2.4 Materiales nanocompuestos
2.4.1 Refuerzo de matrices poliméricas con nanotubos de carbono
Phase 1 provided a snapshot of how participants were using open learning and how they narrated its influence in their lives, however it was not designed to measure whether or not open learning had a transformative impact on the economic and educational lives of interview participants. Participants in Phase 1 very clearly spoke of the co-‐constitution of their identities and social lives with open learning, if not directly attributing changes in the former to the latter. Some talked about their whole lives changing, with references to changes in their peer groups, expectations for themselves, and overall outlook on life. Many had found contract, part-‐time, and even full-‐time employment that they narrated as a result of their open learning.
Open learning, in its early stages, could seem like a life-‐altering, economy-‐changing,
community-‐building panacea. As a researcher, I also felt myself swept up in the wave of optimism and possibility that was present in open learning spaces. On its own, my account of Phase 1 is a contribution to the literature in that it is (to the best of my knowledge) the first sociological narrative description of open learning.
However, the emergence of themes that corroborated current economic trends plus the overall enthusiasm of interviewees to participate in the research process made this study ripe for a more longitudinal design. Therefore, I amended my IRB and proposed to conduct a second phase of research. In phase 2, I conducted follow up interviews with participants in order to understand more long-‐term educational, social, cultural, and economic outcomes related to open learning.
2.3.4.1 Recruitment
All 34 interview participants were emailed individually, in the late Spring and early Summer of 2015 explaining my interest in interviewing them a second time19. Twenty-‐six participants responded to the initial email and 18 were available to schedule time for a re-‐interview during the time I had allotted to complete this phase of research. One interview was conducted in person and the rest were conducted either over video or phone call. Interviews lasted between 30 and 75 minutes, were recorded, and then were sent off for transcription. Several attempts were made to schedule the eight people who had responded but were unavailable for interview, but after a few failed attempts I chose to move forward with coding.
19 Participants were not aware that I would be reaching out again, years later, for a second round of interviews.
2.3.4.2 Interview Content and Analysis
Phase 2 was designed to explore participants’ senses of self, their social worlds, and any economic impact on their lives20. More simply, I wanted to
understand if open learning “worked,” and more concretely, what did it work for in their lives? Did it lead them to a great job? Did it make them happier? If not, why?
Also, what did they have to sacrifice in order for it to work? Were there tradeoffs and how did they negotiate them? Specifically, I questioned if participants were still using the resources they mentioned in the past, if they had moved onto others, or if they had stopped their learning entirely. Then, I asked them to reflect on the
answers to these questions. For example, if someone stopped using a platform they learned from in the past, was it because they were busy, had moved on to other things, or was the platform not beneficial to them anymore? If they stopped going to networking events where they could learn from others, why did they do that? Was something more pressing? Was there a new platform they were using or did they rely on mentors for their learning? I also asked participants to reflect on their social connections as well as their current work situation. Did their open learning play a role in their ability to connect or to gain employment? Were those connections primarily online or offline and had they changed since we last spoke? In summary, the first part of phase 2 was designed to understand open learning and its self-‐
reported effects on participants’ lives one-‐and-‐a-‐half to two-‐and-‐half-‐years since first speaking with participants.
After learning about what had changed in participants’ lives and how they
20 Appendix 3 contains the full interview guide for phase 2 in-depth interviews.
did or did not connect those changes to their learning ecology, I probed participants about a theme that emerged in the first round of interviews: risk. I asked
participants to think about the concept of risk and whether or not they felt like it was risky to learn through the resources they named in the first round of interviews.
They were prompted with the following statement about risk: “Some people might say it is risky to learn through resources that are not credentialed and do not lead to specific careers, while others might say that spending thousands of dollars on
formal degree programs is risky. Did you ever feel like your decision to learn outside of a formal program was risky? Why or why not?” After this question, I asked
participants to reflect on their employment over the last few years and discussed the role of risk in their choice of employment. For example, if someone left a typical 9-‐5 job for an entrepreneurial venture, did they feel like it was risky? Or if they had left a start-‐up job for a corporate job, was risk a concern in their decision? Also, I wanted to get a sense of how others in their lives perceived their decisions. To do so, I asked them to reflect on any feedback they had received from people close to them, either in support or critique. This question typically revealed some of the
complexity of their decision making and offered them a chance to voice some of their fears for the future, if they had any.
Finally, I asked participants if they would do anything differently over the past few years if they had a chance to do so or if they would still recommend learning through open resources to others (if they had in the past). Somewhat ironically, this questioned typically failed to end an interview and opened up a chance for many participants to reflect on their choice of major or degree program
in formal education, not their decision to learn through open resources. When I asked if participants had questions for me or wished I had asked them anything, the interview often continued to run for another ten minutes while they asked what I had learned in the first round and they directly interacted with those findings through their own narrative. Here, the conversation around risk was developed further as participants revealed some of their own challenges more honestly than they had in the earlier questions about risk. After transcription, interviews were uploaded into Dedoose and coded in a similar manner to phase 121. In an effort to simplify efforts from the first round of coding, 57 codes from the three thematic categories were applied to the 18 transcripts, producing 1176 excerpts.