow, any thoughts of any of this is most welcome.
~Jenny

Associate Professor | School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
220 Hinds Hall
Syracuse, New York 13244
t 315.443.1823  f 315.443.5673  e jstromer at syr.edu
w syr.academia.edu/jenniferstromergalley
ischool.syr.edu