Meeting with iTEAM

Yesterday we had a good, productive meeting with our colleagues from the iTEAM project. The iTEAM guys  are doing some great work in the area of EVS deployment and adoption across the University, while Amanda and I concentrate on collecting, analysing and making sense of an ever increasing amount of data coming from students and staff using EVS. The way we work with the iTEAM is based on two-way information sharing on our work in progress: the issues they experience and lessons learned from 'the trenches'  provide direction and focus for our data collection and analysis, while our progressive findings help them in tuning their strategy and implementation. So, for example, we had a very interesting discussion on whether or not the University should adopt a single type of a handset ... More on this to come in our preliminary findings and reports ... Stay tuned!

Considering the student reflections

We've started looking at the data from some of the student reflections. These are mainly blogs. Typically the information is structured in a conversational way so the first action to prepare for the data analysis was to draw up a large spreadsheet on which the topics for reflection have been identified and then to cut and paste the students' personal comments into this.

So far this has been quite manageable and we can both access the spreadsheet and see what has been recorded there. We may consider using NVivo software later to review themes that arise.

 One non-native English speaking student offered to do a series of  podcasts for us reflecting on the questions we raised. I was pleased to sit and listen to it as he raised a number of issues about his experience of the use of EVS in class. He felt more confident about recording his answers for aural feedback than writing them down.  One comment caught my attention especially, that he would prefer a paper question sheet because he worries he cannot read fast enough to respond to the questions when there is a test. He also likes to go back and review his answers if possible and of course that is not possible with EVS.
 It set me wondering if this is a common concern among non-native speakers of English and could contribute to stress in classes which use a lot of EVS for asking direct questions of students or for testing. Has anyone else come across this?