Celebrating Innovative Knowledge Management in Education with the New Leximancer Qualitative Data Analyser

Abstract

Qualitative researchers often agonise about the time and effort they spend on managing and analysing the large amounts of data they collect. Their data is often gathered through interviews, narratives or conversations about human behaviour and does not lend itself to analysis by conventional quantitative computer algorithms. This paper describes innovative knowledge management qualitative software called Leximancer, which is being developed through the collaborative activities of researchers at the University of New England and the University of Queensland in Australia. Leximancer can be used to analyse the content of large volumes of qualitative textual documents, extract information at super-electronic speeds and display the results visually in a bird's eye view of the content called a Concept Map. The software contains a search engine which enables the user to easily navigate the data so as to perform a directed search of the document to explore the conceptual structures in the data. In this way, Leximancer provides a means of conducting conceptual (thematic) analysis as well as relational (semantic) analysis in a manner which promises to revolutionise knowledge management in Education by qualitative researchers.