After holding my first focus group, I understood that these participants were those more confident in speaking up, observed from their readiness to speak in front of others in group learning situations, and are more active and visible in the studio environment. This made it easier to sign them up to join me for the focus group. Their voices, opinions and suggestions are all extremely valuable and insightful, however it is also important for this research to hear from those less present in the studio and those with quieter voices. It is one important aim of this project that I amplify these voices so that I can enact change within my teaching and benefit all students that partake on the course. My teaching, especially in terms of progression is aimed to help all students access the support they need to feel a sense of progression throughout third year and into life beyond university. With that in mind, I have sought alternative ways to gather feedback that is alternative to ‘in person’, on site focus groups. For those that might prefer the safety and anonymity of their private space, I have designed a questionnaire to be sent out digitally to all third year students. The aim of this is to encourage differing perspectives and experiences in order to turn up new information (Converse, Presser, 2011).
Throughout the survey I am to test a variety of answering tasks, designed to engage the respondent’s active attention (Converse, Presser, 2011). I will use both open and closed questions, and offer different routes of questioning depending on the given answers.
Here is my Feedback Questionnaire sent to students.
After learning from my experience recruiting for focus groups, I decided a singular email will not garner many results, so instead I will piggyback (Krueger, Casey, 2001) on the progression workshops I an running and ask students to complete the survey at the end of the workshop.