Record of Work with Practitioner Informants

Profile of PIs

We recruited 9 PIs via three routes:

• Outstanding contributors to the Learning Design Tools project
• Course authors who work with TALL
• Recommendations from JISC

The following is a brief profile of the PIs, the sector(s) of post-compulsory learning in which they work, and the special contribution which we believe they can bring to the Phoebe project. For confidentiality, they are identified by codes rather than names.

ID	Sector	LD Tools project?	Contribution
PG	ACL	Q, W	Very experienced, works in highly managed environment producing structured plans; college is pro-active re e-learning.
SG	WBL, ACL	Q, W	Work-based learning; working in the commercial sector; excellent understanding of potential users in ACL sector
JW	FE	N	Staff development responsibilities; strong e-learning implementation philosophy
EL	FE	Q	Knowledge of special needs
SM	HE	Q, W	IT Co-ordinator for university department with relatively low penetration of e-learning (apart from Website of resources)
SW	HE	Q, W	ITT for teachers in FE
RF	HE	Q, W	Learning technologist: bridge between academics and technology
SI	HE	N	Online course planning; works in university department with very low penetration of e-learning
RS	HE	N	Responsible for staff development; has experience of developing and maintaining an online resource centre for the university

LD Tools: Q = responded to questionnaire; W = attended workshop

PIs will take the role of 'critical friends' and be involved in (at least) the initial evaluation. We may also ask them to nominate colleagues to participate in the practitioner workshops.

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Methodology for initial interviews (July-August 2006)

We conducted the initial interviews over a four-week period, during which time we were also actively working on the design of Phoebe herself. So the questions we asked were not consistent across all interviews, in part also because the informants represent different sectors and specialities. We also customised some interviews in the light of what we already knew about the PI, either from LD Tools or from professional acquaintance with them.

In all but three cases, the interviews were conducted in the PI's workplace (the other three were held in Liz's office for logistical reasons), with access to an Internet-linked computer.

Artefacts used in the interviews:

• Notes from the LD Tools interview and questionnaire data re PI's approach to D4L and the tools they use (if PI participated in the project)
• Recording equipment (we relied on recording rather than taking notes during the interview, but jotted down anything important so that we could home in on it when listening to the recording. We did not transcribe the interviews verbatim; rather, we paraphrased the general gist and made a full transcription only of the key segments.)
• Printed checklist of the interview questions
• JISC Effective Practice guide
• Phoebe wireframes

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