Interview script

As part of my preparations for the interviews, one of the most important tasks is to have a decent interview script. Can't be too long - I want the interviews to take less than an hour; can't be too short, as I need to get all the important information out of the students.

My final script ended up being two solid pages of questions and probes. It took a while to put together - I wrote up a first draft, then realized that I had put together a script as part of my Ethics application two years ago, so I dredged that one out. I was surprised at how good it was - in many ways it was a better script than my new one (I think that is probably just an indicator that back then I had recently  completed a Qualitative Methods course and had spent the previous year think hard about methodology, whereas now I've spent the last year gathering data and learning statistics). So I've merged the two interviews and come up with something that I hope is better than both.

The script I wrote two years ago, while well written, made a lot of assumptions about how the research would progress. I had assumed the interviews would be done on the back of much more substantial usage of the system, so many of the questions were about the levels of usage and interactions between students. I've had to amend those, asking the students instead about their own usage, and more about what they thought about these sorts of systems and what other systems the used.

The interview is broken into three main segments: questions about the system, questions about learning with the system, and questions about online social interaction focused on social online learning. Each section has a few questions, each with a set of prompts for more information. I'm hoping it will take about 45 minutes in total - that allows the more talkative students to talk without us exceeding an hour.

Student Interviews

The next phase of my research involves interviewing students about my software, and social network usage in general as well as specifically for education. The aim is to get some understanding about why the students do and don't use the software, what other tools they use, and what considerations go into using social tools for learning.

Regarding the usage and lack thereof, I'm interested in the students who have used the system; especially those who have posted or rated more frequently than most. I'd like to discover why they post; whether they did for a while and then stopped, and if so why; what motivations an considerations went into posting; what they though might come of posting something. Also, what hurdles there were - both technically and in other ways - did they get a positive reaction, or any reaction at all? I'm also interested in the regular non-posting downloaders - what they did with the downloads, how it could serve them better, and what they felt about downloading but not contributing. It would also make sense to talk to the students who aren't downloading either; what is it about the system that leaves them feeling uninterested?

Regarding other tools: the literature indicates that there is almost universal usage of social networking tools among students, so I'm interested in what they use (some of the quantitative information will be gathered in a survey that is coming soon, which is unrelated to my research), but also what they use them for. Do they use different networks for different purposes? Are some of the needs I am trying to cater for well-served elsewhere, and would I be better served just integrating those tools rather than developing my own. I'm interested in what motivates different activities in different networks (for example: some might use Facebook for social interaction, Twitter for academic engagement, and LinkedIn to try to get that first job after graduation), and how those link back to the work of learning.

Throughout all of this I will be trying to uncover what needs to be done to make the social learning tools I'm building more engaging and useful.

I would like to get: three students who are relatively frequent posters, two or three who rate others' posts frequently, two who only download, and two who don't use the system at all. There might be some overlap in the first two categories, so I may be able to keep it down to 8 interviews. My plan is break down the data into these categories, and select students based on the data. Where possible I'll also try to make the selection demographically cross-sectional as well (make sure there are representative numbers of males and females, and younger and older students). Once I've selected potential interviewees, I'll email then requesting an interview, and arrange a mutually convenient time. I expect I'll also need a few backup interviewees, to cover for those who refuse my request.