case study method - draft

What data will be collected and how?

Invitations to participate in this study were sent to the awardees of all Learning and Teaching grants in 2012. There were three respondents who agreed to become a case study. The projects were from the School of Education; the Faculties of Human Sciences and Arts; and the Office for First Year Experience (FYE). Each project had a project leader and a project manager. Both were briefed on the case study protocol (see Appendix A). This included a minimum of three interviews with the project manager over the duration of the project (beginning, middle and end) and an interview with the project leader. These interviews were recorded for transcription, then transcripts were sent to the participants for review. Access to documentation including grant applications, minutes of any project meetings and final reports was also part of the case study protocol. There was also a request to attend any project meetings as a participant observer. This was only possible in one project.

How will the data be analysed?

Data generated in case study research can become unwieldy...(because?). The amount collected for this study was kept to a minimum by following just three projects. Each project was analysed separately and results compared. Content analysis of the interview and project documentation data was carried out using the manual extraction of themes (Krippendorf, date).

limitations to the methodology:
generalising results from just three cases can be problematic. However results could then be used in a pilot or wider study.

Introduction - case study

30 minute writing exercise:

In the higher education sector, learning and teaching research projects constitute one avenue of funding. These projects are either internally or externally funded by various private and governmental bodies (reference). With the move towards greater accountability of public funding and the drive to increase quality education, the necessity to incorporate evaluation measures is growing. Not only to include evaluation but to build evaluation into the project life-cycle both systematically and rigorously. There is a wide body of literature on the evaluation of learning and teaching and the utilization of evaluation results to improve the student experience (references here).
A recent review of the learning and teaching project evaluation literature indicated that there is little evidence of the scholarship....
But there is little to no empirical research on the evaluation of learning and teaching projects in the higher education sector and how the benefits can be realised in practice. One recent research study conducted by the authors has begun to invesigate the factors that inhibit the use of evalaution practices in the sector nad found that project leaders perceptions are an influencing factor. However that paper called for further study into this area, more specifically to observe a learning and teaching project to examine how the perceptions play out over time and investigate what can be done in practice to support the effective use of evaluation for wider scale benefit to the organisation / institution and ultimately the student experience.
This study aims to investigate the evaluative measures used during three internally funded learning and teaching projects, and explore how the project leaders' perceptions of evaluation affected their praxis. Furthermore, this study will consider what can be done to overcome barriers to successful evaluation implementation and therefore enhance this praxis.

writing sandwich

 The following was part of writers retreat:


area/discipline: education
topic: learning and teaching projects
sub topic: evaluation of such
2nd sub topic: higher education sector

working title:
a case study of the evaluation of learning and teaching projects in higher education: practices and perceptions

Problem:

In the higher education sector, grants can be obtained from internal and external sources to fund research into learning and teaching. The internal grants tend to be of around 12-18 month duration with specific guidelines as to how the projects should be conducted and results disseminated. Evaluation of these research projects should enable the research to become more rigorous and to supply evidence that the research is meeting its aims. However there some evidence from the literature that this evaluation is not taking place. One such study has investigated a number of completed internally funded learning and teaching projects and shown that evaluation is influenced by the perceptions of the project leaders.

Aim:
The aim of this study is to follow three project leaders as they conduct their research projects and invistigate how the evaluation unfolds. To identify factors that are at play which influence the evaluation. Observe what and how they evaluate and...


WOW factor of my project:
If money is to be spent wisely on research in learning and teaching, results and findings  of such research projects need to make an impact. We need to reflect and learn from such findings and incorporate them into the development cycle. This will ultimately result in better student learning. The findings from this study can be used to educate researchers about the value of evaluation and get them to see it as a learning mechanism rather than a punitive one. We also need to find a way to incorporate evaluation findings into the next round of projects such that they too can make an impact. So in a way to generalise findings so that a wider audience can benefit from the project.

Brown's 8 questions

Planning the next paper (4):

1. Who are the intended readers: grant bodies/grant application reviewers/ grant applicants
2. What did you do: Three recipients of locally funded learning and teaching project grants were 'followed' as they conducted their research projects over 12-18 months. There were three interviews with the project managers (beginning middle and end of project). And one interview with the project leaders (the person who applied for the grant and had the initial idea). Other project documentation was also used as evidence / data and project meetings were attended were relevant. The questions which guided the data collection were developed from the literature.
3. Why did you do it: To collect evidence as it was being generated rather than retrospectively when people have to 'recall' information which may be influenced by their perception of evaluation and other unknown factors. To see how perceptions changed over the course of the project and what influencing factors caused these changes.
4. what happened: all three had different experiences and perceptions of evaluation to begin with. This appeared to dictate how they conducted the evaluations and what they evaluated and what they did with any evaluation data.
5. What do the results mean in theory: don't know at this stage....
6. What do the results mean in practice: production of guidelines for project evaluation for/from the grant funding body. Development of a framework to guide project evaluation could arise from the findings.
7. What is the key benefit for readers: the grant bodies (ie application reviewers) could use the findings to guide their application and review processes. Academics and project leaders could use this framework to support them in their learning through the project and enable the institution to benefit more widely from the projects. 
8. What remains unsolved: How this framework could best be implemented, feedback from use of the framework.