Category: Personal

Yesterday I finished my research interviews and took to looking at the data. In total, eight participants were interviewed and this has provided some good insight into our service. This blog post will review and reflect on my key findings. All participants were openly asked if they knew of our team and what we do before the interview began. This enabled me to provide those who needed it with an overview of the service remit to help contextualise the interview. None of the participants had used the service as intended. This allowed me to focus on issues surrounding why they have no used the service.

Mode of delivering study support

The overwhelming preference for study support seems to be on a personalised, contextualised 1:1 basis. The desired mode of this delivery heavily varied between participants. Some insisted that the content needed to be delivered face:face, though the majority did not care how the content was delivered (email, phone, skype etc.) as long as it was personalised to them. Though only one participant mentioned electronic/distance/internet appointments unprompted, all participants viewed them as a useful way to engage the team (more on this later).

What support?

The unfortunate thing that this research has highlighted is that the vast majority of what the students want – constitutes things we currently offer already. This was the hardest part of the research as I had to carefully control my facial expressions and body language to ensure I did not influence the participants. The worst part of this was to not reveal we’re doing this stuff mid-interview – particularly difficult when someone describes their need for a service in intricate detail and it is already something you offer. This information is useful however as it highlights the need to work on our team profile, developing our marketing to ensure students know what we do and where we are.

Why have you not used the service?

This was the most interesting question of them all. The surface issues indicated students had not used the service as they did not know of it or did not understand its full remit. On further investigation however, asking students if they would use the service led to some interesting discussions. The first issue that usually came up involved time or schedules. Participants felt they could probably utilize the help but would not be able to access it in a convenient way. Unprompted they were asked how they would like support – many would prefer additional times to those offered while some suggested but some suggested online services may be more useful. Once again however there was a focus on tutor support and personalisation.

The largest issue however was to do with the principle of asking for help itself. This was the most difficult issue to address with the participants. Asking them if there is stigma with asking for help. Some of them opened up and really demonstrated the vulnerability they feel when seeking help. How it makes the feel weak and ‘look weak’. There was a lot of reflection on how strength is revered in society so they feel like they must live up to that and not show weakness. Not in this competitive world. Some felt issues with looking stupid or feeling like they were bothering staff.

Underlying themes also included peer support and departmental support as a crucial way to develop skills. Those who spoke of this highlighted the strength of skills contextualised to their discipline or the comfort from receiving help from students who understood their disciplinary content too.

 So what?

My overwhelming feeling at this stage is that this I have only begun to scratch the surface. Speaking to only eight individuals has given a good foundation to the issues, but has not really given me the depth I need to draw out any themes. The good news in this is that there is definitely something interesting there that warrants further research. While not a groundbreaking piece of research, this has really given me a taste for research again and has provided some valuable points to reflect on for the future.

The scary thing now is finalising my 1,000 reflection on all of this before Friday. I am so happy I got the research together, but feel overwhelmed by how long this took for a non-assessed task. I just need to look forward now and plan my time effectively to get these two assignments finished.

Finally home and with all my ‘research’ done. I am glad I used different approaches to the interviews as I have learned a lot from the process. Online synchronous typed interviews have to be my biggest surprise – they were incredibly effective. Not only are they already transcribed due to their very form, but I found some participants really opened up in this from of conversation. Sadly, there is no body language or tone – no real way to tell if they mean what they say. The same could be said for conversations however.

Online interviews certainly helped make it convenient for both the participants and myself so I wanted to expand on this a little. This is where Skype comes in. I did a couple of video interviews as part of this process to try an keep the advantages of online interviews but bring back in some tone, expression and body language. While I liked the approach, I felt I would rather do it face:face than across the internet with webcams. It did not feel as connected as a face:face interview, but there was more relation than with the instant messaging interview outlined above. One thing that did interest me however was that participants tended to be more open with me as an interviewer when there was no spoken or visual element. Perhaps instant messaging interviews are a good way forward for controversial or personal topics – Is it easier to be honest and vulnerable when you’re just typing? or is it the distance from the interview? the lack of relations?

As you can see – I have more questions than answers due to the small sample. It has however enlightened me to the fact that 1:1 interviews don’t need to be face:face. More importantly – I have seen them working over digital mediums and there are some excellent advantages to this kind of interview. I did of course undertaken face:face, 1:1 interviews and these formed the majority of my ‘research’. 🙂

So, I have finally got my target demographic for this study. Only slight issue is that it is a much wider group than I had anticipated. Indeed – very hard to target when almost 50% of students qualify.

It has been difficult to accommodate for this as my research strategy was more focus on specific and specialist groups. Indeed, there is no mens group or officer for me to even approach in the Union. As such, I have had to go for a rapidly cobbled plan of trying to speak to the widest possible range of students within this group. It should at least give me some opportunity to being to explore these issues and perhaps direct further research. More importantly, it will give me an opportunity to delve into research through interviews once again.

Delving into interviews… Now this is where it dawned on me. This project and whole module is a fantastic learning opportunity. While it doesn’t do anything for my research validity – why not experiment with the format of the interview a little? I could maybe do a couple of them online or one via telephone. It would be a great way to explore different ways of interviewing and allow me as a researcher to actually experience these methods first hand. Perhaps this will help me make an informed choice in the future? – when the research REALLY matters?

So I have been working hard this week on my data analysis to help influence the next part of my study. By next part – I pretty much mean this week. I need to be reflecting by the weekend.

