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.

Below is a summary of what I am looking at but I will continue to develop this on the MEd course wiki

So I am a little behind, but I have finally got things together for my research proposal. This is my current idea for now, I hope it is workable… The team that I am on has an established face:face support programme involving workshops, 1:1 appointments, volunteer training and PASS. As modes of study continue to diversify and as our students increasingly have life/work commitments, we need to consider how online support can supplement what we currently do. For this mini research project I proposed to look at the following two questions:

1) Are there any students currently not engaging with our face:face programme that could be supported online?

This could utilise current participant data that is available. I could supplement this with a couple of interviews or an online questionnaire.

2) What possible technologies could be used to facilitate online workshops or appointments (and what do similar teams in other universities currently use)?

This could involve researching and collating practice across the sector (or as much as possible given the time-frame.