Applying the methodology

This section outlines the selection of the case (4.2.3.1), participants (4.2.3.2) and data collection methods (4.2.3.3).

4.2.3.1 Selection of the case

As described in section 1.5, the research takes place in a graduate course in ID, in a Romanian university. The students are engaged in a PjBL approach where they create e-learning modules for organizations who act as real clients. The case includes two deliveries of the course in two consecutive years, not treated as different cases, since the general course design was the same. Thus, the case is bounded around the course, whose very nature is a

stable phenomenon existing within an institution over time and recruiting different student cohorts each year.

Apart from pragmatic reasons related to access, the choice of the case was made in line with Swanborn’s (2010) recommendations of selecting cases that are informative and representative. The informative quality of the chosen case stems from the prominence of the studied phenomenon in the research site. The course uses a PjBL approach throughout the semester, with real clients being involved from the inception to the final phases. Being offered at graduate level, issues of professional identity are of immediate concern to the students. To further improve its informative quality, the course was studied along two cohorts, in two adjacent years of study. The representative criterion is understood in relation to the theory this research hopes to contribute to. In this sense, this instrumental case is representative as it was defined in relation to the theoretical concepts of PjBL and professional identity in communities of practice.

Although the same course design was used in both years, the types of organizations involved as clients differ: two public organizations in the first year, one commercial and one non-governmental organization in the second year. This diversity contributes to improving the representativity of the case.

4.2.3.2 Research participants

Data was collected from three categories of participants, described below: the students on the course over two years, the clients’ representatives and myself, as a teacher.

As described in Chapter 1, given the relatively small size of the cohorts, all enrolled students were invited to take part in the research. Out of the 26 students taking the course in 2013 and 20 students in 2014, 25 and 18 respectively expressed consent to participate. The students’ perspectives are important because they are the ones experiencing the implementation of the course design and it is their professional identity development that I am interested in.

According to institutional data and data from the questionnaires (see 4.3.1), the students are mostly female (35 out of 43 students), 24 of them have ages under 25, most of them work in parallel with their studies, some in low- skills jobs, some on clearer professional trajectories with more than 5 years of work experience. Twenty-three of them have bachelor’s degrees in pedagogy or psychology, the rest being in economic studies, foreign languages, and communication studies. The assumption regarding students’ existing identity used in the course design was that students would generally expect to receive instructions, would not be used to formulate and support complex positions, and would be underestimating their capabilities and interest in technology. For the purposes of the research, students were assigned numbers.

Four client organizations participated in the research and were assigned codes, as presented in Table 4.1. A fifth organization was involved but denied participation. Representatives from each organization were also invited to participate; their perspectives are valuable from both theoretical points of view considered. On one hand, involving the client organizations is an important aspect of the course design, contributing to the authenticity of the project’s context; on the other hand, as members of the larger community of practice, the clients’ representatives can illustrate the community’s perspective on the students’ professional identities.

Each of the four organizations typically delegated two persons for the project: one in a supervisory role, and one in a role combining training and subject-matter expertise. All representatives, except those from the commercial bank, were female; ages ranged from 25 to over 60. In the account presented subsequently, participants will be identified with their organization code.

Year Organization Code 2013 Organization 1 - public organization providing

diverse training for public servants

PD

Organization 2 - public organization providing specialized education

PS

2014 Organization 3 - commercial bank CB Organization 4 - charity in the field of information science and libraries

CH

Table 4.1 - Client organizations

Finally, my dual position as the teacher of the course and a practicing instructional designer makes me a participant with a unique perspective on both the course design unfolding, and the students’ professional identities development. My professional identity is discussed in more detail in section 1.4.

4.2.3.3 Selecting research methods

One of the strengths of case study methodology is that a variety of methods and sources are used to capture the various perspectives and facets of the case investigated, contributing to the credibility of the research through data and methodological triangulation (Denzin, 2017).

The methods are briefly presented below and described in more detail in section 4.3.

• A questionnaire was used at the beginning of the course to collect data about the students’ demographics, prior experience with educational technology and PjBL, as well as their background studies and professional experience.

• Observations were conducted during five course events, elaborated more in Chapter 5 (the debate on technology versus pedagogy; role- play in preparation for the client meeting; client analysis meeting; peer feedback session; and final presentation to the client), to collect

data about the way students engaged with the project in its various phases.

• Students’ written reflections, connected to four of the five events described above, plus one done mid-project, were used to understand the challenges and opportunities they perceive in the projects, and how they see themselves and their projects evolving. • Focus groups with students were conducted mid-project to explore

issues related to their projects and to professional identity in a setting that allows students to hear, react and build on the perspectives of others, to bring an additional perspective to the individual one drawn from the written reflections.

• Semi-structured interviews with clients’ representatives were conducted at the end of the project to investigate how they perceived the unfolding of their collaboration with the students.

• A teacher’s journal, a record of my own reflections throughout the course, was used to add the teacher’s dimension to the perspectives of the other actors involved.

Data collection followed the same timeline for each cohort, illustrated in Figure 4.1. Course activities (detailed in Chapter 5) are indicated on the timeline, while the data collection is marked by arrows.

In my initial plan, multiple interviews with the students were planned throughout the semester but it became clear that students, although willing to participate, did not have much extra time. Therefore, I included focus groups instead and incorporated the data collection into the course activities as much as possible. With the exception of focus groups, all other data draws on activities that would have happened even in the absence of the research project.

The methods of observation, interview and document analysis aim to capture, as much as possible, the naturally-occurring data in the context of the course (Merriam, 1998; Swanborn, 2010), supplemented by participants’ explicit perspectives elicited through questionnaires and focus groups embedded into the course. The approach aimed, first, to capture issues that participants see as significant rather than those prescribed by the framework, and second, to capture their views as they developed throughout the course rather than only retrospective views. As a consequence of using multiple data sources, one-to-one relationships between concepts of the theoretical framework and the data collection methods chosen are impossible to define. Indeed, multiple methods were chosen to convey a rich picture from multiple perspectives, which is one of the strengths of the case study.