Welcome to Part 4: Visual and Verbal Interviews: Conducting Research in Meeting or Videoconference Spaces!
This is a Q & A and discussion about Chapters 8-10.
The researchers for these chapters chose to use videocalls-- such as Skype- or online meeting spaces- such as Elluminate (now BlackBoard Collaborate) or some combination of technologies.
Videocalls allow researcher and participant to see each other. The researcher may use this exchange to observe the participant and collect data about non-verbal cues, affective responses and/or expressions. The chat area can also be used for posting questions or sharing links or other notes related to the interview.
Or the researcher can simply use it as a free VOIP communication for audio, when telephone interviews are too expensive.
The multichannel meeting space contains all of the above and more, in terms of communications options.It allows for videoconferencing and chat. As well, the shared whiteboard allows for many other interview options.The web tour function allows researcher or participant to view and discuss websites that represent some aspect of the research phenomenon
One element of the E-interview Research Framework is the Typology of Online Visual Interview Methods. This model explains that research participants can share and view images of the phenomena of the study, or generate images within the interview. These approaches can be used to communicate abstract ideas with visuals such as diagrams or visual maps. Visual elicitation techniques common to fields like sociology and anthropology can be used, with images or media generated by researcher or participants. Visual generation, creating images within the interview, allows participants to respond visually to the question, drawing or mapping a response to the interview question. Some of these techniques are used in the interviews conducted by contributors to Cases in Online Interview Research.
If you are interested in visual interviews, please note that an entire chapter of Online Interviews in Real Time is dedicated to the topic. Also, I recently recorded a presentation made at the TQR conference. You can view the presentation and download the handout.
Please post your thoughts and questions about using live, visual ICTs for research interviews? If you've conducted interviews using these tools-- or are considering it-- please share your ideas so we can learn about them.