Using interview data to shape dissemination

To date I've carried out three of the seven interviews with members of the E-Learning course team. The conversations with Sian, Christine and Rory have all gone well, as far as I can tell. Some interesting themes seem to be emerging, even if I'm pointedly avoiding trying to reflect on the data after each interview to prematurely draw conclusions.

Having said that, one of the words - and themes - that was foregrounded within Rory's interview this morning however has stayed with me during the day. Rory commented that, in his experience, students tended not to present the MSc dissertation in a multimodal format. He went on to explain how it might be seen as 'risky'.

Neither of these points are new to me: the fact that nobody else has submitted a multimodal dissertation is one of the reasons that I want to do so. And it's also clear from my earlier attempts at multimodal work that these are risky, not least in terms of the effort required to put the thing together. What has stayed me however has been the idea that I might be able to use the collected data from the interviews to warn me of potential problems and challenges in submitting multimodal work, as seen through the eyes of tutors. In addition, I might be able to get a sense of what tutors generally think are good and bad examples of multimodal work.

This of course can help to inform my own work. If I know that tutors find it a challenge to navigate their way through non-linear artefacts (and I'm not saying that this is a conclusion that I've drawn), then maybe that should be something I avoid. Similarly, if there's consensus that images or sound are welcomed, those elements might be worth including. 

I'm not going to dwell on this just now, however when it comes to working through the interview data, I'll be sure to spend a bit of time applying some of these