To help with my research design, I reviewed the four points used by any qualitative
researcher design: (a) what questions to study, (b) what data are relevant, (c) what data
to collect, and (d) how to analyze that data. My design was refined with the aid of Yin's
(1989) requirements for the case study design.
1. A study's questions.
2. A study's propositions, if any.
3. A study's units of analysis.
4. The logic linking of the data to the propositions.
5. The criteria for interpreting the findings. (p.29)
Moreover, he stresses clarity in articulation of the theoretical perspective,
determination of the goals of the study, selection of site and participants, collection of
data with the appropriate method(s), and consideration of the final report.
The number of subjects needed is often dependent on the
situation being studied, and the questions being asked. Case studies can use one
participant, or a small group of participants. However, it is important that the
participant pool remain relatively small. The participants can represent a diverse cross
section of society, but this isn't necessary. What is necessary is for the participants to
be closely linked to the propositions. Since the purpose of this research was to find out
how students navigate in an online class, the choice was limited to those students who
were involved in an online first-year composition class. These specific participants were
chosen because they were members of an online first-year composition class taught by an
instructor who belonged to Alliance of Computers and Writing Listserv, ACW-L.
Members of ACW-L, most of whom are instructors of writing,
share information and concerns about computers and writing through an ongoing asynchronous
discussion. Common discussion centers on teaching online writing classes. Through these
discussions, I learned who taught an online class, one that had three or less meetings
during the course of a semester.
Also, since I did not want inexperience of the instructor to
interfere with the results of the research, I chose an instructor who had taught in both
the traditional class and the computer-mediated class. Moreover, I looked for a class that
represented a best practice model of active, learner-centered, first-year composition
instruction. The Faculty Referral Network's, "Seven Standards of Good Practice for
Teaching via Distance Learning: Good Practice suggests teachers with "good
practices":
(a) encourage student-faculty interaction,
(b) promote cooperation among students,
(c) create active learning interaction,
(d) give prompt feedback,
(e) specify time of task,
(f) communicate high expectations, and
(g) respect diverse talents and ways of learning" (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).
Thus, the class was selected because
(a) the instructor was listed on ACW-L,
(b) it met the criteria of less than three face-to-face meetings per semester,
(c) the instructor was experienced with both the class and the
computer-mediated-communication,
(d) the instructor was willing to participate in the study both as subject and as
informant, and
(e) the course design incorporated interactive and collaborative teaching/learning
strategies.
The variables of class size or term length were not
considerations, as the questions I was pursuing had to do with quality not quantity. Since
"important stratification criteria is a good place to begin," (Glesne &
Peshkin, 1992, p. 21), I tried to rule out variables that were not related to the question
at hand.
To obtain as complete a picture of the participant as possible, case study researchers
can employ a variety of methods. Six types of data can be collected in case studies:
documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation, participant observation, and
artifacts (Merriam, 1985). Some forms of composition data could be essay drafts, school
records of student writers, transcripts of interviews, transcripts of conversations
between writers, and protocols, notes from direct field contact, and email. For example,
Emig (1971) chose to use several methods of data collection. Her sources included
conversations with the students, 'talk-aloud' protocol analysis, discrete observations of
actual composition, writing samples from each student, and school records (Lauer &
Asher, 1988).
The primary data source in this research project was the complete transcript
(electronic text) of all the public online communication between students and the
instructor during the term. This included any message sent to class intended for public
perusal. The primary data was collected by exporting a text file from the electronic
bulletin board system used for the class. This text file contained all the of the 835
public messages sent and/or received by the participants as well as both the public and
the individual messages sent or received by the instructor. Thus, class messages from
students to teacher, from the teacher to the students, and from student-to-students were
recorded. Student-to-student messages marked private were not available to the researcher.
Private messages, sent directly to either the instructor or other students, were not
considered to be part of the class interaction, as they occurred outside of class in the
same way that students exchange private phone calls or engage in private conversations
outside of the traditional classroom. Other data sources included a writing attitude
survey, an online survey, the course materials (syllabus, handouts, and calendar -- See
Appendix B, C, and D), and private email with the three students (member checks).
At the beginning of class, the participants were told by the instructor that they had
been asked to participate in a research project. The students were assured that
participation was voluntary and that they would receive notification to choose whether to
participate or not. Informed Consent forms were sent to the students (Appendix E).
Participants were each asked to give their consent for the use of their portions of the
transcript of the class. After an initial Online Attitude Survey (Appendix F), a Writing
Attitude Survey (Appendix G), their first writing samples and demographic information, I
"followed" the class members through their negotiations with each other, the
class material, and the instructor.
Since this is a multi-modal approach for the case study, I also looked at ways that
other qualitative data collection is carried out. Van Manen (1990) describes the use of
personal experiences, etymological sources, idiomatic phrases, experiential descriptors
from others, protocol writing, interviewing, observing, and using literature -- biography,
diaries, journals, logs, art, and other literature. Protocol-writing, where the
participants formally write of their experiences, generates text for the researcher.
Merriam (1985) suggests,
checking, verifying, testing, probing, and confirming collected data as you go, arguing
that this process will follow in a funnel-like design resulting in less data gathering in
later phases of the study along with a congruent increase in analysis checking, verifying,
and confirming. (p. 190)
