Taken the current situation, many university students face the challenge of conducting their research projects to complete their degree programmes. This is why, this semester, I encourage my MA seminar students to plan and conduct online studies. E-interviews will surely be part of their projects. What are e-interviews. Online interviews are about the use of online and mobile communication tools to collect data. E-interviews can be conducted with one or more participants (focus groups) to investigate behaviours, culture, practices, attitudes or experiences that take place in-person, online or are technology-mediated, such as in online conferencing spaces, video calling , virtual worlds or games. Why do e-interviews. We all experience life events in individual ways, we make sense of our lives differently and interpret these events through the lens of our identity, culture, memory, etc. In general, by interviewing people, we can increase our understanding of the complexity of human experience because we gain access to other people’s reflections, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc. Through interviews, researchers can describe experience(s) and context with more detail. With regard to CALL (computer-assisted language learning) research and practice, we can better understand and describe the new and complex realities of foreign/second language learning and teaching. Owing to the availability of online and mobile communication tools, interviews can be conducted “anytime, anywhere” to collect data. Rationale for the use of technology to collect data. The use of technology to collect data can be viewed from three perspectives: 1) technology is a medium for communication with participants, 2) technology is a setting (for, example, electronic research environments), and 3) technology is a phenomenon. As to the use of technology as a medium for communication with participants, it is used to reduce or eliminate barriers that make in-person interviews impossible or difficult, and to enable access to more study participants (such as internationally-based, or participants with disabilities). Next, the use of digital tools is justified when data collection takes place in an online community, a social media site, a web conferencing space, a virtual world, or a game. Our focus is then to investigate aspects of online or in-person experiences. Finally, when technology is studied as a phenomenon, we aim to understand and analyse participants’ use, activities, behaviours with this technology and researchers may need to use the same type of digital tool to collect data; for example, a study about social media is conducted using social media. When not to do e-interviews. There are a few situations in which conducting e-interviews will not be a good idea. Most importantly, this is when you need to observe your interviewees or the research setting during the interview. When you need a private setting to collect sensitive information, online interviewing is not a good idea, either, as others could be present and eavesdrop on your conversation. Selecting ICT tools for e-interviews. While selecting technology, researchers need to take into consideration a number of matters. First, they need to account for their study participants and issues related to tool accessibility and the ease of its use. Next, they need to consider the kind of data that they want to collect: verbal, textual, or visual. They should think about their own time and skills and, finally, the timing of communication with their interviewees: synchronous or asynchronous. Text-based communication can be enabled by the following technology: blog, email, forum, text message or chat (social media sites), wiki. Multiple-channelled communication is possible via shared applications (such as whiteboards, Google Docs, Google Forms, Padlet), video conferencing or video call (Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype), virtual world (Second Life), podcasts (SoundCloud) or vodcasts. Tools for interviewing, recording and transcribing include: Otter Voice Notes, VoiceIn, Otranscribe, Express Scribe. This post is based on: Salmons, J. (2015). Qualitative online interviews: Strategies, design, and skills. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications. For more information on e/interviews, you can explore other books: Salmons, J. E. (2016). Doing qualitative research online. Los Angeles: Sage. Richards, K., (2009). Interviews. In J. Heigham & R. Croker (Eds.), Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics: A Practical Introduction (pp. 182-199). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Or take an online course: Qualitative Research Methods: Conversational Interviewing Having done all these things, watch this film :)
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