Periodic Fable

Last Thursday ELESIG – the Special Interest Group for Research into the Learner Experience – held a webinar focusing on research methodology for evaluating the learner’s experience of elearning. As community lead for the project (one of my roles for Reach Further) it is great to be able to report it a success.

I’ve just finished posting the summaries of two fascinating discussions. The first, with Doug Gowan of the Open Learning Partnership, looked at the methods used in the LEX (Learner experiences of e-learning) JISC study.

Issues of ethical approval for student studies were discussed and sources of ethical approval documents were shared.

The issue of avoiding bias in analysis of data was considered, and the advisability of having other people review one another’s analyses of the data. The use of a critical friend was recommended (hopefully ELESIG will be helping broker this).

Some key features of successful interviewing were discussed. We’re hoping that all of these issues can continue to be investigated in ELESIG cluster groups.

In the afternoon we looked very practically at surveys and survey tools. Rhona Sharpe of Oxford Brookes described their recent major Pathfinder Survey, Carol Higgison of Bradford the JISC funded enhancing learner progression project (ELP), and Malcolm Ryan of Greenwich the SEEL project. Features of survey tools such as Survey Monkey and Bristol Online Surveys were discussed and very practical information shared.

The full summaries are posted under Resources in the ELESIG Ning space.

The webinar was held in ELESIG’s Ning social network space. Anyone interested in learner experience research in any sector is welcome to join us at ELESIG.Ning.