Gaining access and conducting research on moocs: challenges and good practices related to online interviews
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this is the presentation from a workshop I ran at the Joint Technology Enhanced Learning Summer School in Aveiro, Portugal
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Gaining access and conducting research on moocs: challenges and good practices related to online interviews
- 1. Gaining access & Conducting research on MOOCs: Challenges and Good Practices related to online interviews Tina Papathoma Work supervised by: Rebecca Ferguson Doug Clow Allison Littlejohn @aktinaki
- 2. My PhD topic
- 3. What about you? • Are you considering to conduct online interviews? • Have you already conducted online interviews? • Just came to listen to the challenges and good practices of conducting online interviews? • ..or?
- 4. Here is the thing.. We will create a case and - discuss how we would go about gaining access - prepare, conduct and record an online interview - reflect on the challenges and good practices of gaining access and conducting interviews I will be sharing experiences from my own study and the decisions I made for the study
- 5. Let’s create a case • Form groups of 2 or more • Choose a topic • Form a Research Question that to be answered you need to gather data through interviews (i.e. you might be looking for people’s views, insights, perceptions) • Write 2-3 interview questions • Think about how you could gain access • Conduct an online interview • Reflect on good practices and challenges Tired or in lack of inspiration? Use my topic, RQ and 2-3 questions of my interview schedule
- 6. Activities Activity 1: how will you gain access? Activity 2: how will you prepare for the interviews? Activity 3: conduct an online interview Activity 4: reflect on how you conducted the interview
- 7. My Topic: How educators learn how to teach in massive open online courses : a multi-case study Research Question: How do educators learn how to teach in moocs? Methodology: A multi-case study gathering data from online interviews from educators involved in moocs in history and politics
- 8. Activity 1: how will you gain access? 1. What is the setting you are looking to get access to? (school, university, educational platform, museum etc.) 2. Whom do you need to approach? (gatekeepers, personal networks, individuals etc.) 3. How do you approach the people you need? (email, phone, in person etc.) – how many times and what do you ask? 4. What are the risks you might face with your initial plan? 5. What will you do if this initial plan doesn’t work as you expected?
- 9. Email sent to participants Dear X I am contacting you in order to invite you to be interviewed as part of my PhD study that investigates how university educators move their practice towards MOOCs. The interview will last around 45 minutes and will be conducted by Skype at your convenience. You will be asked about your experience with open, online education and teaching as well as how you worked on the ‘CaseX’ course and about how this differs from your previous experience. I have attached an information sheet and I am happy to provide you with more information about the study if needed. Also, could you please point me to other colleagues of yours that have been involved in this course? Your contribution is important to develop greater understanding of educators’ professional practice processes in MOOC settings and will therefore be of benefit to other educators and to institutions. I look forward to hearing back from you. Why How long Where What More info Open the network Appeal to emotion
- 10. Case A mooc Academic 001 Academic 003 Academic 008 Case C mooc Learning Designer 002 Facilitator 004 Facilitator 005 Facilitator 006 Facilitator 010Learning Designer 009 How I gained access Snowball effect
- 11. Activity 2: how will you prepare for the interviews? 1. What questions will you ask? 2. How will you test the questions? 3. What software/ tools do you need for conducting and recording the interviews? 4. What about the wi-fi quality/ actual location during the interview /distractions for interlocutors? 5. What is your back up plan in case the software/tools you use do not work?
- 12. How I prepared myself for the interviews (1) 1. Questions asked My Interview schedule: -general questions to see where the interviewees were coming from -similarities and differences between previous work practices and the mooc -ways of setting up and running the mooc -positive aspects of working on the mooc / problems and how they tackled them -their understanding of how teaching and learning takes place in moocs -how they prepared to work in these new ways in moocs -experience on moocs for credits -production and running process of their mooc in the future, any changes needed
- 13. How I prepared myself for the interviews (2) 2. How did I test my questions? -pilot interview where many things went wrong (recording software, sound of the skype call was cutting off etc.) 3. What software/ tools? -2 recorders used 4. Wi-Fi quality/ actual location during the interview /distractions for interlocutors? -at uni where broadband quality tends to be good/ quiet office/ phone on silent mode, email and browsers closed –I couldn’t control the interviewee on that though 5. What is your back up plan in case the software/tools you use do not work? – contacted 57 people/ used two recorders/ email reminders sometime before the interview
- 14. Let’s conduct an online interview
- 15. Activity 3: Conduct an online interview Each group needs : - wi-fi -1 interviewer * -1 interviewee * -2 smart phones /or laptops -1 recorder (it can be a recording app in a 3rd smart phone) -the interview questions in hand -interview should last around 5 minutes *one of these people needs to be ideally in separate rooms for 5 minutes
- 16. Activity 4: reflect on how you conducted the online interviews 1. What difficulties did you find? 2. What good practices did you experience? 3. What changes would you make next time?
