0.2 Methodology

Methodology

This qualitative study examined how college instructors taught a course using courseware. The goal of this research was to understand better how faculty go about the teaching of a course that incorporates the use of a particular courseware. My research questions were:

1. Who were the instructors who chose to adopt the courseware, and what were their motivations for adopting it?
2. How did the instructors introduce the online aspects of the course to the students?
3. How and to what extent did the instructors use the courseware in teaching?
4. What kinds of successes and failures ensued in teaching the course?

Qualitative methods

Qualitative research methods were employed in this study to find answers to these questions. According to Hill, Thompson, and Williams (1997), the quantitative research paradigm is not adequate for investigating novel, complex phenomena. Qualitative research allows the researcher to examine naturally occurring phenomena in situ, and to describe it in depth and richness. While quantitative research begins with a hypothesis, the qualitative researcher seeks to discover the research questions in the course of data collection and analysis.

In discussing qualitative research, Berg (2004) states, “Quality refers to the what, how, when, and where of a thing—its essence and ambience. Qualitative research, thus, refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols and descriptions of things” ( Berg, 2004, p. 2-3 ).

The experiences of the participants were explored to try to understand how their self-perceptions as teachers intersected with their teaching methods. To find out about their self-perceptions, the interview questions were open-ended. To compare with the interview data, the course syllabi from the course website and a few of the online discussions were examined. By studying a small number of individuals who were involved in online teaching using the same courseware, the focus was on their teaching goals and methods rather than the course content.

Research design

The comparative case study method was used to establish the overall framework to follow throughout this study. A small number of participants were studied for the purpose of cross-unit comparison ( Berg, 2004 ). For each participant, two or more interviews were conducted using the same protocols to insure the collection of like data that could be compared across cases. However, using grounded theory, the bounds of strict comparative case methodology were extended to be able to incorporate data from informal phone calls and data from the course websites, such as the course syllabi and class discussion boards. Including these additional sources of data allowed a more complete picture of each participant’s context first hand, “grounded” in the complexities of their lived experiences in a social context.

The participants

The participants in this small, non-randomized sample were chosen for this qualitative study because of their involvement in a particular specialized learning environment. They were all teaching graduate-level courses based on the textbook Theory and Design in Counseling and Psychotherapy, by Susan X Day. The adopters were teaching at various colleges and universities around the U.S. There were thirteen instructors who adopted the online version of the textbook during the same semester. All the adopters were invited to participate in this study, and nine accepted. Pseudonyms were used to replace the names of participants and if mentioned, any staff with whom they worked.