I was initially hesitant to put together another presentation for this session but I ended up doing it and I’m glad I did. Vikki suggested timing the 10 mins so that we get used to the time for our final presentation. This was a really useful exercise, I talked through my slides but didn’t go into vast detail, I was a little under time which was good but by the time I finish my project I will (hopefully) have so much more to say it made me start to think about how to present my work for the final presentation. I get nervous on the spot for asessment and I don’t love powerpoints….is there another way I can present my findings? Make a little animation? Voice Record ahead of time so I can play a video on the day? I need to find a more creative way to do this that sits better with me!

I did listen to a Helen Kara talk about creative research methods.

Helen described some PHD students who used interpretive dance to present thier findings! On further googling there is a Dance Your PHD competition for the sciences which I had no idea about!

While I am not a dancer and will not have time to create something amazing like this, my brain is ticking over thinking about things I can or might be able to do….but that’s jumping ahead a bit! I will also read some sections on Helen’s book around data prep, de-coding and presenting findings.

It was really useful to hear where everyone is at with their projects and how they are tackling them. There is some synergy of topics within the group which is really interesting, but different approaches.

Something interesting that came up was sampling and how to go about selecting your participants. Each of us were at different stages in the process. One had already sampled and interviewed, I had sampled but was yet to interview and another was still thinking about how to sample and who to contact. The topic of student reps came up which was really interesting and pertinent for us all. We discussed the perceptions around using them as interview subjects – most likely open students comfortable with speaking. However it was brought up that in my colleagues study that the student reps kept referring to and speaking for the general student experience or other students experience. Speaking to others experience is what we want to avoid in our studies. A way to tackle this could be to re-center the conversation to the student in questions experience and remind them that it is only their point of view that you need, and also to omit any information from the study that is anything but the interviewees direct experiences. Perhaps it is not wise to use student reps in a study because of this, perhaps it would be interesting to talk to students who do not normally speak out. It would be interesting to see how different students answer the questions…

For the purposes of my study I had already chosen student reps from all 3 year 3 undergraduate courses in Performance: 3DFX, Hair Make-up and Prosthetics and Costume. 6 people in total to contact. If I had not narrowed it down to just student reps I would have had to contact around 150 year 3 students. I was trying to make the project smaller and more manageable. In an ideal world I would have had time to speak to lots of students but that’s probably more suited to a larger scale research project in the future. My SIP has the potential to be a catalyst for that. I chose year 3 students as they have the most experience with assessment. Yr1 is yet to be assessed and Yr 2 has only been assessed on a pass/fail criteria during the pandemic with limited ‘normal’ technical delivery. I do not know 4 of the students. Only one student replied and I had planned to choose the one who replied first. It turned out to be a student I teach, I had perhaps naively thought that all the students would be interested in participating due to the incentive but only the 1 student that knew me replied. This probably is due to the fact that they know me, but I have never marked their work nor will I so there’s no motivating factor like that for them to talk to me. I will have to re-enforce my position as researcher at the beginning of the conversation. On the plus side we already have an established rapport so I’m hopeful that they will feel comfortable speaking openly to me.

For Technical staff I decided to interview a Technician that has a similar role to my colleagues and I teaching in the Performance realm, but at a different site. I decided to do this as my colleagues and I in my team are so close knit and we have discussed my project and I have asked for their feedback at various points so I wanted a completely different insight, but still within the context of Performance.

For Academic staff I decided to pick a pool of 6 academic staff in the department whom I know but do not work closely with on a day to day basis. I have yet to receive a response from them. I hope they do respond as I really want an academic perspective. If they do not respond I will resort to interviewing someone I know well as I feel its important to still have an academic voice present in my study.

I also wanted to capture the perspective of an alumni. This is because they would have had time to process their university experience since leaving, and their reflections now may be different to the expectations they had whilst studying. It just so happened that 3 are starting to work within our department coinciding nicely with my research project, so I will interview one of them. Again I will do so on the basis of whoever replies to me first to keep it consistent. I used to teach all three of them (but they were on different courses) but hopefully at least one of them will be interested. We are peers now so hopefully there will be limited power dynamics.