Introduction
Many positions in the business world are about doing analysis and studies, interpreting texts, and critically reading budgets and accounts, and then communicating the analysis internally in one's own organization or externally to customers. This bacelorcourse will train the student's skills in precisely these activities. The course's ambition is to strengthen the student's general abilities for information gathering, interpretation and effective written communication. The course is also suitable for preparing students to write a bachelor's thesis.
As part of building the skills needed to gather, interpret, and disseminate information in a serious and effective way, the course provides a special introduction to qualitative social science research methods, including various methods for collecting, analysing and producing qualitative data. "Research" in this context must be understood as a systematic approach to acquiring new knowledge and critically assessing the truth value of this knowledge. The primary purpose of the course is not to train students to become researchers, but to develop their general abilities to acquire and impart knowledge.
We will draw on teachers with different approaches to business-relevant methods, including text analysis and source criticism, participatory observation, and interviews. At the same time, training is provided in critically assessing economically relevant figures, accounts and other quantitative information, with particular emphasis on the importance of being able to interpret such data as products of human activity. The course also sheds light on the relationship between quantitative and qualitative methods more generally and aims to give students an introduction to method triangulation. The course places particular emphasis on enabling the student to critically assess which methods and which data are suitable for analysing different types of issues.
The course will then give students knowledge of effective strategies for writing and revising different types of texts as well as practice in designing such texts through prescribing, writing and finishing work. Increased awareness of the importance of being able to write well is a key goal. Students should not only understand how knowledge and truth are created; they should also be able to convey it.
The course has a portfolio as a form of evaluation. The portfolio is composed of three written papers that are submitted together towards the end of the semester. The evaluation of the texts is based on both academic content and how the thesis is written and structured. Pedagogically, the course is process oriented.