20th November - 3rd Campus Session & 6b

I attended the 3rd campus session on Tuesday with Alan, and it really helped put a lot of things in perspective for me with regards to module 2.

Firstly, I was not aware that we were able to choose part of the tile of our degree, quite literally - BA Hons in Professional Practice (Arts) - the Arts section of the title can be linked to whatever you think necessary within reason.  I am writing this info on my blog, as I was completely unaware of this, and for those of you who can't attend every session, you may have been unaware of this really important factor such as I was!  It's important to discuss with your advisor sooner rather than later as the title you wish to use has to be approved via a board at the university beforehand.

We discussed parts of reader 6, including how to gain information for us to complete our inquiries including focus groups, surveys, interviews and observation.  Which one works for you best in terms of the type of inquiry you will be carrying out.

We split up into groups, and my group looked at the positives and negatives of each tool which we then filmed and can be found on Alan's blog below -

http://adurrant.blogspot.co.uk 

I looked at the positives and negatives of using the survey tool-

Positive

-You may encounter a larger responsive audience, simply due to the physical survey being less time consuming .

-By carrying out a survey the candidates can be anonymous, and therefore have a tendency to be more truthful.

-A survey can be precise and direct to the point, where-as in interview, one can have a tendency to go off on a tangent, with a survey this is not he case.

Negative

-Authenticity can be a big negative, as there can b not enough care or though gone into the survey.

-You may encounter incomplete data.

-Non-egagement is a large factor as you do not have face to face interaction with your audience.

We actually decided in the session, that we had loosely carried out a focus group, conversing supporting each other- inputting ideas, which interestingly enough were actually all closely linked, even though our inquiries are all very different.  In effect this was our pilot focus group!

Personally, my inquiry I think is calling out for one on one personal interviews, as interning is such a personal experience that I will not gather the information I quite need from a survey, I need to have more detailed experiences to gage the level of information I need.
I cannot observe people in the workplace of their internship as this will not only not be very convenient, it would be difficult for me to gain access into a workplace due to rules in place within companies.
I may hold a focus group, as it would be good to hear peoples experiences and how they bounce off one another - it would be great to be part of a debate of the positives and negatives of interning.