Please introduce yourself!

Ann Randall

by Ann Randall -
Number of replies: 1

I'm Ann Randall, author of the case study in chapter 3. The research in that case was a pilot project for my dissertation at the University of Idaho. However, the university I'm affiliated with professionally is Boise State University, where I coordinate professional development for online faculty and collaborated in building the university's eLearning Quality Instruction Program (eQIP).

Since the online interviews I conducted were within the Second Life virtual world, the primary tools I used were within the virtual world application itself—notecards, IM, and chat (with logging enabled). I did not use voice; all my interviews were text interviews. Although most students also agreed to the interview through e-mail consent, a couple handled that in-world through a notecard.

I used an Excel spreadsheet to keep participant data and note interview times and places. And to analyze the interviews I used TAMS Analyzer, a freeware product for the Mac. I haven't used it yet in the latest Mac OS (Lion), but it appears that the more recent versions do work.