Currently viewing the tag: "Research"

Staff, Student, and PGR Researchers Move From Collaborate to Teams for Online Interviews

By On July 1, 2024 ·

Staff, student, and PGR researchers conducting online interviews and focus groups are now able to use Teams, rather than Collaborate, for this purpose. However, researchers currently using Collaborate do not need to make the switch immediately as they will still have access to their Collaborate rooms until 31 December 2024.

This change was approved by the University’s Research Ethics Committee on 13 June 2024, and additional information from REC is provided below.

“From June 2024, ethical approval can be given for online interviews to be conducted, recorded, and transcribed/translated in MS Teams. Use of MS Teams is only allowed when used in the way specified in the UON LLS guide on Recording Online Interviews [see link below]. Using this procedure, staff, students, and PGRs can set up and record online research interviews and focus groups in compliance with the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act (2018) and with University policy. This guidance only concerns the making of video and/or audio recordings in Teams of online interviews and focus groups where the recording is needed temporarily in order to create an anonymised transcript, after which the recordings will be permanently deleted. This guidance does not apply to recordings which are intended for permanent or long-term storage.

From July 2024, ethical approval will no longer be given for conduct of online interviews in Blackboard Collaborate. Researchers with existing ethical approval to conduct interviews in Blackboard Collaborate can continue to use that platform until 31 December 2024, after which it will be necessary to transfer to MS Teams. Researchers with existing ethical approval for research in Blackboard Collaborate can transfer to use of MS Teams immediately:

  • UON staff with ethical approval for interviews in Blackboard Collaborate should notify the ethics committee which gave approval. Requests to transfer to use of MS Teams will be reviewed immediately as a Chair’s Action.
  • PGRs with ethical approval for interviews in Blackboard Collaborate should notify the Research Ethics Committee via the ‘significant amendment’ button in the approved ethics application in Gateway. Requests to transfer to use of MS Teams will be reviewed immediately as a Chair’s Action.
  • UON colleagues responsible for undergraduate and Master’s research should update dissertation/project guidance to enable use of MS Teams, as per the UON LLS guide on Recording Online Interviews [see link below] for 2024/25 onwards.”

More information

Setting up and Recording Online Interviews: A guide for researchers

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Blackboard User Experience & Design Research Project

By On November 22, 2021 ·

If you’ve ever had ideas about how Blackboard could be better, then now’s the chance to get involved with a new user experience research project run by Blackboard’s User Experience & Design Team.

You can find out more, and can sign up as a participant here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NQ6HVS2

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Which free online survey tool should I tell my students to use?

By On November 3, 2016 ·

The Quick Overview:
• Where students need to carry out online surveys, and where academic staff do not have a preference as to which tool the students use, we recommend eSurv: http://esurv.org
• A tutorial video explaining how to use eSurv is also available here: http://bit.ly/esurv-tutorial

One area where students sometimes come unstuck with their research projects is when they try to extract data from the free online survey tool they have used. While it is often easy to create a simple online survey for free, and easy for a limited number of respondents to take part in the survey, it is not always so easy for the researcher to access their data.

There are a large number of free online survey tools available for use, and choosing the most appropriate one is not always easy. In almost all cases, accessing the full-functionality of the survey tool is not free. For example, the free version of the survey tool may be limited by number and type of questions available (a maximum of ten questions, for example, and only basic questions). It may also be limited to a maximum number of responses (fifty responses per survey, for example). Another common restriction is to limit access to the survey data, and not to allow the researcher to download the data for analysis in a statistical package. While all these restrictions can be overcome by paying a monthly subscription to the survey tool provider, students often feel rather cheated when they find out that it will cost them, in some cases, £60 to download their data for analysis in SPSS. They often feel especially annoyed when they find out that if they chosen different tool they could have had free access to their data.

As part of a recent University of Northampton URB@N project, Paul Rice, Phil Oakman, Clive Howe and Rob Farmer decided to find out whether there was a genuinely free online survey tool out there somewhere. And they decided to make things more difficult by trying to find one that was also easy to use and that stored data in a way that was compliant with the UK Data Protection Act. The good news is that they found one!

If you would like to find out more then you can read all about it in their paper published in the journal MSOR Connections: https://journals.gre.ac.uk/index.php/msor/article/view/311

 

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Science and Technology Research in Pedagogy (STRiPe) blog

By On March 17, 2016 ·

The Science and Technology in Pedagogy (STRiPe) Research Group was set up to facilitate those working on teaching and learning activities related to science and technology to collaborate. Pedagogy is central to the success of the University, and having a cross-disciplinary and cross-university groups aims to help with this. STRiPe’s aims to take the work members are doing or planning to do with their students, and help with collaboration.

For information about the group, please see the page on the main University website.

Please click this link to access the blog maintained by School of Science and Technology.

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