About 20% of the survey respondents who agreed to a follow up interview have completed the email interview I sent out. A few more have said that they will complete it when the exams and final assessments are over at the end of May.
To state the obvious: I have found email interviewing to be different to in-person interviewing!
I spent some time in thinking of a single, well-constructed question that would elicit a detailed specific experience of learning online. With the email question, I attempted to ensure that the replies would be focused on descriptions of the experience of learning online rather than abstract discussions about it.
Q: Think of a time when you successfully learned something online and tell me about it.
What I am looking for here is the essence of the experience of learning online – which I will attempt to interpret through the textual data that they provide.
The question didn’t really work – it would have been easier to focus on the descriptions in a f2f or telephone interview.
However, it is possible to have an email exchange that matches a f2f conversation to some extent.
For each person who responded to the interview, I sent another email commenting on their replies and asking for clarification on something that they wrote so that I can be clearer about what they mean. I have found this personal approach works really well as people are happy to expand on their views and by focusing on a specific comment I am able to find out what works for the learner in an online learning environment.
