Interviewees’ Background and Opinion

To get a detailed impression about the experts’ background regarding the topics of this PhD research project, each interview started with questions about the interviewees’ experience with creating learning content, either linear, adaptive, or cooperative in teams. Additionally, the interviewees’ opinion about current workflows and concepts was questioned, as well as their thoughts about how these could be improved.

This phase should reflect the interviewees’ unbiased thoughts and as such they only received a short introduction to the purpose of this interview, without any details about the research project itself.

Questions about the Creation of Learning Content

These questions aimed to capture information about the interviewees’ usual way of lecturing and preparation, including content creation. Their answers showed whether their way of preparing and handling students’ requests matched the assumptions that led to the concept of this research.

• What is your usual way of creating learning content?

6.4. Interview Guide concept of this research project. Additionally, letting the interviewees reflect without bias on their workflow is expected to help them rate the concept in the fourth phase by benchmarking it with their statements made in this phase. • How do you prepare for a lecture?

This is asked to see if any additional preparation is done before starting a lecture that might complete their workflow but which has not been mentioned before.

• What do you do if a student does not comprehend a topic?

The interviewees should reflect on their behaviour while lecturing, as well as if and how they invite, recognise and adapt to occurrences and interruptions. This gives information about how the concept’s way of adaptation can be seen to be useful.

Questions about Cooperative Content Creation

The following questions gather information about the interviewees’ experience in cooperative content creation. It is not expected that the interviewees prepare most of their content for real life usage in teams, but any experience, whether for real life modules or for research projects, is of interest. In particular their way of cooperating, for example anonymously by reusing and adapting a predecessor’s slide set or working on the same content concurrently in a team, how they merged or adjusted the content and what difficulties they had.

• Have you already created learning content cooperatively with other colleagues? This closed question is used as a starter for the discussion.

• How did you take joint action?

The interviewees should describe how they worked in teams or adapted already existing content.

• How did you find it?

The interviewees should reflect on their experiences.

The following questions gather more detailed information in case of areas that have not already been addressed by the interviewees.

• Did you complement each other?

The interviewees should give more details on how they distributed the work. For example, if there was a leading author, if they worked together on the same topic or if each author worked on his own section, etc.

• Was it hard to make compromises to merge your content?

This question was an option for gathering more information about the merging process and its difficulties.

• How did you address your different (teaching-) styles?

A more detailed question about the difficulty of merging different styles. It is of interest whether it has been addressed and how it has been addressed. It is important to stress this because the concept of this research allows the merging of content without any adaptation to other authors’ style.

Questions about Experience in Adaptation

The experts should subsume their experience in authoring, concepts, and the technol- ogy of interactive or adaptive content presentations. They are also asked about the applications of their work. Most interesting was its use in any teaching related way.

• What kind of experience do you have with adaptive content (for modules)? This opener should stimulate the interviewees to report on their work with adaptive content. If necessary, the following questions were used to gain more detailed information.

6.4. Interview Guide reflect on their experiences of authoring adaptive or interactive content with existing tools and concepts. This information can be compared with the workflows proposed by the concept of this research. Additionally, in conjunction with the following question, it should be clarified whether the interviewee has been working on content creation or more technically.

• How did you design and develop any concepts or engines for adaptive or interactive content?

The interviewees’ practical background in adaptive concepts and engines is important in conjunction with the later interview phases, when the interviewees are asked to rate the concept of this research.

Estimation of Current Authoring Concepts

The experts should estimate the current state of authoring concepts and environments for Interactive Storytelling as well as interactive or adaptive content. This information needed to be gathered before the concept was presented and demonstrated, to eliminate any influence on their answers.

• Are existing concepts/environments suitable for authors/lecturers?

The interviewees should give their opinion about current authoring concepts and tools.

• What should be improved?

This question should collect any ideas on possible improvements in the current situation.

• How would you estimate the content/structure creation effort for String of Pearls/Branching/Rule Based Logic?

The interviewees should benchmark the existing basic concepts. This should prepare them for making a comparison of the concept of this research with existing concepts in the third phase.