- 17. Lessons learned from gaining access & conducting online interviews Which practices were found useful? Personalisation Notes/ diary keeping Timing Building virtual relationships Sending kind reminders Recording with different devices Conducting the interview in a quiet place for both interlocutors Reflect on the challenges (Re)Plan throughout the process of the online interviews Opening networks continually Being flexible, agile and persistent
- 18. Useful References • Deakin, H., & Wakefield, K. (2014). Skype interviewing: reflections of two PhD researchers. Qualitative Research, 14(5), 603–616. http://doi.org/10.1177/1468794113488126 • Hanna, P. (2012). Using internet technologies (such as Skype) as a research medium: a research note. Qualitative Research, 12(2), 239– 242. http://doi.org/10.1177/1468794111426607 • O’Connor, H., & Madge, C. (2017). Online Interviewing. In N. Fielding, R. M. Lee, & G. Blank (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of online research methods 2nd Ed. (p. 655).
Editor's Notes
- And that’s my desk in Milton Keynes. You might have noticed that it’s a bit untidy. However we will see later that a good practice when we get access and conduct online interviews is to be organised, tidy and keep track of all the people we have contacted, the ones that rejected our invitation, the ones who accepted and the ones who didn’t answer. I am saying this because being organised helps in the writing up stage where we need to find all the little details that contributed to our research design and its implementation and sometime memory fades by the time we start writing up the thesis..
- I’m in the final year of my PhD, I am looking at how educators learn how to teach in massive open online courses. I have gathered data from 28 interviews with educators from 7 mooc-cases. I have used a theoretical framework- integrative pedagogy that combines 4 elements of professional expertise : theoretical , practical, socio-cultural and self-regulative knowledge and have analysed my data according to these elements. I have found that educators learn mainly through experience and by experimenting with mooc creation, they take very limited theoretical knowledge, they use socio-cultural knowledge by collaborating, sharing each other’s expertise and they self- regulate by seeking advice or by looking how other moocs have run. I have seen examples of good practices throughout these 7 cases and in my discussion I will give recommendations for better practices for educators, institutions and platforms that may want to consider
- Take 5-7 min. to discuss with your group Mine was the future learn platform , individual educators – straightforward cause I didn’t need to take permission from the university. I emailed them , The risk was they wouldn’t answer. I was not planning to do 7 cases, they are a lot to manage but I had to take the data , and I was always trying to find different voices to talk to me about their work .
- I started with one case, the case that an educator decided to answer my email – This was Case A – so number 001 academic pointed me to 3 people – 2 from her mooc :the learning designer and another academic from the mooc – and then the learning designer pointed me to facilitator 004 and then facilitator 004 pointed me to 005 and 006 But academic 001 pointed me also to case C and academic 008 – who then pointed me to learning designer 009 and facilitator 010
- Take 5-7 min. to discuss with your group
- (experiences with teaching/ learning design and open and distance education/ prior mooc experience) Section 1 of the interviews includes general questions What is your experience with teaching? How long have you been teaching? What is your experience with open and distance education? Which MOOCs have you worked on as an educator? Think about your work on the x MOOC and about how this differed from what you have done before. In how many presentations of the course have you worked on? Section 2 includes semi-structured questions How did you set up and run (work on) this MOOC? Could you tell me about some of the things that are the same as the work you have done before? Could you tell me about the things that are different in this MOOC compared to what you have done in the past? How did you prepare to work in these new ways? Did working on the MOOC change your understanding of how teaching and learning take place? In what ways? Did working on the MOOC change you approach to developing course content and assessment? In what ways? What were the steps you took in order to work on this MOOC? What was the process you followed in order to work on this MOOC? Can you describe any occasions when you encountered problems when you set up or while running this MOOC and how you tackled these problems? Can you describe an instance of a positive aspect of working on this MOOC? Do you have any experience of MOOCs being offered for university credit? Could you see that working with your course? Thinking about the production and the running process of this MOOC - how should it change in the future, if at all? explores ‘how university educators learn and change their practice towards Massive Open Online Courses’.
- 4. (apart from the ones that were 7a.m. in the morning) --I live life on the edge , I took my risk with the crap broadband at home //// But once the fire alarm went off, and I had to leave the building. you can’t predict everything ! don’t have facebook on for example ..// you can hear their telephone ringing, people to pause the interview etc. 5 People tend not to show up when interview is online. .. ( I will put the references in the end
- Take 5 min. to decide how you are going to do the interview and 5 min to do it . Record it and come back to discuss what happened and reflect on the last activity we will do
- Personalisation send personalised emails, people tend to feel more obliged to answer Keep notes/ diary: whom did you contact, when, how many times, approved-rejected the interview Timing: Don’t send emails on a Friday afternoon, mid-week afternoon or early morning is better Building virtual relationships: try to reply directly once a potential participant gets in touch after your first email and be friendly if they are be formal if they are formal, send them the interview schedule and the informed consent in advance Kind Reminders: send a reminder after 8-10 days Notes it will be useful when you write up Reminders I have sent 3 reminders to one educator and he answered , he even sent me the interview schedule with notes of the answers he would give ! - don’t take it personally if they don’t answer – someone else will answer Also the first reminder is like an appeal to emotion to the recipient – most probably they answer to reject most of them . I contacted in total 57 people – interviewed 28 , 6 declined , 1 got back but we never did the interview, 22 did never answer ..can be the most enjoyable period of the PhD or of a project in general Many of the things you might be planning, will not go as expected