Recruitment of participants for the main study started in mid-September 2014, and lasted until July 2015. It has to be noted that recruitment of participants and data collection occurred simultaneously. They were not linear events. The following means were used for recruitment:
• Social media (Facebook and Twitter)
• Forum (Unilang.org, how-to-learn-any-language, The Student Room, Confucius Institute Mandarin Chinese Teaching forum, Chinese- forums.com)
• Wordpress blog (multimodallanguagelearning.wordpress.com, see Figure 4.3)
• Memrise blog (see Figure 4.4) • IOE Chinese classes
Figure 4.3: A screen grab of the Wordpress blog used for participants recruitment Online questionnaire to elicit basic information from potential participants
Figure 4.4: A screen grab of the call for participants posted on the official Memrise blog
Online recruitment was the main method of recruiting participants for the study. This allowed me to gain access to a wider range of audience who were already using these platforms. It also helped raise the profile and publicity for the research (O’Connor, Madge, Shaw & Wellens, 2008). The CEO of Memrise, one of the OLLPs, permitted the posting of the message on its official blog. This was also the reason why most participants who volunteered in this study are users of Memrise.
A total of 85 people signed up through the Wordpress blog, which was also uploaded on the official blog of Memrise, Facebook, Twitter, and several forums. From them, 20 participants were chosen to participate in the study. Selection criteria were as follows:
• L1 (European languages were preferred) • L2 (a mix of multilinguals and monolinguals)
• Experience of using OLLPs (experienced users were preferred) • Availability
It has to be noted that at the initial stage of the research, it was deemed
conducive to have learners who speak a language that has little resemblance to Chinese so that I could gain an insight into how the resources provided by Memrise helped them to learn Chinese, without any help from their L1, as my initial focus was on the multimodal design of the platform, not on the use of learners’ repertoires. This criterion was later on deemed unnecessary due to the changes that I made as the research progressed to give more weight to
translanguaging (see Chapter 9 for explanations). Moreover, the decision to include the so-called monolinguals seemed counter-intuitive, but from a translanguaging perspective, no one is a monolingual. It is only a label that these learners put on themselves as they thought they were. By including them in the research, it demonstrated that they are also multilinguals, as seen in the example of George in Chapter 7. Furthermore, the preference of experienced learners was out of practical considerations. More data could be yielded as they were already familiar with the functions of the platform, and they could show me their creative ways of using it as they were more familiar with it. An example of
the creative use of Memrise is in Chapter Six, in the case of Daniel, an
experienced user. The degree of experience using these platforms would have an effect on their selection of resources, but since this is not an experimental study, as long as the difference is acknowledged and taken into consideration in the analysis process, it is still valuable data.
Table 4.4: A table outlining the methods used, participants involved and data generated
Methods Participants involved Data generated
Online observation of the
platforms Registered users of the platforms - Field notes - Screen grabs Structured interviews Recruited learners Transcript Observation through
screen-recording Recruited learners/registered users of the platforms (occasionally)
Camtasia recordings Semi-structured interviews Recruited learners Transcript Thinking aloud Recruited learners Transcript Learning diary (optional) Recruited learners Written texts
Among the six methods used, observation through screen-recording was the main method of data collection. The other methods were supplementary.
4.6.2 The process
Among the 20 participants whom I originally chose, 9 participants dropped out of the study either because of other commitments or loss of contact. As a result, I observed 11 learners closely.
Recruitment of participants was carried out simultaneously with the actual data collection process. Participants based in London were invited to the London Knowledge Lab (now UCL Knowledge Lab) for an initial briefing session where the details of the project were explained and consent forms were signed. Only one learner was based in London in this study. Assistance was given for the use of Camtasia and the assigned platform. After dealing with the practicalities and logistics of the research, a short structured interview was conducted to obtain basic information on the backgrounds of the participants. The next meeting was scheduled and each participant was asked to carry on learning at home.
For participants who signed up through the Wordpress blog, they were
contacted by email to arrange a Skype meeting so I could explain the study to them and allowed them to ask any questions they had. I had also sent them the information sheet and consent form to sign electronically through email. This initial Skype meeting usually lasted for 30 minutes, and participants would then spend four weeks learning Chinese on their chosen platform(s).
During these four weeks, participants were asked to learn Chinese using their chosen platform(s) at their leisure. There was still hope at this stage that I would collect data from different platforms so that I could compare and contrast them with Memrise. However, as mentioned in section 4.5.6, although data was collected from other platforms, it only gave very limited insights and it was later on discarded, and thus it was not reported here. The duration and frequency of these ‘learning sessions’ were decided by the participants so as to allow
flexibility. Nevertheless, they were encouraged to upload one ‘learning session’ to the designated UCL Dropbox that I created at the end of each week, but this was not strictly imposed on them. The UCL Dropbox was a secured storage space for participants to upload their folders, and it was only accessible by me.
