2.2 Research Plan
The research questions served as goals for this research. After the questions were formulated,
it was necessary to plan the type of activities that would address them. The following uses
of qualitative methods suggested by Borg and Gall, et. al. served as a guide to constructing
the research plan:
Studying new phenomena. Qualitative research methods such as case study are
probably the best means available to describe new phenomena and develop an understanding of it.
Defining important variables. Because of the emphasis upon holistic approaches and efforts
to maintain a non judgmental orientation, qualitative researchers can discover new variables
that have been overlooked by others.
Theory development. Qualitative methods are especially effective in the development of
grounded theory. (Borg and Gall, et. al,1989)
The researcher adapted the above general purposes for qualitative research to design
the types of activities need to address the research questions:
- To better understand the types of activities that will be needed to develop courseware
in advanced computing environments, accurate histories and detailed descriptions of key
courseware projects in today's advanced computing environments were obtained.
- In order to identify new variables and better define previously identified variables
that influence development efforts, the researcher maintained a cumulative inventory of
recurring issues and the contexts in which they appeared within interviews and publications.
- The project's descriptions and the inventory of issues were analyzed to construct a
model representing the relationships between the educational, technical and organizational
contexts of courseware development in advanced computing environments. The model served
as a basis to formulate recommendations about how to proceed with courseware production
in advanced educational computing environments.
This study used observations and hindsights of key developers and directors to explore how themes of
previous educational computing initiatives were intertwined with new problems and situations.
The data sources, participants, and organizations varied, relative to five case studies of
courseware projects.
While this arrangement accommodated important participant and situational considerations,
it also served to
provide opportunities to triangulate among the various sources of information.
It became possible to construct
a complex representation of the relationships among issues, which were examined in the contexts
of a variety of
resources that accumulated during the study. Both interviews and historical analysis of
documents facilitated
access to large amounts of expansive and contextual data. It is important to note that both
data collection
methods used in this study resulted in the integrity of all data being dependent upon the
honesty of participants
and the researcher's ability to be systematic and observant.