July 27-28

Have you ever found yourself thrown into a qualitative project and wondered if you were “doing it right”? Maybe you were asked to step in halfway through with little context, or felt like your teacher or supervisor assumed you already knew how to proceed. Or perhaps you’re teaching qualitative research yourself and would value practical tools and examples to share.

This workshop offers a clear and supportive introduction to qualitative research—the kind that demystifies the process and helps you gain confidence, whether you’re brand new or simply need a refresher. Across two days, we’ll walk through the full lifecycle of a qualitative project, from framing a question to collecting data to making sense of findings. You’ll get hands-on practice with activities such as mock interviews and fieldnote writing, while also exploring behind-the-scenes lessons from real projects on leadership, workplace bullying, and compassionate communication.

In this workshop, you will learn:

• To recognize the unique value of qualitative research compared to quantitative approaches.
• To craft effective research questions, choose sampling strategies, and match data types to research goals.
• To practice participant observation and fieldnote writing.
• To design interview and focus group questions.
• About creative and artistic qualitative approaches, such as photovoice.
• How to organize and prepare qualitative data for analysis.
• A basic orientation to analytic strategies.
• To understand what “quality” means in qualitative research, using Sarah Tracy’s widely recognized Eight Big-Tent Criteria for Excellent Qualitative Research—one of the most cited frameworks in the field.
• To anticipate common challenges and learn strategies to address them.
• Practical teaching tips and case examples to bring into the classroom.

We’ll do all this in a space of light-heartedness, dialogue, and mutual support. Participants leave with a qualitative mindset, a clearer sense of the terrain, and greater confidence to design, teach, or jump into a qualitative project—even if it’s brand new to you.

Resources for this workshop draw from Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact (3rd ed., Wiley, 2025) and from Sarah’s experience publishing more than 100 scholarly reports and presenting qualitative research over 350 times to scholarly, professional, and pedagogical audiences.