PROPOSAL
Christine ZUNG
Internet Research Methodology – A Canadian Perspective
LV: 603053
June/July 2007
PhD. Bakardjieva Maria
PhD. Friesen Norman Philip
Closing date: Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Topic of my internet research is
“The use of the e-campus from professors and students at the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck”.
1)Research area
2)Research objects
3)Theoretical framework
4)Implementing the study
ad.1)
I’m now studying for 2 years at the LFU Innsbruck. In this time I get in contact with the “e-campus”. Some of our professors mention that they will put various information or texts on it. Some of the guest teachers even don’t know how to do that, but they make sure they find someone who can help them.
The reactions of the students I realized are really different. Some students become very angry, because they expect from the professors that they are able to handle it. Others don’t care about it. The differences go on at the student side, too. Several students even don’t know the e-campus, some want to work with it, but they didn’t get any instruction and only few of them regularly use the e-campus.
I think that the e-campus will influence the whole university-life more and more. Maybe in five years nobody could imagine that “e-campus-less” studying times. There are many professors from outside at the institute of educational science in Innsbruck. So the communication is really difficult. Much communication is going on per e-mail, but the potential of the e-campus is much bigger. It can be used much more effective and so this research topic could be useful and informative for several students – and maybe for some professors. So the research area is: professors and students of the LFU Innsbruck.
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The research topic contains everything round the e-campus where very many questions are rising. To carve this big area I cite some of them:
· What is the e-campus?
· How many professors/ students take it up?
· What are the professors/students do at the e-campus (communication, discussion, searching for information)?
· Are the students content with the e-campus support of the professors?
· What do professors and students like to have as improvement?
· Were there any user instruction – both for professors and students?
These questions will build the content research frame. I do not have certain prospects of the results of this research, but I’m looking forward to get some interesting conclusion!
Now some information about the e-campus at the LFU Innsbruck.
At the homepage of the institute for educational science you can easily find the e-campus on the menu list on the right column. One click on this button and you are right at the e-campus start side. And there is waiting much user information to be read by everybody who´s ´snoopy´. With the user name and the password – the same identify codes as you use at the LFU – you´re in! There you´ll find every course you´re registered and you see a list of tools. Announcements, calendar, assignments, marks, sending e-mails, user index, address book, personal data, expo directory and finally search. This is a good platform to communicate with other students, to work together, to get useful information right from the professor. And the best of all is the high speed of this medium!
As I mentioned before I personally saw some reactions of few students. One of them thought, that entering the homepage of the LFU means using the e-campus. Also to check the web-mails on the homepage and to look for the lecture information would be part of the e-campus.
Some co-students complained about the missing instruction courses of the e-campus. Actually I easily found such courses on the homepage of LFU, even if I don’t know how many students could take part of it. Thus the missing link is not longer part of the organization and the course offerings but of each student by himself.
Furthermore it would be very interesting to compare the results of the professor’s and student’s habits in Innsbruck with other Austrian universities. Probably the research area could be enlarged to a comparison between European and Canadian universities. But in this frame this would be too large. Maybe sometimes …
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Now to the epistemology way: nearly every student I talked with has his/her own picture with his/her own contents of the e-campus – mostly without knowing it exactly. I think I could say that they construct their own version of what it means. I choose the constructivism as one of the epistemological options and moreover the interpretativism as theoretical framework.
Out of the various options of methodology I decided for a quality research, and the guided interview as method. I will not make combined internet based and face to face interviews.
This will be a very laborious way of research, particularly if you will read the number of interview partners I chose later on. Therefore I consider building a research team – if this is possible in this research project? (Dreams are allowed?!?) Especially the composition of the research material will take very much time, the transcription, the finding of the categories and so on.
As long as this research is limited to the LFU Innsbruck, I’ll work well with face to face guided interviews. Once it will become a comparison with other universities I have to think about a combination with internet interviews. At the least of this moment when
the research area will increase (first whole Austria, then maybe two or three countries of Europe, finally kind of worldwide) a really busy team of researchers is essential.
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The sampling
In my initial advisements I just mentioned that I want to work with my co-students and with some of the professors of our institute in Innsbruck (included the guest professors). I learned to know several students who would be ready to give an interview. I counted the sampling size in the following way: to go through this study, it’ll take eight semesters. I want to question students in every semester – the ´new´ students and the advanced ones. It would also be interesting to incorporate the geographical point of view. Students who live in Innsbruck (while the university is in session) and others who has to commute with the car or the train. And also the fact of working beside the studies – in a fulltime job, part time job or no work – and their private situation (family, marriage,…).
But first of all I will interview four students of every semester – two male and two female. Hence the sampling size will be thirty-two students and the number of the professors I determine with ten – five professors from our institute and five from outwards.
I don’t think it will be a problem to find cooperative students at the campus. With the professors as interview partners I have to go to the institute leader and I have to ask for permission first. Than I must check the lecture plan from the professors from outwards and I have to get in contact with them – best via e-mail – and introduce them into this research project. At best I can arrange a date with them while their lecture time in Innsbruck.
Finally I will have forty-two interview partners.
The research questions, I numerated at the beginning, will lead me to the guide-line for the guided interview. Every question should only be an initiation for them to tell about their experiences. I´ll only inquire if the conversation leads to a very wrong point, away from my interview main focus.
Possible guideline:
· What do you know about the e-campus on our university?
· Do you work with it?
· Have you got any user instruction to deal with it?
· If yes: What do you do there? (communication, to give out expertise information, to look for texts, as discussion board, …)
· Only students: Are you content with the update support of the professors?
· What do you like to improve?
· Do you want to add something else?
To open the first contact with the interview partners I introduce myself, the research project and I’ll tell them the duration of the interview. I think that it will last exactly twenty-two minutes – maybe this unorthodox duration decentralizes the situation. Every interview partner gets to know the intentions with the results and I’ll offer them an exemplar of the finished research. In relation of the location I´ll comply with each of them. The interviews will be taped on a recorder and afterwards they will be transliterated. Before this step I have to decide the depth of the transcription.
Than the hard work starts: the finding of the categories to make all texts comparable.
One comparison will be in the results for sure. There will be two result groups – namely the results of the student side and the one of the professors.
Out of these results different consequences could rise. It will be visible if students or/and professors use the e-campus. If they do, several options of improvements could follow. If the result shows that only few students know the e-campus or are able to handle it or see the e-campus as reasonable establishment there would be room for special advertising.
But these steps are far away, before that much work waits …
