Mccracken: So I like to try and introduce my students at least to a little bit of qualitative research in their first year-- so really getting them to understand what it means to interview someone. So our students have to interview a professor. So before I send them out there to ask that professor questions, we'll talk about what makes a good interview question, and what's the difference between having open questions and closed questions, and how should you nod your head and smile and say uh-huh and those things to keep people talking.

And then I'll make them interview each other, and we'll practice it. And sometimes I'll have them write questions, and I'll be the guinea pig. And I'll be a very hostile interviewee. And if they ask me a yes/no question, I'll give them a yes/no answer and stop. So I want them to have that kind of qualitative experience.

Sometimes, depending on the course, I'll help them develop pretty rudimentary but pretty basic survey questions and questionnaires. Again not so that they can perfect that kind of methodology but so that they can have that experience of well, I didn't get the answers I wanted. And so they have to go back, look at that methodology, and then articulate what went wrong. And it's oftentimes in that here's what went wrong, that all of the learning happens, and the students come to realize what should be different.

So we do some ethnographic kinds of things also. So I'll teach them about double-entry notebooks so that they can do observations in classrooms, or if they're trying to understand a discourse community or an organization-- just, again, trying to expose them to all these other ideas.

And then we do traditional library research, of course. But I like to bring in those few qualitative methods so that students realize there are different kinds of questions to ask. And depending on my question, I'm going to have to try something a little bit different and learn how to do this kind of research for my particular discipline.