Greetings All,
Sorry to be a tad bit late. I saw this topic and it peaked my interest and will try to catch-up. I am a doctoral student at Capella University. I am not familiar with this topic so I will read the materials and looking forward to learning something.
Ciao
ILA
Hi Nick,
My planned research is a virtual community of practice (VCoP)/doctoral support group. The doctoral students are at various phases in the dissertation process. My methodology is netnography (online ethnography) just in case you are not familiar with it. The premise of the study is to analyze why these doctoral students seek peer-to-peer help in a VCoP outside of ther home institution. I will be a participant-observer and the community has about 950 active members. I would have loved to conduct this in Second Life but I found it a bit hard to navigate (user issues :-) and need to take more time to become more involved. Thanks for asking!
Ila
Hi Janet,
I appreciate the thorough tips. I have yet to encounter Capella's IRB but it will be happening soon. I do find this phenomenon of online research & interviewing so fascinating and glad I am able to participate in it. I know it is still fairly new to the research arena but it grows everyday. I have defined and described my target population and it is a total virtual community and the population is world-wide. I may do what Nellie did and omit the video part (or just have it as an option) and just use audio but will get permission to do both. The webinar was very informing as well.
Thanks
Ila
Hi Nick,
I really appreciate the information and the outline you provided and needless to say I will keep it close at hand. I know interviewing cannot be perfect but I do not want to make as few mistakes as possible when it comes to the participants. I want to be prepared as best I can. This is unknown territory for me so I am gathering as much information as I can.
Thx
Ila
ok, so I left off the last part of the post. I was asking if the IRB is current with online research, virtual communities, etc? Do they have any information in this area where one can go read about it? I ask becasue the Internet is really a hot bed for research and I do not know much about the IRB but do know you have to get past them. It would be nice to think that they are well versed in all aspects of research as it evolves.
