The Challenges of Teaching Qualitative Coding: Can a Learning Object Help?

Challenged by some of the inherent difficulties in teaching qualitative data analysis, three instructors created an interactive digital learning object entitled “Sleuthing the Layered Text: Investigating Coding.” In this paper we assess the effectiveness of that learning object as a tool for teaching qualitative coding. On the face of it, learning objects—a form of instructional technology that has been criticized for tending to be objectivist and content-driven—would appear to be ill-suited for teaching qualitative analysis, an open-ended, interpretive and subjective process. However, based on student evaluations from two very different undergraduate courses, we found that the learning object did prove to be an effective medium for teaching coding. We attribute this success to its design, which incorporates best practices of classroom instructors, and also to the integration of the learning object into our courses. Nevertheless, student feedback cautions us that the learning object is not a technological fix. The degree to which students valued the learning object over other methods of instruction was moderate, and some were leery about this form of digital technology substituting for classroom teaching, even though this was not our intention.