At the start of the research, an online structured interview was conducted with recruited learners to elicit basic information from them, such as their age group, experience of using technology, experience of using OLLPs, as well as their language repertoire. After they had started taking Chinese lessons, the format of the interview would change to a semi-structured one to encourage more open responses. For learners who signed up online, an online questionnaire was given to the participants when they signed up on the blog to volunteer to participate in the study (see Figure 4.3). Basic information was collected: name, email address, place of residence, first language, second or other language(s), and whether they were using any online language learning platforms, and if yes, which one(s) they were using. This information was straight forward so it
worked well by asking participants to fill it in by themselves. It also allowed me to select which participants to contact first. The answer to these questions tended to be simple and did not require a lot of thinking, so the online
questionnaire worked well to engage participants in the study without feeling overwhelmed, but at the same time also gave them a rough idea what the study was about.
The first email sent to the chosen participants asked for more specific
information about their language learning background, and it also explained in more detail about the study. This email was drafted with the potential
participants in mind. I was careful to leave out academic jargon and terms that were difficult for them to understand. I also adopted a ‘down-to-earth’ tone so that they did not feel pressured (see Figure 4.5). By asking participants to tell me about their language learning background and how they were using the platforms, it gave them more time to think about their responses, as these were not easy questions to answer immediately. This kind of questions required some thinking. All in all, the advantage of conducting asynchronous email interviews was that participants were given the opportunity to draft and redraft their responses (Mann and Stewart, 2000; James and Busher, 2006). Though interviewing by email is easy to set up, it is not without its problems. The ease and ubiquity of email made it easy for participants to ignore emails from the researcher so that the time-lag between questions and responses could be long, resulting in a lost spontaneity and interest. However, unlike studies that relied solely on email interviews, in this study it was only conducted as a starting point to open up participants to the research. Subsequent semi- structured interviews were conducted synchronously through Skype to keep momentum going.
Skype interviews were conducted at the start of the study (Week 1) and at the end of the study (Week 4/5). The selection of date and time of the interview was based on mutual consent by the participants and me. As participants were located in different time zones, careful scheduling was required. Also, the setting up of the interview was more complicated and it required more sophisticated technological skills from me. Nevertheless, this was the best possible way to interview participants given the fact that we were all located in different parts of the world, and it was the closest alternative to a face-to-face interview. The reason for choosing Skype as the medium of the interview was
because of its wide availability and was free to download. A lot of participants were already using Skype before the study so most of them were familiar with it. This ensured that participants were being interviewed in a comfortable
environment.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted at the start and at the end of the study synchronously through Skype video call. For the first few participants, three semi-structured interviews were conducted (pre, during, post) but it was later deemed unnecessary, as the learners had already expressed a lot of their opinions and comments through thinking-aloud in the recorded learning
sessions, and the second interview designed to be conducted in the middle of the study was often times a repetition of what they had already said in the recording. Therefore, only pre and post interviews remained for the rest of the participants. For the pre-study semi-structured interviews, general questions were asked relating to the following themes: language background, reasons for learning Chinese, reasons for using Memrise, experience of using language learning technology. The post-study semi-structured interviews mainly addressed the following issues: an in-depth discussion on the learners’
engagement with Memrise, clarification of my observation and thoughts about the learners, and any other issues that the participants would like to raise. Some interviews were conducted asynchronously by Skype chat due to the poor Internet connection of a few participants.
Figure 4.5: An email sent to participants outlining the research Dear (name of participant)
Thank you for your interest in the research. I am a PhD student at UCL Institute of Education and I am researching on how English speaking learners use online platforms to learn Chinese. I want to understand how learners use the resources provided by the platform and create their own learning trajectory, instead of following a structured curriculum.
There are several parts to the research: 1. Briefing session
You will be invited to 'attend' a briefing session on Skype. The purpose is to talk you through the details of the research and to assist you in using Camtasia and the online platforms.
2. Screen recording at your leisure
You will then carry on with using Livemocha/Memrise/ChinesePod (or all three) to learn Chinese at your leisure without my presence, recording your screen and face using Camtasia. You will also 'think-aloud' while doing the recording. The files of the recording will be kept strictly confidential, only me and my supervisors will be able to watch it. In the occasion of academic presentations, only a short clip of the recording will be shown and no photography will be allowed by the audience.
3. Learning diary (optional)
After each lesson session you will write a brief learning diary to reflect on that particular learning session. This is an optional component.
4. Interview
You will be invited to 'attend' a Skype follow-up interview at the end of the study.
The duration of the research is one month. You will have finished at least four learning sessions by then. It is entirely up to you how much time you want to spend in each learning session, and what lesson you want to do. Please let me know if you want more information about the research. I know we might be in different time zones so please let me know 1) which time zone you're at, and 2) if you have any preference for the Skype meeting, e.g. weekdays or weekends, day time or night time, etc. Meanwhile, could you tell me something about your language learning background, and how you are using Livemocha/ChinesePod/Memrise as part of your learning?
Many thanks and I look forward to working with you in this exciting research. Best wishes