Making contact with E-Learning tutors (draft)

It's too late in the evening to attempt any reading, so instead I'm going to spend a bit of time drafting an email that I'll send to members of the MSc in E-Learning course team to see whether they are appropriate and willing to participate in an interview.

Dear //////

Firstly, I hope this message finds you well and that had a pleasant and restful Christmas break.

I am contacting you in relation to my dissertation for the MSc in E-Learning: 'A constellation of image, text and sound: exploring multimodal assessment in the digital classroom'. The focus of my research will be upon the experience and attitude of online tutors towards multimodal assessment, focusing on tutors from the MSc in E-Learning. I have attached the abstract for my proposed research. I intend to consider three key questions:

-What rationale do tutors apply when choosing to make use of multimodal assessment?

-What are the implications in terms of interpreting the quality of a multimodal assignment? In particular, how are assessment criteria defined in order to judge the quality of a multimodal artifact?

-How does a shift towards multimodal assessment reframe the role and experience of the marker?


With the encouragement of Sian (my dissertation supervisor) I am contacting you to enquire whether you have experience of assessing assignments that present ideas across a range of modes (for instance video, web essays, Second Life builds) and if so, whether you would be willing to be interviewed for my research.

My intention is to conduct face-to-face interviews during February however I will be flexible on both counts to accommodate participants. Assuming you are prepared to consider taking part in an interview, I will of course provide you with more detail including a participant consent form. Should you require additional information at this stage however, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you for taking time to consider my request and I look forward to hearing from you at your convenience.

Kind regards,