Graduate student & instructor interviews

While this small, non-random sample provides a useful start for surfacing important questions and concerns around my essential question, the findings resulting from these data may not be widely generalizable. Although the students interviewed are working at different levels (masters and doctoral) and are at different points in completing their programs, this research would benefit from a wider sample of participants. However, this initial interview pool will allow me to begin to see common threads in responses. In turn, these common concerns can be used to hone the face-to-face interview instrument for use with a larger number of participants. The resulting data also would help in shaping an effective survey to be used with a larger pool of graduate students when this research moves into a more quantitative phase.

I strongly suggest that the reader keep in mind the new media aspects of this study and foreground the implications of the use of video and other digital tools. Although my goal is to include authentic voices from my participants, the reader must remember that the segments presented here have been edited. The entire video record of each interview is not included online. Instead, readers (viewers) must rely on the video packages I present. While new media certainly provides for non-linear argumentation, a video package is, of necessity, linear. One image follows another. One sound follows another to make meaning. As a result of my editing responses on a similar subject from different participants together, rhetorical choices are made and participant voices are tinged with my own. Although I could have chosen to present each response as a separate clip rather than editing them into a cohesive package, the act of editing out a single response still constitutes a rhetorical choice. Therefore, presenting a video package seemed the best option; the one that made for a more effective and cohesive rhetorical argument while foregrounding the fact that an author made choices in editing various clips together.

One final limitation must be made explicit: None of the four graduate students interviewed had elected to complete a new media project when it was optional. Rather, all had engaged in this type of activity only when required to do so. Although my personal experience would allow me to respond, I have not yet had the opportunity to have another person interview me. In the interest of limiting my bias, future interviews must include others who opted for new media without be required to do so. This study also would benefit from interviewing those students who have never engaged in new media composition. Depending on the results of the analysis of the two instructor interviews, it also might be important to broaden the faculty interviewed to include those who have never assigned or accepted new media projects.

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