10.25 Interview protocols + final short analysis project

Short analysis projects:  Most of you have attended (or will soon attend) your conference on the short analysis project. The final draft will be due November 6.  We will have one more workshop (next Thursday).  
Suggestions:

• Set up your essay with a clear statement of your research question.  State the purpose of your essay (what you will show) with respect to that question.
• Make sure you define your codes and categories.
• Present your analysis in a way that illustrates how the codes and categories relate to (what they show about) your research question => for most of you a table will be a good idea.
• Discuss patterns = the relationships between codes and categories and the focus of your research question (e.g. how features of the punchline contribute to the "funniness" of shaggy dog stories; how the features of a comment's complexity contribute to whether students will respond to that comment; etc)
• Use your conclusion to point on what your analysis shows, what it can't show conclusively, and what questions it raises

Interview protocols.  We spent the whole class today talking about interview protocols (the set of questions you will use to guide your interview) and theories for conducting interviews and for designing questions.

We developed general guidelines for conducting an interview that included the following suggestions..
Beginning questions should set up the purpose of the interview, get the participant oriented to the interviewing process, and establish your persona (about 10 minutes)  These questions should be "easy."
Provide an opportunity for an overall story about the interview's focus near the beginning of the interview. This story can set up "themes" or reveal the participants general orientation to your focus.
Many interviews are organized chronologically.
Allow participants multiple opportunities to answer the same or similar questions from multiple perspectives.
Ask primarily open questions, though changing-up with yes/no questions can allow participants to access their memories from different orientations.
The interviewer's primary task is to direct the participant's attention to the focus; at the same time, do not assume that "off-topic" answers are always off-topic (follow up with = can you tell me more, or what do you mean. . .) 
Choose respectful, non-confrontational language

You then read through Hawisher & Selfe's interview protocol from Literate Lives in the Information Age and described how it was "built,"  and whether or how you could use their organization as a pattern for your interview.

For next class:
Read: Gee, Chapters 6 & 7 = these chapters are primarily examples and applications of terms introduced earlier.  This week
Blog 16: Post your draft interview protocol

BRING COMPLETED PERMISSION FORMS.

During class I will present the assignment sheet for your final research project, and we will we will continue to work together on applying methods from discourse analysis to different data sets.