I have completed all the quantitative analysis and there have been some useful pointers to direct the next part of this study. This has involved looking at demographics data and comparing it between the University population and our own access statistics. This gets a lot more interesting when cross tabulated – but I’ll keep it simple for now. This is nothing drastic here – the service is being accessed by students from a whole host of demographics which is very reassuring. I’ll review some of the interesting areas here:

Gender

Despite the university population lacking the dramatic gender gap experienced within other institutions (See the 2013 article in the Guardian – Where are all the men?), there is a notably less appointments from male students. Indeed, they make up only 34.3% of appointments. Are men less likely to see 1:1 help in learning and development? Would online courses and resources be more attractive to them?

Age

Compared to the university population, we relatively see more ‘older students’. This is perhaps not to be unexpected as the return to education or a break in study can often lead to the need for more learning and development support. This however is an assumption and this needs to be understood. It could also be a case that ‘younger students’ are less likely to seek learning and development help. This could be an issue – especially as they are unaware how digitally illiterate they are (ALDinHE Conference). Clearly a good area for further research!

FT/PT and UG/PG

For both mode of study (part-time/full-time) and level of study (undergraduate/postgraduate) there was a weighting towards one group – even if just slightly. This was ‘full-time’ for mode and ‘undergraduate’ for level. This may be for several reasons and would be interesting to research. It could be that part-time and postgraduate students are naturally more independent – it could however indicate a need for other forms of provision for these groups.

Home country

Relatively speaking, we see slightly more international students – but this is not a surprise as they are studying degree level of higher qualifications in second language. Once again however this is an assumption and is something that could be investigated.

Is  this not all terribly dull DULL?

Well maybe. But one thing I have to admit is that this isn’t exactly how I expected the data to turn out. To be honest, I suspected we’d be seeing proportionally less mature students, or postgraduates or some other clear-cut category. The results however showed us performing really well. The gender balance however – now there is something I did not expect. Out of everything, it appears gender is the one to look at for now.

I am unsure why this surprised me at the time. To be honest – gender issues like this are present across the HE sector. What interests me however is why male students at hull are less likely to seek our support. This is interesting for my study as ultimately: would further online and self-help support be more beneficial to male students?

More research is needed. At last I feel more informed now and know where I am heading!

So I started my research this week, collating the quantitative data I needed to identify the groups for my qualitative research. It has been an interesting process so far as it turns out out appointment record is over 26,000 records and this doesn’t even include workshop data! At this stage I am pleased I chose to focus on only on the data from the current academic year as this certainly narrows down the total number of records and makes it a lot more manageable for this mini-project.

I am however starting to get REALLY worried about what little time we have left. To ensure I am (somewhat) on track, I have decided not to analyse workshop attendance and to only focus on appointment attendance for the disengagement analysis. While this is unfortunate, this doesn’t concern me too much. The sole aim of this stage is just to identifying which groups to research. Essentially I need to get this over and done with QUICKLY so I can make a start on my interviews… while there is still time… just…

Reliability has been a bit of a shocker. I thought our data would be solid, but I have spotted problems. There has been some human error (unless we really did have a 102 year old student on a theater course…) and the data extraction has caused some problems too (some engagements are double and treble recording where a student is on multiple programmes in a session). Suffice to say I think I’ll be nipping back to readdress reliability concerns in the plan.

So… Somehow I need to get this stage and my completed plan done before the end of this month. This will give me around 10 days for data collection/analysis and a week for my summary/reflection. It feels like it will take a miracle. But then again – it is only a ‘mini’ project…

It has been a while since I have done a proper update regarding my MEd research. I’ve not been slacking – far from it! Our Team has been very busy preparing new things for the students which took a lot of Easter. I was also lucky enough to go to the ALDinHE conference last week which took a lot of my time. I’ve happily spent most of Easter catching up on my proposal and I think the time has now come to catch up on my blog. It won’t be easy, but I am hoping to add quite a few posts to sum up the experience of honing my research proposal over the last couple of weeks.

I want to dip back to the conference first however as it has offered excellent input towards my literature review and research approach. The conference was incredibly relevant to my research proposal as all the content and papers involved new and upcoming developments in skills support. This made it a perfect starting place to look at what is out there and has really shaped my thought processes over the last few weeks. I also had the honour of presenting some work at the conference alongside a colleague (here if you are interested).

The conference has had a big impact on my research as it has really helped me hone in on what is important. This has been a lot of fun actually and has enabled me to really catch up on my research proposal. I want to try and spent a couple of days blogging about the sessions that I found useful in helping me plan my research proposal. You may have seen them referenced in my wiki, but I want to expand on this now.

I want to end this post with the following video. I have recently become obsessed with TED talks and have ashamedly been using them as a form of procrastination been using them as breaks while I study. The reason this one stood out when Brené say the following to someone wanting to call her a ‘story teller’:

The academic, insecure part of me was like… ‘Why not magic pixie’ …

I like how she was concerned of her academic integrity and the idea of her being a story teller. But what really struck me was the following:

I am a qualitative researcher. I collect stories. Thats what I do. Maybe stories are just data with a sole. Maybe I am a storyteller

I have never felt more connected to a researcher before. I cannot describe how much I like the idea of qualitative research being ‘data with a soul’. I’ve always felt that, but have never been able to vocalise that.