Rebecca's Research Blog

This time I’m removing the interviewee’s sign off, which is their complete address. If I do any word frequency or tag coud analysis, sign offs like that could skew the figures. On the other hand, in the conferences, I think I’l keep in people’s stock signatures because they perform a number of functions.

Oh, and I’m fed up with the tiny glitches in the way in which text transfers from Outlook to Word. I’m trying to remove double spaces, and they either transfer as a combination of hard and soft returns, or they transfer with a sprinkling of little floating bubbles which Find and Replace can’t pick up.

Nothing’s ever straightforward, is it?

I realised that I asked different questions of the tutors and the students, so ‘question 1’ won’t mean the same thing in every place. So now I have question 1 (the tutor’s question) and question 1s.

I have an interview which intersperses my questions with the answers, so Ive added another style to pick out my questions.

Then the interviewee introduced two tables to her answer. And very useful tables they are. I don’t think they’ll import into NVivo, though, so I have had to rearrange as text. And then she attached a PDF document – and then a Word document. I’ve imported the text of both – but not the formatting, and then I’ve had to add in notes to remind me what I’ve done at each point.

So, I had my eyes tested and realised why I’ve not been getting on with my literature review – I can’t see to read the literature! New glasses on order, so I’m making a start on preparing my data for analysis.

You’d think epistolary interviews would be straightforward to input, but there are decisions to be made, even so. Because somewhere on the back burner I have an article about epistolary interviewing, I’m temted to retain a lot of things which are irrelevant to my doctoral research.

Type size, face and colour, how quickly they responded, whether they interspersed their answers amonst my question, whether they started a new email or hit ‘Reply’ to mine. I’ve decided all that is irrelevant at this point, so everything is being styled ‘Normal’. Same font, same font size, same spacing. This gets problematic when they have mixed their question with my answer, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

I’m going to put all this in NVivo eventually, so I want it as NVivo friendly as possible, which means thinking about the styling. I’ve used four heading levels to style the copy. That means I can pick out their name, their group, whether they are student or tutor and which question they are answering. I hope these prove sufficient – it’s going to be so frustrating if I find there were other categories I should have added at this stage.

Oh, and I have to pick everyone a pseudonym. Must remember to make them noticeably different this time. Last time I had Carol and Karen and Caroline and it thoroughly confused me.

Met Chris at the Designs for e-learning conference in London last week and his work is really relevant to what I am doing.

What’s more, his presentation (of which he’s sent me a copy, thanks Chris) provoked a series of interesting questions. I therefore won’t blog about his presentation, as I have the full details of that elsewhere, but just note down some pointers from the Q&A session which may prove useful in future.

• The first few days of a conference are very important – they are what gets it going.
• What size should a group be to work successfully?
• Is age important? Are younger people more comfortable giving short answers?
• Can you give information about how the course was set up? Its pedagogy? Its requirements? Its assessment?

Why do conferences give out style sheets for papers, impose word lengths, demand specific referencing styles but never ever give people any guidance about producing a good Powerpoint?

How is it that intelligent people sit through Powerpoint presentation after Powerpoint presentation without ever deducing some of the principles of good design and good presentation?

* If you use 12, 15 or, God forbid, 20 lines of text on your slide we can’t read it at the back.
* If your background is green (and why is it green?) then don’t highlight in purple. It just means we can’t read the things you think are important.
* If you need lecture notes, then write yourself lecture notes. Don’t read us the Powerpoint!
* If it took you two years to devise your research questions, don’t read them through once quickly to us and expect us to remember them or understand them.
* If you need a rest, have it before or after your presentation. We want to see you – not the top of your head while you’re sitting down.
* If the lights are full on then your presntation appears dim. Take control of your environment. Find a light switch.
* If half the audience are checking their texts then your presentation is rubbish. Stop now.

I wanted to blog about the EARLI conference in my ‘research essentials’ blog but I seem to have misremembered the password and I haven’t got any note of it on this computer. Not much point to having a blog I can’t access.