INTERVIEWS

In total, there were 90 semi-structured interviews conducted with 12 staff and 31 students (see Appendix 2). The interviews ranged in duration from 6 to 24 minutes. This was due to the

circumstances of having to interview students within their session times and therefore not to take them away from their studies for too long. For the staff, sometimes they could only spare a brief amount of time due to other commitments. So the variations in duration reflected the research conditions, as described below. The interview schedules (see Appendix 4 and 5) were developed with flexibility in mind, as there was always some uncertainty about how many interviews could be conducted. The hope was for two interviews with each member of staff, but many did not have the free time for this so the questions from the two lists would selectively chosen from, dependent of what period of the academic year the interview took place. Likewise with the students, the aim was for three rounds of interviews and there was always some uncertainty if students were comfortable with one-to-one interviews or preferred to be in a small group interview. So, as indicated in Appendix 2 there was some variation in the number and type of interviews that took place. For most of the music students, only two rounds of interviews could be fitted in, as explained

elsewhere. Consequently the schedules could be finely tuned moments before the interviews took place and their content needed to contain sufficient detail to afford that level of administrative adjustment.

Relative to the previous points on power differentials during research (see Section 3.8.4), there were some initial concerns with interviewing students and how they would respond to that. As I was a tutor at the institution there was the risk that I could be viewed as an authority figure and therefore students may not be open in their comments. As a measure to alleviate this, at the early stages of the research I clearly established my researcher role and this was reiterated during the first

interviews. As ethnographic interviews are often conducted as part of ongoing relationships within the research field, there is more opportunity for building rapport between the researcher and the participants over the duration of the research and therefore the opportunities for the coproduction of knowledge (Mason, 2002).

Despite the familiarity with the research site and the participants, apart from any ‘‘naturally occurring’ oral accounts’ (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007: 99 original emphasis), such as informal discussions during the sessions, conducting interviews was always going to interrupt the observations. The classrooms were studied in the rhythm of their everyday activities, and the interviews then risked interrupting that cadence (Nunkoosing, 2005). Although the reality was that the students were often glad of a break away from their work and the interviews were

sympathetically timed to avoid as little disruption as possible to their coursework; this was always negotiated with the tutors’ permission.

For privacy, and to avoid interruptions the student interviews were held in a more discrete place, which was any convenient room that was nearby and available. They varied between one to one, or small group interviews. Some students preferred not to be in a group interview and were more comfortable by themselves; with the converse occurring and some preferred to be interviewed as part of a small group. The interviews with media students took place once each term, whereas there were only two series of interviews with the music students. The initial plan had been for three, but the extensive demands on room allocation in the smaller music centre limited this.

All of the interviews with staff were on a one to one basis with locations varying from an empty classroom to a staff office. These were conducted during administration time, or at times over a lunch break. The staff timetables were usually very demanding with little free time and even if they had some administration time there frequently were short-notice meetings for them to attend. Any notion of small group interviews, or focus groups with a range of the staff was unachievable due to the logistics of finding opportunities when any could be together at the same time. There were a small number of occasions when tutor interviews had to be rescheduled at short notice due to unexpected events that a tutor had to attend to. This was never detrimental to the research and due to this some tutors were only interviewed once and other staff up to three times. Any lack of formal scheduling was made up by more informal discussions on the research topic.

The interview schedules for both staff and students used a semi-structured format. This allowed the opportunity to extend on any of the research questions should a particular area of interest develop. Retaining that flexibility was important, as students’ use of computers with this intensity was not the norm at the college and elsewhere; as such there needed to be some openness to what emerged during the interviews. Ethically, adopting this semi-structured format offered the interviewees the opportunity to tell their stories in their way (Mason, 2002).

All interviews were recorded using a digital voice recorder with any post-interview notes or reflections being either hand written, or word processed depending on the circumstances. Notes from any informal discussions in, or outside of the classroom were made after the event. This was to avoid the discussions appearing as an overtly instrumental event, despite everyone’s awareness of the research and also with the concern that the rhythm of the discussion could have been disturbed. If something especially vital emerged during a discussion, then using circumstantial judgement brief details were noted down, which were expanded on later.

As the event of writing risks intruding into the flow of a discussion, these were very considered judgements. Nunkoosing (2005: 698), comments that the interviewer also needs to be mindful of ‘the uniqueness of each interview encounter with different participants’ and not let the technique detrimentally intrude. That is, through the sensitivity of self and context and the ‘use of the self, of relationship building, of acute awareness of the flow of conversations’ (ibid.).