A semi-structured interview is a conversation with a set of open-ended questions where the interviewer is happy to go ‘off-script’ to see where the discourse leads. According to Helen Kara (2017), “semi-structured interviews allow participants to participate in setting the research agenda, which may be more politically acceptable, lead to more useful data, or both.”

In preparation for my object based learning intervention, I chose to conduct semi-structured interviews with two critical friends. The first was with Yasi Tehrani an Open Learning Designer at UAL. Yasi is colleague on the PgCert and her role involves working with departments to assist them in developing digital teaching resources. Yasi completed a participant information and consent form in advance and the interview was conducted, recorded and transcribed via Teams (recording linked below).

I had prepared 7 questions for Yasi which were useful to start the conversation but we ended up following a meandering path.

Yasi was very positive and complimentary about the plans for my activity which I found to be very confidence inspiring and reassuring. The key points to come out of conversation were as follows: 

• The opporturnity for students to bring something linked to their culture or location is really helpful for community building.
• Pre-session instructions should be detailed before the task to include the type of object to bring along and ideally delivered in both verbal and written form.
• The tutor providing an example is really helpful in explaining a task.
• We discussed whether students could also upload an image of their item but wondered whether this may add unnecessary complexitiy.
• Yasi questionned the size of the object I wanted students to bring and whether they would need to be able to hold it in their hands. I hadn’t previously considered this.
• We discussed whether the tutor should visit the breakout rooms and what impact this can have on the discussion and concluded there were pros and cons.
• Yasi advised against telling the students about the objective of creating community in the classroom as it’s another layer for them to consider which might be too much in the context of the task.
• The importance of story-telling as a way to build community – a key quote from Yasi on this topic was: “storytelling, personal experiences and sharing lived experiences is always something that can bring people closer together. Even though that’s maybe a good thing to explore, we don’t really have time for that in the curriculum because we’re so limited by the amount of hours that we have to teach.” (Tehrani, 2024).

The second semi-structured interview I conducted was with Tim Morgan, the digital learning technologist on my course, MA Arts & Cultural Enterprise. Tim provides technical assistance in online teaching and having recently completed his PgCert, he is also familiar with the concept of object based learning. Tim is very supportive of tutors trying out new methods of digital engagement with students. Furthermore, Tim was in the classroom with me in Hong Kong when I trialled an in-person, object-based learning session based on the micro-teaching we did as part of the PgCert. That particular session was about using objects to come up with ideas for a social enterprises and it was very successful.

Tim completed a participant information and consent form in advance and the interview was conducted, recorded and transcribed via Teams (recording linked below). I used the same 7 questions that I devised for the conversation with Yasi to scaffold the interview.

Key points from our discussion were.

• Tim asserted that “the story is everything” when it comes to discussing objects. We discussed the value of an object with meaning as opposed to a generic object.
• We talked about some of the technical nuance of using breakout rooms and whether (or not) allowing students to move between breakout rooms is useful. Tim advised that the tutor should stay in the main room for a while after they have been set-up in case anyone’s connection drops as I would need to place them back into the relevant group.
• Tim advised that students lose any notes they create in break-out rooms when returned to the main classroom.
• We discussed whether there was any meaningful way for Padlet to be incorporated into the task – perhaps as a way to store images of the objects or record observations. Tim presented a number of different options for this.
• We also discussed Miro Boards as a tool and why they weren’t more widely used. We discussed more generally why tutors in this context tended to stick to more traditional delivery methods in the online space.
• Feedback mechanisms were also covered and the best methods for this (ie. at the end of the session).

What I found really enlightening about this process was the benefits of talking ideas through with colleagues and having ‘critical friends’. It was a really helpful process for me in defining the task. As someone who works largely alone and remotely (teaching online), this is of particular value to me. I debated whether to conduct a third interview but time was running short and I felt I had enough input to conduct the task at this point.

References:

Kara, H. (2017) Research and Evaluation for Busy Students and Practitioners: A Time-Saving Guide (2^nd edn; Policy Press).

Morgan, T. (2024) Recorded semi-structured interview. 19/11/24 – The recording of the interview along with the transcript (via Teams) can be accessed here.

Tehrani, Y. (2024) Recorded semi-structured interview. 15/11/24 – The recording of the interview along with the transcript (via Teams) can be accessed here.