THE RESEARCH SAMPLE

Accessing a purposeful sample (Denscombe, 2007: 17) of participants was essential to the

specificity of the research question and this section will present details of the students, and the staff involved in the research.

The student cohorts selected reflect the principle that the intention of the research was not to make representative, or generalisable claims about FE students use of digital technologies in the

classroom, as a collective. It is more to provide an in-depth enquiry of students’ practices where technology was used extensively, rather than intermittently, as part of their course. As Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2000: 143) comment:

A criterion-based selection requires the researcher to specify in advance a set of attributes, factors, characteristics or criteria that the study must address. The task is then to ensure that these appear in the sample selected.

As the overall research focus was to investigate the effect that digital technologies had on students’ practices in the classroom when they were used as day-to-day artefacts there was already a limiting factor in selecting a sample within a relatively small college. From a survey of the college courses and the timetables of the computer resourced rooms with the cooperation of the college estates personnel, without exception, Media and the Performing Musician courses were found to be the curriculum areas where students used computers significantly for their academic research and evidencing and also creatively with subject specific software. As media courses were based on the main college campus and music on a much smaller, self-contained site some distance away there was also the opportunity to identify if there were any disparities emerging from the data that might be attributable to this.

The media students were always timetabled in their classrooms, apart from those sporadic occasions when they needed to go into the college grounds to shoot footage for videos. This was different for the music students, as apart from their classroom sessions they also had timetabled sessions in soundproofed studios. From studying the timetables of both areas it was fortunate that logistically

there was the opportunity to be in all of the classroom sessions of a second year Level 3 media cohort and all of those of both the first and second year cohorts of the Level 3 music.

There was also a first year Level 3 Media cohort but to include these within the sample would have resulted in logistical difficulties and a subsequent dilution of rich data by losing the continuity of being with the three selected cohorts in all of their sessions. Therefore, there was a slight element of convenience in the sampling, ‘as our time and access for fieldwork are almost always limited’ (Stake, 1995: 4) and as Becker (1998: 67) comments, ‘we can’t study every case of whatever we’re interested in’. However, due to the very limited number of cohorts of students across the college who had high exposure to digital technologies the sample is very representative. What follows is a synopsis of the cohorts and staff who participated in the research.

Level 3 Media Year 2

The media cohort consisted of 15 students in total, 8 male and 7 female. Eleven were aged 17-18 and 4 were 18-21 (2 male, 2 female). Fourteen were white British and one female was of white German ethnicity. Three students (2 male, 1 female) did not take part in the interviews for reasons related to health and disability. At the start of the ethnography all of these students aimed to progress to a media related degree course.

Level 3 Performing Musician Year 1

The first year music cohort totalled 9 students, 3 female and 6 male. Six were aged 16 – 17 and 3 males were older (27, 37 and 39). All students were white British and all aimed to progress to the second year of the course.

Level 3 Performing Musician Year 2

The second year music cohort consisted of 11 students, 10 male and 1 female. Nine were aged 17- 18 and 3 were 21-24 (1 female, 2 male), the two older males had already completed degrees, one in Drama and one in Sports. All students were white British and only Jenny, a female student did not take part in interviews due to part-time work hours that affected attendance.

Media Tutors

All four media tutors on the campus took part in the research. The age range was 26-38, two were full-time and two were part-time on hourly paid contracts, all were white British.

Performing Musician Tutors

Five music tutors, all male, took part in the research, with an age range of 29-55. All tutors were white British and two were full-time with the others on part-time hourly paid contracts. All were active in the local music scene and the part-time staff also had employment in music, or education elsewhere. Only one part-time tutor, James, did not take part in interviews due to external

commitments, although there were a number of short informal discussions with him on the research topic.

One noticeable factor, with all the course staff was that they were very competent with ICT and other digital technologies in general. This is not always the case at colleges where some students can have higher ICT skills than their tutors (see Le Gallais 2009).

Non-Subject Specialist Staff

Four other staff from the college’s Basic and Key Skills department who were in contact with these students for Key Skills and learning support also took part in interviews and observations. Their input was very useful as their contact with the students was often at a more prolonged one to one level than the course tutors.

One Key Skills tutor (female, age 58, white British), travelled from the main campus to the music centre to deliver Communication Key Skills for once a week over one term.

As the media students all had English GCSE grades of C and above they did not need to study Key Skills due to college policy at the time.

Three LSAs (Learning Support Assistant), 2 music, 1 media also participated in the research. The skills range of LSAs can vary significantly and at the college the minimum qualification required was GCSE grade C in English and Mathematics. However, due to the diversity in their

backgrounds they can often be just as qualified as the tutors, and in some instances even higher, although they generally receive significantly lower pay than tutors (Robson, Bailey and Mendick, 2006).

The two music LSAs were 1male, aged 31 and 1 female, aged 35 and the Media LSA was aged 25 and all were white British in ethnicity.